What a GREAT trip! We had the best time :) We left Saturday morning around 7am from the house and took a taxi over to the Cruz de Sur bus station. It was about a 3.5 or 4 hour ride to Paracas from there. The bus ride was really nice. We sat on the 2nd floor and I slept most of the way. The seats leaned back really far, so it was very comfortable.
We had reservations at a hotel in Paracas and someone from the hotel came to pick us up at the bus station (which we found out later was literally a 10 minute walk away, lol). Then we hung out on the roof of the hotel in a terrace while they were getting our room ready. We chatted with a group of people who were leaving that day and heading back to Colorado from a spring break service trip. The guy at the front desk made all the arrangements for us to go on a tour to the national reservation, which we heard was a must-do, even though we hadn't really researched much about it. THEY WERE RIGHT!!! It was unbelievable! Paris and I went with another guy from Norway who's in Peru with his job at an international development NGO. The 3 of us hung out for the next day and a half together... but let me tell you about the national reservation!
We drove through the straight desert for about 20 minutes or so until we got right to the edge of the ocean and then miraculously this hilly, sandy, desert had cliffs that overlooked the ocean. When we first got there, it was so windy we could barely see though! I had to take my contacts out immediately where I stood outside because I couldn't even open my eyes there was so much sand. Paris and I made a barracade from the wind while I fished through my bag to find my contact solution and case, and then my glasses. Once I had my glasses on I could see a little bit, but really just held my camera out to take pictures so I could actually see the ocean later because it was like we were in the middle of a sandstorm!
Then we drove to another spot and the wind stopped. When I got to the edge of the cliffs again, I could see the most beautiful ocean! The contrast of the colors were beautiful. There were no trees, nothing green at all - just desert and then the ocean right up against the cliffs. One of the cliffs we saw has a small beach at the bottom called La Playa Roja (Red Beach) because the sand on the beach is made up of tiny, small red pebbles which makes it look like there is red sand. It's beautiful. And other areas we saw had thousands and thousands of birds and penguins sitting on rocks in the middle of the ocean. Beautiful! We stayed out there for about 4 hours.
Then we walked around Paracas that night. It's such a strange little town - completely built around tourists with strips of small little family owned restaurants and markets lining a tiny beach. And then behind that strip are are few blocks of local hostels and that's about it folks! :) But it was nice.
In the morning we woke up early and went with our new Norwegian friend to a dock on the beach where there were about 200 people lined up for a tour to the Ballestas Islands (Islas de Ballestas). I got yelled by the tour organizer :) because I didn't pay attention to the directions on the form I was filling out while we were in line to get on the boat. I hate directions! Who reads directions anyway??? For my nationality I wrote English because I thought it said 'language.' So then I scribbled it out and wrote American and he said, 'no! no! no! this is an official document!' Luckily they still let me on the boat :) The boat had about 25 or 30 people on it with a tour guide who spoke English, Spanish, and French. After only 5 minutes out in the ocean the boat stopped because we were surrounded by dolphins! We took some great pictures and video! Then we went out about 30 minutes further into the ocean and rode around the Ballestas Islands, which has different coves of sea lions and penguins. We saw one beach in particular where all the mom and baby sea lions are - there were hundreds and hundreds of sea lions there and they sounded like elephants! I literally felt like I was in Jurassic Park because all of the thousands of flocks of birds flying overhead. There is really no way to even describe it. If you come to Peru, you HAVE to go there! And it was great because we weren't rushed around. We just meandered around in the boat from one cove to the next, seeing sea lion after sea lion...
I guess I have to mention here that, like I said before, we have GREAT pictures!!!! Unfortunately, when we went sandboarding a couple days later in another city, we got sand all in the camera and it's not really working at the moment. The memory card is fine so we are going to try to get all of the pictures off the camera, but it's a work in progress, so you'll have to wait a few days to actually see them :(
Later that day we said goodbye to our friend and went back to the bus station to head to our next big destination: Ica! At the bus station, we met another guy from L.A., California who is in Peru for a few weeks trekking around. He was headed to the same place we were, so we found a new buddy to pal around with for the next few days of our adventure... but I'll tell you more about that when I write about Ica! :)
