Sunday, April 1, 2012

Waking up in an old mansion has its perks. The restaurant is on the top floor as we are getting used to in this strange country. The benefits are the views from the restaurants. Simply amazing! We even can see an active volcano (Volcan Misti) from our table! We are at altitude and we are shown something called, “Coca Leaves”, which are a narcotic and probably a controlled substance in our home country. But Altitude Sickness is a real thing and we need to adjust to it. Arequipa is at 7660 feet which is not much more than our local Big Bear in SoCal. But breathing has become a bit labored. So it is suggested that we chew Coca Leaves. This is rather disgusting. But it is also suggested that we drink, “Coca Tea”, which is much more pleasing. So I start a regimen of two cups of Coca Tea each morning from here on. It seems to work nicely!

We are picked up by a taxi driver who sends word to the hotel and the restaurant gets the message and we go down and meet the driver/guide for the day! She takes us to some scenic overlooks and a small market where we abstain from spending money. But we pose with a fun statue and have fun. Our cameras are entertained also!

She takes us to a city center, the name of which eludes me after 9 years. But there is a church to check out and a plaza to photograph. And here I find a subject that those of you who know me, know I always look for. A pair of Lovers. I find them here and they happily pose for me! We see another ice cream vendor that looks so intriguing but we refrain due to the nature of unpasteurized milk here. We find Easter Flower Vendors preparing for the upcoming holiday and another “Inri”, or a “Crucifix” designed for workers that denote the tools they use for different locations. You have already seen several “Inri’s” on previous posts and will see more as we move forward!

So I get only a few shots inside the church before I’m chastised and told to put the camera away. I was apparently too obvious and a church worker follows me for the rest of the tour. LOL. So we finish up and I get more shots outside of another ice cream vendor and other sights outside!

Now our guide takes us to a local monastery that is still an active monastery and has nuns and priests living there. The place is quite the camera eye candy and my cameras are having a ball! Our private guide takes us through and shows us the place, complete with old kitchens and laundry area which is quite intriguing to see! A system of cut bowls that go downhill and the laundry goes from one vessel to another to get clean!

Next we go to a local restaurant for a fun local meal of Alpaca, Vicuna and Beef! We find out that Alpaca is healthier than Beef AND is delicious! “Alpandina Gastronomia” Restaurant is quite the interesting place as it overlooks the local square!

Later in the evening, I am tempted and do some more night photos, which I love to do!

Good night and see you tomorrow!

Saturday, March 31, 2012

Where has the morning gone? Oh yeah, the Nazca Lines, those wondrous artifacts that make you wonder! But that morning flight is over, time to move on! So our ride takes us to the Ica bus station. We board a luxury double decker bus and luck out by being early enough to board first! So we scamper up top and grab the front seat on the top deck! Our tour guide introduces himself and all is good.

My cameras get a workout (which they love!) and capture the local sights along the way inclusive of a roadside memorial for someone who passed away! New buildings of homes is simple here where it never rains and the building appears to be made of bamboo but I don’t know where that comes from!

An interesting addition to this bus is it has a kitchen on the bottom level in the back and they actually prepare hot meals and deliver them to your seat! We pass through the villages of Chavina, Puente Angosto and Concar, where we see trucks transporting strange loads that seem to include animal hides. What’s up with that? We never get an explanation. But the sun sets on us as we climb up into the mountains.

We have lost daylight and our cameras are totally bummed out, but the story goes on. we zig zag up this steep mountain road that has one lane in each direction. Our driver below us is a brave and bold soul that will let nothing slow him down. He must be able to see the road better than us (even though we are in the top of the bus and I swear can see everything available) and he starts passing slow commercial trucks even on the hairpin turns! We cringe and wonder if we should have chosen this view! But the ride goes on for hours up these steep mountain roads and we survive it!

Finally we arrive in Arequipa, Peru and the bus pulls up to our latest hotel and Elee and I are the only ones to debark. We are standing in front of an old mansion that has been turned into a hotel. We have to press a button and get admitted and we are shown to our room along with our luggage. We are treated like royalty and we are amazed! The room is spacious and it is another luxury space. The bathroom and toilet have the same restrictions as all of Peru though and we get accustomed to Peru!

Good Night everybody and we’ll see you in the morning! Wait, it is already morning!

Saturday, March 31, 2012

We go to the complimentary breakfast offered by the hotel and it is a spread of fruit. Was hoping for some eggs and meat, but then I realize where I am and happily scarf down a plateful of the delicious fruit. Across the street from the hotel, we see we are back in the 3rd world country after a few blissful hours of luxury.

Our taxi this morning takes us to the Ica Airport (pronounced Eeek-a) for a flight over the Nazca Lines. You can also fly out of Nazca Airport, but when we checked before we started this trip, we found government warnings about higher crime in Nazca. So we chose to fly out of Ica instead. We get there and check in for our flight. There are two other passengers waiting also, and luckily, they give us the two seats right behind the pilots. They are personable and speak decent English and the flight begins.

We first fly over lush green farms that are obviously irrigated. We learned from our hotel concierge that it never rains here. The hotel lobby was open to the sky and I asked what they do when it rains. The concierge chuckled and informed me that the last time it rained was in 1955 and they got a whopping one tenth of an inch! We do fly over what appears to be a resort that is an oasis in the desert for real. Can you spot it? The rest of the desert has only been eroded by the wind!

We finally reach the area they call the “Nazca Lines”! This is a spectacular day! A lot of the lines are seemingly random geometrical lines that criss-cross the desert without specific patterns. Now I feel it important to point out that all of the Nazca Lines were made in these deserts over 3000 years ago! Long before the concept of flight was even a glimmer in the most educated scholar of the day’s mind! Now as you will see in the photos, some of these lines and patterns go for miles, much farther than the eye can see on the ground! Also know that the lowest we flew was one mile up as per the aviation rules regarding this area!

There was a doctor who visited the Nazca Lines named Maria Reiche, and she ended up spending the rest of her life living there and studying them! Here is a quote from Wikipedia, “Later Reiche found lines converging at the summer solstice and developed the theory that the lines formed a large-scale celestial calendar. Around 1946, Reiche began to map the figures represented by the Nazca Lines and determined there were 18 different kinds of animals and birds.”

In the following photos, you will see random lines, and figures including the “Spaceman”, “Spider Monkey” and the “Hummingbird”. Click on the photos and look at them up close!

(There also does appear to be a few rivers that flow from the jungle areas to the east of this place and flow specifically across a few places.)

Here again is the Hummingbird. There appears to be a brand new road (or newly paved road) across the desert. You will then see a “Spider” and some creature with two hands and nine fingers, LOL. There is definitely evidence of water erosion in places, but I think I explained that in the last paragraphs. You will also see a roadside rest stop with an observation tower for roadside tourists that looks over a couple designs.

Alas, our flight time is up and we head back to the airport! Keeping in mind the age of these lines (3000 years) and what you just saw, I challenge anyone to explain these lines! You can only see the patterns and designs from above. And to see the magnitude of them, you have to be very far above them! So how did the Nazca people make them, and more importantly, Why??? Who did they think would see them???

See you in the afternoon!

Friday, March 30, 2012

So we board the bus for the 1 hour 20 minute ride to our next destination, Ica, Peru. But first I allow my camera a few shots around the bus station. Then it’s time for a short ride across the Peruvian desert.

It is very desolate here. The police checkpoint checks our papers and we go through a toll booth. We even see a grape vineyard before going into a manicured city square. But more desolation in the form of half destroyed building assault our senses. But then we arrive and check into our next hotel, the Villa Jazmin. This place is a 5 star oasis in the middle of a 3rd world country.

The morning has been eaten up and we are reminded that it is lunchtime. So our next taxi driver takes us first to a comfortable restaurant, but not before driving by a roadside ditch where we witness locals washing their laundry in the culvert. Once in the restaurant, “La Olla de Juanita”, we enjoy a well prepared meal of chicken and have our first “Pisco Sour”, a drink similar to a Margarita only with Pisco, a type of Brandy that is proprietary to Peru. The drink is topped off with whipped egg whites, go figure. But it was delicious!

After we are done with lunch, our driver heads out into a deserted desert. If he wanted to rob us and leave our bodies, we unlikely would be found for a long time. These thoughts go through our heads for what reason I do not know. But our driver is a pleasant guy and speaks enough English to describe what we are seeing and he brings us uneventfully to our destination, “Tacama Winery”, the oldest winery in Peru.

We walk into the winery just as the day workers are leaving. Every worker is inspected and frisked by a security team to make sure they are not taking anything out that they shouldn’t be. It is a bit unsettling to say the least. We are ushered into a waiting area/tasting room to await our guide for the tour.

Our guide takes us around and gives us the history of the winery and shows us some of the old and some of the new equipment that is used to make wine and to make Pisco! She even takes us up into a bell tower to see an overview of the vineyards. Elee hams it up and pretends to take a drink directly from a keg and my camera chuckles!

Now it’s time to go back to our hotel, the oasis in the desert. Dilapidated buildings and poverty surround us. It is eye opening.

Back in the serenity of our hotel, we don our swim costumes and take a refreshing dip in the sparkling blue water. The swim up bar speaks of luxury that people within 100 feet of this place will likely never know. My camera is whining about taking night photos so I find a couple angles for it to do its thing! In our room, the one thing that reminds us of the fact this is a 3rd world country is a sign in the bathroom. The same sign has been in every bathroom in the country, it says, “If it didn’t go through your body, don’t let it go in the toilet!” That’s right, nothing in toilets in Peru that you didn’t digest. Toilet paper? Put it in the trash can, period.

See you all in the morning for the next adventure!

Friday, March 30, 2012

Today we awake to a beautiful morning and we walk down to the boat docks for our next adventure. We board the “Candelabro II” for a trip to the “Ballestas Islands”, nicknamed the “Galapagos of Peru”. The boat holds approximately 30 people and we are in rows of seats with a middle aisle. Our first sights are of the parked fishing boats and a pod of dolphins.

Then we come along our first ancient relic, the “Candelabra”, a carving in a desert hillside speculated to be a navigational tool for mariners.

As we continue out to sea, we get glimpses of flocks of migrating birds, even a Yellow Albatross. We arrive at the Ballestas Islands and enjoy sights of many sea caves and tunnels and the islands are topped with flocks of Cormorants, Albatross and many other birds.

Coming across evidence of humans, our guide explains that the bird and animal Guano is flammable and used to be mined from the islands to be used as fuel. At one point, we even see a couple workers doing something on the ship dock but we never find out what.

We find a group of Boobies (the bird kind, LOL), Seals sunning themselves, a Booby in flight, Inka Turns with their magnificent red beaks and feet, more Cormorants, Pelicans in flight and beaches full of Seals before we arrive back to the docks in Paracas.

Back on dry land and it isn’t even lunchtime. We let our cameras capture a few more tidbits including a man preparing food, a delivery vehicle and the front of Portada El Sol Restaurant. Then we take a short ride to the bus station which doesn’t look like any bus station we have ever seen. It is no more than a large shade cover. Inside, my camera spots and old box of chocolate candy, a name by Nestle that must be made for South America only.

So we wait for the bus. You will see that part of the trip in the next post!