Planes, Buses, and Boats
I am very glad that my body is still on Argentinian time (two hours ahead of Peru) - because so far this week we have had 6:45am, 7am, 7:30am, etc... starts to the day. And they have been very long days too, often until 7pm-8pm - with me falling asleep in front of the TV in my room before 10pm - hence the lack of blogging (plus the internet is often too dodgy to upload any photos).
So, what are my days like? How's this one - we were on a boat by 8am, on a bus from 10am-4pm. And then after an hour's wait at a tiny airport in Nazca, I spent half an hour in a little four-seater plane. What's more, this whole day was done with a bout of vertigo (great timing, hey?!).
I actually really enjoyed the trip from Paracas out to the rocky Ballestas Islands on a high speed boat. We saw plenty of birds, as well as penguins and seals. Check out the gallery for the photos.
Then we crossed so much desert in our little bus - for two days in fact. As I tend to sit just behind the driver (to minimise motion sickness) I feel like I have also driven the close to 1,000 km we covered. I have lost count of how many trucks we overtook, as we were on the main (the only) highway between Peru, Bolivia, and Chile.
I've always associated Peru with Paddington Bear-induced visions of deepest darkest jungles and of course with the mountains seen in Machu Picchu. But a good proportion of its southern coastal areas are spectacular sand deserts and jagged cliffs that end in roiling blue oceans.
On a plateau of this desert are the Nazca lines. There is a monkey, whale, condor, hands, spider, a tree - an amazing number of images scratched into the brown sand hundreds of years ago, which is best seen from above (and as such has raised questions about who the lines were designed for - perhaps alien spacemen?). I was amazed at how easy they are to see from a plane once pointed out by the pilot and co-pilot. Unfortunately the camera is not so perceptive. I have ended up with over a dozen photos of brown dirt that prove very difficult to lift out the images.I've included one in the gallery where I've cropped and enhanced - can you see the spaceman (locals say it's an owl man) waving on the side of the mountain?
And yes, think a minute about the angle that the plane wing is at for me to take this photo! The first two times we banked (the pilot would do a figure 8 around each picture so that both those on the left and right sides of the plane could see the image) I felt very light-headed as we were pressed back into the seats with the noticeable g-force. Either I got used to it, or it wasn't as severe later in the flight, but I was still rather relieved each time the plane would level out. My head was totally spinning when I got onto (supposedly) solid ground again.
Our following day was another 13 hours in the bus to get to Arequipa. I will write a separate post for this glorious little town, at the foot of 2 dormant volcanoes (I hope they stay that way - it's scary enough seeing all the "safe" signs for where to stand during an earthquake!). But right now, I need to head to bed, because, sure enough, there is another early morning start tomorrow as we head to even higher altitudes to Puno and Lake Titicaca on the border with Bolivia.
While it is great to see so much of a country when travelling by land, it is also frustrating at how much time it takes - how big this earth really is. Still, after all those plane flights, I don't really mind staying away from airports for another week (Nazca notwithstanding).
Until the next spare hour (which seem few and far between) I will say hasta luego. Aveline. xxx
