We were scheduled to be picked up at our hotel at 7:15 am for our first leg of the area. The van arrived, we squeezed into it, and headed off for Paracas to take a boat out to the islands. They call the islands “Peru’s little Galapagos”. Once on the boat we had a 20 minute boat ride, at high speeds, to the Ballestas Islands. The wildlife was amazing. There we thousands of birds, penguins, pelicans, red billed terns, and lots of others along with sea lions everywhere. They were horribly stinky and very loud. We were warned to keep our hats on because of the large volume of bird droppings. The indigenous Indians used to come out to this island to collect bird guano for their fertilization. It is a “not to be missed” spot. The boat got back and we were scheduled, according to our initial schedule, to see the National park of Paracas. Off we hopped, Vinnie missing landing in the water by a hair, to search for our tour leader. Little did we know that the old fellow that took the boat out was our tour guide. We only found this out by again, asking everyone we could find that had a badge on. The National park is beautiful, stark and a sharp contrast of the desert hitting the ocean (see photo’s). The tour of the park took a few hours and we stopped at a small fishing village for lunch. It was fresh…caught just this morning! We headed back to Pisco (wondering why they had us stay in that hole and not in the nice town of Paracas). The driver took us to our hotel, we picked up our luggage and were dropped off at the bus station. Mind you we had 3 hours to wait for our bus to arrive. We insisted that the tour guide go in and make sure that the bus was scheduled to really arrive being that this is a tiny little town and we DID NOT want to spend another night in it if avoidable. We walked around the town (took about 30 minutes to do the whole thing) then sat in the terminal waiting. The bus was an hour late but at least it arrived. This time it was a double decker! We had seats on the top layer (oh, joy). This bus had no shocks and one little bratty kid that I was ready to strangle after the first 20 minutes. This bus driver didn’t go as fast as the last one (thank God, because my heart couldn’t have taken it) and the bus was a bit more comfortable. We did have reclining seats, dirty but it was much better than the last bus! The bus had a tendency to sway from side to side. The three hour bus ride turned into a 5 hour lesson on why we will never take a bus again (after tomorrow that is!).
We arrived in Nasca two hours late so it was dark and we were exhausted. We got to our hotel and were absolutely tickled to death at the quaintness of it. It was an old hacienda that had been converted to a very nice hotel with beautiful grounds out in the countryside.
We were so HAPPY! But before we could get too excited our taxi driver turned to us and announced that he would pick us up tomorrow at 3 pm. Well…we have had enough of not getting enough time to look around at all the sites so after much talking convinced him that we would be picked up tomorrow morning to fly over the Nasca Lines. I guess our tour company had neglected to schedule that little detail for us. With a smile back on our faces off we trotted to our room.
We each had a nice drink, wandered the grounds with delight and then tucked ourselves into bed with sugar plums dancing in our heads. About two hours later I awake to find Vinnie standing there in all his glory swatting at bugs. He is covered in mosquito bites! The room is just filled!! The walls are splattered with his blood…it looked like something out of a horror movie! It was actually a bit funny because mosquitos typically find Vinnie much tastier than me and tonight was no exception. I was unmarked! Luckily I had brought a little bottle of 100% Deet and after much digging through my suitcase came up with it. The ordeal of the day had finally ended with a splash!
