Peru South

After a lovely couple of days in Lima we are off on a 7 day jaunt with Peru Hop Bus.  Our fist stop was a 17th century Hacienda with a dark history in the slave trade.

Pic hacienda

We walked in the tunnels which were only discovered after the earthquake in 2007 – over 17km of them.  It is believed that when the laws regarding slaves was changed the then owner sealed the tunnels with 8000 slaves inside – hopefully this is just an old wives tale.

Pic tunnel

On arriving in Paracas where we were staying overnight we had a few hours free so Steve and I decided to hire a quad bike and go to the museum and look around the national reserve.  Turned out not to be the best move, we caused a bit of a curfuffel.  Got the bike and drove to park, at entrance it appeared we should have a guide and ticket person saying we could not enter ( we think,… Language issues). At this point a group turned up they spoke to lady and we put our names on a piece of paper and allowed to go.  Not sure what the group were doing but we turned off at museum.  Ladies there said things we did not understand and they gave up so we went to waters edge to look for birds then to museum. Pretty scary the medical things they did back then, operating on brains and changing head shapes etc.

On leaving we were accosted by same ladies plus guys we rented bikes from. We were told to follow them back to town, even though we had paid for another one point five hours to explore Park. On the way back we all got stopped at entrance. 25 mind of a group of people arguing while we sat there with no idea what was going on.  Eventually one of the people explained that it is mandatory to have a guide in the park and the bike should not have been rented to us without one.  Not our fault they said.  Still quite embarrassing and a waste of the hire cost.

Pic museum stuuf

The next morning we took a boat ride out to some small islands near by to see the Humboldt Penguin.  On reaching first island, there are a few seals but virtually no birds at all – apparently due to current El Nino they have moved to another island.  Off we go to that group of islands and there are so many birds, not just penguins but many others too, the islands are covered.  Quite a sight.

PIC island

Next stop a night in Huacachina, on the way our bus kept breaking down and also got rear ended by another vehicle – no damage though.
Huacachina is mainly for sandboarding or dune bikes which we decided not to participate in and just enjoy the scenery instead.  Pretty high sand dunes – impressive, but one guy on our bus went over the handlebars of his bike and then it ran him over.  Luckily not too much damage – glad we did not partake.

Pic….

Next stop the Nazca Lines, firstly a tower viewpoint where you can see a couple of the geoglyphs but the best ones are by a flight over.  It was very impressive, unfortunately our photos are not.

Pic lines….

We had planned to go to the aquaducts, but a mis communication meant we missed that option – in the end not so important as we saw them from the flight.

pic aquaducts

So far the bus journeys have not been to bad but the next one is 11.5 hours overnight, it was not great with little sleep had, although more space than a plane which is an advantage.

We decided to spend 2 nights in Arequipa as there were some interesting things around, like Colca Canyon and Ruta Del Sillar.  In the end we would have liked a 3rd night as it was a lovely city with lots of old buildings and other interesting places we could have poked around.

2 options for Colca Canyon – viewpoint or 2 day hike, which apparently is really tough on even youngsters spanning from 3287 meters down to 2100 metres – too tough for us. The short viewpoint walk was hard enough at 4900 metres.  The main drawcard of this viewpoint is the number of Andean Condors flying around, impressive.

pic condor – view

On the drive to Colca Canyon there was ice on the windows of the bus and it was freezing.  We also went over even higher passes with puddles and small streams covered in ice – melted by the time we came back at midday.  Again even up this high there is so much rubbish everywhere – every place you can stop is a rubbish tip.

Ruta del Sillar was interesting – although a bit of a “Selfie type of place” for my liking.  All the houses in Arequipa used to be made out of the two colours of “sillar” blocks of volcanic tuff, of course it is too costly now so to keep the history of the “White city” a road in the quarry has been turned into a tourist attraction with many carvings – pretty impressive ones too.

Pic carving

Next stop Lake Titicaca, we are only doing this part to find a rare grebe on the lake, the Titicaca Grebe although it was interesting to see the floating houses it is very touristy – although also very quite while we were there.

Pic grebe and ….

This was a tough stop as we arrived at lunch time, had a short time to wander around – in our case a quick hour round the first part of the lake looking for birds, then the boat trip to the islands.  After that we had  5 hours to kill waiting for the night bus to Cusco.  At least this bus has seats that recline a lot further a large improvement for a shorter journey….

Arriving at 5am in Cusco we went straight to our accommodation to sleep.  The whole 7 days with night buses was exhausting.