El gran viaje 2007

We finally managed to drag ourselves away from the comforts of Arequipa on Friday, when we got on an overnight bus to Lima. We weren´t going to Lima just yet though, and we got off early in the morning on Saturday in Ica, about five hours south of Lima on the Panamerican highway.

Not that we could see Ica, or anything along the road as the taxi driver took us to Huacachina, the little town where we were actually staying. Everything was covered with opaque white fog. Anything more than ten feet away was pretty much invisible. It´s lucky the taxi driver could see enough to get us to our hostel in one piece. That´s how the entire south coast of Perú is in winter-- covered in thick, sun-killing fog.

As the day wore on and the fog began to part enough for the sun to shine a little bit (I don´t think we´ve seen the sun since), we could see that the entire town of Huacachina was surrounded by mountain-sized sand dunes. We´d had no idea earlier in the morning. But the now-visible sand dunes were what we came to Huacachina for and later in the afternoon we jumped on a dune buggy for a trip into the desert.

The point of the dune buggy tour is pretty much for the driver to speed up and down the dunes scaring everybody to death. Basically like a roller coaster except scarier. We made it through that too, though, and the driver stopped us at the top of a huge sand dune so we could sandboard down it. Sandboarding is fun because it´s like snowboarding except not as cold and it takes no skill, so we were speeding down nearly vertical slopes in no time. When the sun set and we couldn´t see where we going anymore, we got back in the dune buggy to speed back to Huacachina.

Since that was pretty much all there was to do in Huacachina, on Sunday we caught a bus to Pisco, another few hours up the coast to Lima. Pisco is a bigger town than Huacachina, but still not particularly exciting and more than a little run-down. Our hostel was down a tiny dirt road littered with trash and full of stray dogs. But we weren´t there to see Pisco, we were there to see the Islas Ballestas, known in guide books as the "poor man´s Galapagos."

Seeing the islands meant waking up extremely early (and no coffee anywhere!) to take a bus to the port at Paracas, where we caught a boat to the islands. After about twenty freezing-cold minutes on a little boat, we stopped at the islands to look at the wildlife. Mostly that meant birds, lots of birds, and lots of bird poop. The islands were absolutely covered with it, and the place smelled like it, too. In Perú though they call the poop guano and they harvest it and sell it for a lot of money as a fertilizer.

Among the birds, though, were little Humbolt penguins. And lounging on the rocks were sea lions, hundreds of them laying on the beach and playing in the water.

Then it was back to Pisco to catch an afternoon bus to Lima, our final destination. Well, we still have a month here and plenty more travelling to do, but getting here is still the symbolic end of our journey. It took us three months and thousands of miles, but we´ve made it.

It feels really good to be in a big city. We´ve mostly been in the middle of nowhere since we left Rio two months ago, and for now we´re enjoying the sound of traffic and the smell of car fumes. Well, and the food and the shopping.