Peru

The next town we were staying in was Nazca. However on the way we stopped of at a few other places. Firstly a tour of a Pisco distillery, then we stopped at an oasis in the middle of a load of sand dunes for driving around like idiots in dune buggies and sandboarding down big dunes.

Nazca is home of the famous Nazca Lines, a series of massive lines in the Nazca Desert, created by the pre-Inca Nazca people between 200 B.C. and 700 A.D. The remarkable thing about the lines is that many of them form pictures of animals and creatures far too large to be seen from the ground. You can only see the images if you fly overhead in a plane, which is exactly what we did:

No-one knows exactly why the Nazca people chose to create the lines; they never developed reading and writing so we've never discovered a scroll with the writing "we created the Nazca Lines because..." You get the usual calendar, astronomical and alien theories though. (The top figure above, the 'astronaut', really gives the alien theorists some ammo)

Personally I just think they were trying to fuck with the heads of future archeologists. Which they've succeeded in doing wonderfully.

Next we stopped at the nearby Chauchilla Cemetery, the burial site for a pre-Inca people. This site contains many ancient skeletons and artifacts displayed in their original tombs. Sadly a lot of the remains and artifacts have been looted over the years; you can see lots of craters around the site where grave robbers have started digging.

Lastly we went to see a ceramic workshop where they still make pottery as the Nazca people would have done all those years ago.

Our evening meal was quite different too... We ate at a pachamanca restaurant. Basically the food was a mixture of meat and vegetables; it's the method of cooking that is unusual. Rocks are heated up on a fire and then warpped amongst the food in various leaves and clothes before being buried under the ground and left for a few hours. After a quick ceremony (dropping coca leaves on the ground, blessing the food, that sort of thing) it's dug up and eaten. Quite nice it was too, although it seemed far too much effort for me...

We then jumped on the night bus to head to our next stop, the city of Arequipa...

First stop on our tour was the seaside town of Paracas, just south of Pisco on the west coast of Peru. We arrived in time for dinner and had a fantastic meal on the seafront. I had one of the local fishes, charela. The seafood is amazing on the coast of Peru, and very cheap too; I had a big meal and a beer for approximately £4...

The next day started with a boat tour. First we went to see El Candelabro, a giant figure carved into the coast of Paracas:

As seems usual with these huge carvings there are lots of theories as to why the thing was carved, but no-one knows for sure. Some of the theories include a calendar, a warning by pirates, various religious ideas and of course the obligatory 'built by aliens' explanation. Whatever the explanation, it's pretty impressive.

Then the boat swung over to Islas Ballestas, a nearby island covered with lots of birds sea lions;

There are various constructions on the island as the guano (i.e. bird crap) is valuable and therefore people collect it up for sale. There are loads of different breeds of bird on the island, ranging from turns to penguins and pelicans. On the down side it does stink of bird crap.

Sea lions also hang around the islands, lounging around on the rocks or making lots of noise on the beach. The sound of several hundred sea lions lying on a beach roaring their lungs out is certainly an experience!

My first stop in Peru was it's capital city, Lima. I didn't spend that much time exploring it though so don't expect any words of wisdom yet... I have a few guided tours of the city later on my trip so you can expect some more info then... My time so far in Lima has been spent on drinking and eating mainly... Although I did find time to take a few pictures:

I can recommend the Pisco Sours, a Peruvian cocktail comprising of Pisco, (a Peruvian brandy) lemon juice, egg whites, ice and a dash of bitters. It's rather nice, although I have found the sourness varies somewhat depending on which bar/restaurant you're in...

As for food, well the lomo saltado is very good. Lumps of beef steak with strips of red onion and tomato, served with chips, rice and corn. Very tasty.

The one annoying thing here is internet access. Although the connections are usually pretty fast the computers are usually pretty shite, making it a pain to do anything. Therefore don't expect me to be updating this blog that often! (Having said that I never did when I was in America and had great internet access...)