Paracas 2

Wednesday, October 1st, 2008

Day 94 on The Big Trip. “Poor John’s Galapagos”


Poor Alisa’s Earthquaked-Hospital Trip For Upset Stummy:

POOR Alisa wakes up with symptoms similar to those I had with Salmonella poisoning, excluding extreme dehydration. I check the hostel lobby downstairs every hour starting at 4am to see if there are any lights on or anybody there. Not until 6am. I walk downstairs and wait, and eventually someone comes out into the lobby from the lobby-side room and opens the outside door for me, but I shake my head and tell him I have a question instead. “Where is there a doctor or hospital near here or in the neighboring town of Pisco because my girlfriend is…not well?” Apparently there is only a farmacia in Paracas, which isn’t open yet. No good. In Pisco there is a hospital. He tells me he has a taxi and can drive us there for 18 soles (US$6). Happy to have something I can do for Alisa finally, besides urge her to drink water and remember to take her ciprofloxacin (antibiotic), I run back upstairs to room B5.

She gets dressed. We grab bread, water, and money and head downstairs. We pass by the man who I had talked to in the lobby and exit the hostel. On the corner of the small plaza right outside of our hostel sits a man. We ask him how much a taxi should cost us to Paracas. He says that we can take a colectivo. Alisa says that she is sick and wants a taxi. Oh, he says, then a taxi is going to cost you 20 soles, no more. Realizing our good deal at the hostel, we return and the man runs across the plaza to a hidden parking lot of taxis. We return to the corner of the plaza opposite our hostel near the hidden parking lot and watch as other taxis cruise by. Some honk and others holler to see if we want to hop aboard. Meanwhile, a man is pushing our would-be taxi and taxidriver in reverse to get out of the parking lot. It seems as though the taxi won’t start. Another taxi pulls along side us, with room for two passengers still, and asks us if we want to go to Pisco. This is clearly going to be less risk and quicker than waiting on our good man from the hostel. So Alisa runs to his window and tells him we’re taking a ride with a taxi that works. We hop in said taxi, beginning the conversation with hellos, good mornings, how are yous, and one I’m sick and can you get me to the hospital in Pisco? The driver and other two passengers all say oh, cholico.

In Pisco the hospital has one building still standing and a few makeshift buildings that are more of white tents you’d see in a foreign medical relief effort as I imagine it. We wait in the waiting room for someone to arrive at the information desk. There are two other windows: the caja (billing) window and the farmacia window. We need neither yet since we need to get set up for a visit at the information desk. Finally a person in a red vest turns into the information kiosk rather than into the long hallway of the building. We bounce between there and the caja, where we find a consultation only to be 4 soles (US$1.33). Not bad, aye?


POOR John’s Galapagos, known to locals as the Islas Ballestas can be an expensive trip for what you get, costing as much as 45 nuevo soles per person, which is equivalent to US$15. However, thanks to looking at each and every hostel before we decided upon one, namely the Mar Azul (Blue Sea) Hostal, we got a combo deal on our room and the boat trip. Our deal is such that our room gives us a 25 soles per person deal on the Islas Ballestas. That’s roughly US$8.33, a bargain for us since we certainly can’t afford a five-day, five-thousand dollar Galapagos excursion.

So what is this trip? You get on a boat with approximately 20 other people and put on puffy orange life vests and chug out to the islands. The islands are much less bodies of land in the water than they are bodies of bodies of birds in the water! Apparently there are at least 60 different species of birds. After seeing the sheer quantity of birds I am not surprised that there are so many different species. I am surprised, however, that not one of them managed to get me! Besides the birds and penguins (secretly not birds), there were seals and other boats of tourists. No turtles or flamingos were found here, but the wildlife was ever so plentiful that it didn’t matter. Birds would carpet the land and even more would fly, perhaps because there was no room on the ground.

On the way back to dock we were lucky enough to spot a group of fisherman-chasing dolphins just offshore. Every so often the fishing boat tossed choss from a bucket into the water and even more often, the five or six dolphins would play a mass-game of peek-a-boo, curving in and out of the greener water, mere feet from our camera and our eyes.

POUR a little fun into a sickday and it turns out OK! Alisa and I both smile knowing that this day could have easily been spent indoors, in bed. Luckily her stomach is feeling better for the moment and only knocks on her door once in a while. Or should I say pounds on her door? Either way, meds are started and ready for attack according to the timetable, which is reassuring and effective to begin with, even though progress starts slow with these tummy problems, it seems. It almost seems like two days in one since we had the dark lord of Pisco hospital back-to-back with the evanescent but glimmering island-trip!

After this and that, we catch an unnecessarily fancy one-hour bus to Ica: Splat! Ica is expensive, or so we’ve heard. So we hop a taxi to 10-minute away Huacachina where we investigate each and every hostel in this hostel-rich town. Our sights are set on the most economic hostel, taking into account deals on dune buggy (and dune boarding) tours, and TV with cable, because the US Vice Presidential Debate between Sarah Palesincomparison and Joe Bite’em is scheduled to air live tomorrow night. Eventually we settle on a S./.10 (10 soles or US$3.33) per person hostel that gives us the dune buggy ride for S./.45 per person (US$15), which is a steal in comparison to other offers. We do have to put up with bunk beds and staying in a very small hut, but it’s no problem at all, especially for the price, which includes use of their kitchen – not a guest kitchen! The availability of a kitchen in a hostel is necessary for us again in this trip because we need to make soups that suit Alisa’s stomach.

There is more pouring up until our horizon, which sits in a honey glazed path at the edge of our sights. Nummy, nummy, honey in our stummies!