Huacachina Ica Nazca Cusco

Friday, October 3rd, 2008

Day 96 on The Big Trip. “Pick up and Go!” and "First take a picture on your birthday above the Laguna in Huacachina that is on the 50 sole bill!"

Huacachina. Taxi. 10 minutes. Ica. 30 minute wait. Bus. 2 hours. Nazca. Nazca lines from a 30 foot tower. 6 hour wait. Bus. 19 hours. Should have been 14 hours. Cusco.


Saturday, October 4th, 2008

Day 97 on The Big Trip. “We made it!”

It’s past 3pm by the time we exit the bus. We’re exhausted, hungry, and dirty. We want to sleep, eat, and shower. In other words, we’re on a mission to find a hostel and then a restaurant. We do. We shower. Goodbye stinky feet from 19 hours of being crammed in a sandy sock in a sandy non-breathing boot! Finding food takes forever and includes a failed hunt for an Indian restaurant that was nowhere we wanted it to be.

Highlights of the days:

1. I really enjoyed being able to tell Alisa happy birthday very often.

2. Getting a huge container of donuts for her birthday that we ended up not liking, and proceeding to occasionally hand them out to surprised kids and a few adults, all of whom I believe we made a good impression on. This was a good turn-around!

3. The bus from Nazca to Cusco needed to be fixed about 13 hours into the trip. Given that we left at 8:40pm (40 minutes late), this put us somewhere in the vicinity of 10am by the time the soccer ball came out. The following is given: gringos passing a soccer ball around; a high school of Peruvianos was also on the bus, also waiting for over an hour for the bus to be fixed; competition; love of sport. The result, of course, was a five-on-five game with an entire double-decker busload minus ten for an audience.

4. Not being robbed or anything of the sort. We were worried at one point in Nazca. When we grabbed a taxi and he told us S/40 to the mirador and back, we thought two things. First, “What a great deal! That’s much less than the S/60 we were told to expect!” Second, “That’s a lot less; he’s suspect…” What didn’t help our nervousness was a quick phone call placed just before we took off, made by the driver, which included the phrase “I’m bringing two tourists to the mirador now.” More suspect was that he did it quietly. Before he handed the cellphone back to the Claro woman (Claro is the cellular company that provides for all of Peru, or so it says), I explained my thoughts to Alisa quickly, who agreed it was sketchy, and so I opened my door (beside the curb) and placed my foot out. The Claro woman told us it was OK and I looked inside to find the license plate numbers, and then shut the door, nervous. Alisa gave me one water bottle. I suppose that Alisa’s right: if a water bottle’s good enough for a pack of vicious Ecuadorian dogs, it’s good enough for a Peruvian or more with bad intentions. Luckily, Alisa started talking with the driver about how much better for us Peru and its people have been for us. This made us feel a lot better, as did seeing signs for the Nazca lines. Everything turned out swell! From our budget and pictures we’ve seen, going to the mirador (tower, really) for S/40 total and two lines is way better than flying for US$60/person/hour and 32 lines. I’ve been on a shaky plane and crab-landed and crab-flown and loved it (thanks dad!), and I get the idea of the lines from pictures and seeing it in real life even from 30 feet is enough for me! Cha-Ching! Weighing options saved us US$107! That’s roughly S/321! Yikes!

5. Last but not least on my list of highlights for the two-day trip to get to Cusco from Huacachina with a pitstop in Nazca occurred on the 19-hour bustrip. It came when we were about to see a really bad movie or really bad music sketches on the TV’s on the bus, and we thought, “Hey! We have movies in our daypack! We don’t have to sit here and painfully observe another bad movie! Let’s talk to the stewardess!” We saved the day for the entire bus! We watched The City of God in Spanish (Ciudad Dios). It was great. Everyone liked it.