Cusco 1

Sunday, October 5th, 2008

Day 98 on The Big Trip. “Preparation”

Music was playing in the square and we went to the market where we purchased lots of goodies at good prices. We also met some friendly American ladies who wisely wore Obama pins and talked with us for a bit. Then we did laundry, conveniently 10 feet from our hostel. Alisa almost got a new red shirt of someone else’s thanks to a laundry mixup in her bag!

THE GIST of today was preparation for tomorrow, when we try to get to Aguas Calientes. Consequently, we relaxed, used the slow internet, and got to know the city a lot better.

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.

Huacachina!

Thursday, October 2nd, 2008
[Pictures Pending]
Day 95 on The Big Trip. “Bored? Dune board!”

Morning means making breakfast before the working crew takes over the kitchen for the Banana Restaurant Hostel. It also means the wild dune buggy ride is soon upon us! We each dress accordingly; I chose long socks, boots, and pants for armor. We meet the only other people staying at our hostel of two side by side huts: Daniel and Jamie. The other people who booked their dune buggy tour through our hostel start showing up and soon the driver is here, too.

As we’re about to pull out in our dune buggy we are told that we need a few soles per person to pay an additional fee to receive the ticket for the ride. Everyone has to make money somehow. Quickly I unbuckle and run back to the hut to grab our puny pocket change purse. I mistakenly believed that “paid in full,” meant that the ticket was ours.

And we’re off! The buggy cruises around the block before leaving the streets for the dunes. The buggy has a roll cage; aren’t roll cages ineffective for sand dunes? At least we’ll be splitting the time between cruising up, down, and around these sand dunes with sand boarding on our feet and stomachs with tremendous vistas!

The buggies park at the top of sets of dunes and release us with our boards and candlesticks. We wax our boards while looking down the dunes and wondering how we’ll each fare! Since I have two or three days’ experience snowboarding I am pressured into going early on to provide an example. Thanks! It’s great fun! It’s amazing and much more difficult to turn with these boards in the sand than it is to curve any which way you please in the snow, but otherwise quite similar.

The neat part about sand boarding is that you can treat the board like a sled, which you don’t do with snowboards. This way, instead of slowing down by turning like you do standing up, you just pick up speed and hope there are not that many footprints (speed bumps) at the bottom. If there are and you have a heart attack, you’re in luck: it’s like CPR!

The last run of our first four dunes in a row is the largest of them all. At the bottom we will be picked up and brought to another great boarding location. At the top of this last dune stand myself and Jamie, the block from our hostel, our hutstel. He wants me to go first, and I don’t mind one way or the other: we’re both going to be watched by everyone whose buggy still hasn’t left. There are at least three, maybe four buggies remaining at the bottom of this locale at this point, which means that there are about 30 people waiting down there, maybe more! Jamie decides he’d like to go last and see how I go down, pick up some pointers maybe.

I start cruising and try to switch board edges and turn, but end up flipping or something! By now I’m trained to close my eyes and roll a little, so I’m fine and quickly hop up and finish the huge run! What a blast! I unstrap the Velcro holding my feet in and run to join the others waiting for only Jamie now before lugging ourselves through the difficult terrain of sand to the buggies, 100 meters away. The group of us stand with our boards as our canes, backs against a magic carpet of sand of monstrous proportions.

Jamie takes off the top; we watch. He is coming straight down, not using any edges or going at an angle like I had and thus, he is going much, much faster. A few cheers sound as he comes down and nears the bottom, but wait. He stands up a little, just before the sand begins to crest back into flatness and this puts the tip of his board in: he flips forward, smacking once hard on the back of his neck, and around again he comes, screeching to a halt by body-flapping smack flat into the sand, head down. Everyone is stunned.

He doesn’t move and for a moment I think that he’s just showing us that he hit hard and he’s about to stand up, but no, not so. The group of us runs to meet him, as he doesn’t move at all for a “good” 10 seconds. As we meet him and roll him over a bit, he finally gains consciousness. Sand is in his eyes, coating them. Sand is dripping from his nose. Sand is where Jamie is. But this isn’t what we’re worried about: we’re worried about his head and any injuries he may have sustained. He doesn’t remember what happened. He thinks that maybe a buggy hit him. Water is poured over his face, and drinking water is used to clean out his mouth. Thankfully there’s a nurse on hand who makes sure that Jamie doesn’t sit up right away. Unfortunately, it wasn’t Ninny, but hey – we’re in the desert! Can’t find Ninny everywhere! The story ends up that he feels find and he graduates sand-eating to become a dune buggy tour photographer. In fact, because Jamie stayed with the dune buggy henceforth, he was the only tourist in our group who actually got to see the sunset! (Note: we took the 4pm departure dune buggy tour because the sunset is part of it and is supposed to be gorgeous. Thankfully, Jamie and the driver took pictures of the sunset using everyone’s camera!)


CAMERA REVIEW: Olympus 1030SW.
Jamie had our rugged Olympus 1030SW when he crash-landed into a sand dune, the camera crashing and flying out of his pocket into the sand alongside him. Although there was a bit of sand along the tiny ridges of the camera, it was easily wiped- and blown-off. A bit of sand is stuck inside of the function turnstile, which is otherwise functioning fine, at least for the time being. Otherwise, no sand was found within any of the important interior areas such as the battery compartment, behind the flat lens cover, or in the USB port. And of course, with all of the bumping and bouncing this camera did, all of the files were intact. Good job, Olympus!

After the dune boarding was done, we hopped back in the buggy for the trip back. The sun setting, we cruised around in the buggy with headlights, noting other buggies with lights darting in and out of dunes, even in front of us. The wind over the desert was strong, especially in the buggy and looking around behind me (Alisa and I had the front two seats next to the driver!), I note that only one other person besides myself and the driver are not wearing sunglasses! But of course we’re practicing our squinting faces! The driver would slow down almost to a stop before every dip or top of a dune, as we began our plunge down sand hills, some small, some very steep, and all a mystery until we crested the top and could see down!

We screeched back to our hostel, a great way to end the buggy tour. The driver tells us to get Jamie a drink, but of course we’ll be more apt to find him food, ice, and his bed! This fun of a trip with a group of travelers ends nicely with a beginning of introductions and plans for dinner and drinks. Unfortunately, with Alisa’s tummy not feeling so great, we have to make soup at our hostel, but tell everyone we’ll meet up with them for drinks – which we did - after we eat and watch the Vice Presidential debate!

A great night leaves us tired and not so much looking forward to leaving this relaxing and oddly exuberant town. I could easily go boarding and buggying for another few days! Anyone?!

On to the next day!

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!

Happy Birthday Alisa

October 3rd, 2008

"Happy Birthday Alisa!"

Alisa Gragert, the world travel endulger, the up-for-anythinger, the giggly wombat once named Jimmy, didn't get to enjoy a pisco sour or a night of Richter-scale-inducing dancing on her birthday, as she desired. Why? Because she's traveling, and sometimes that means time on buses or time in taxis.

And still, Alisa has managed to rack up quite the cornucopia of memories, sharing them all the while. From Ramallah to Huacachina, from storylistening with the locals to helping tourists find their way, Alisa has been expanding her impact on the world, one person and one village at a time.

Because of Alisa's everlasting adventure craving and her drive to pass the joy around, the quality of life for myself and others as well has improved, and for this reason I say "Happy Birthday Alisa, and Thank You!"

Paracas 1

Tuesday, September 30th, 2008

Day 93 on The Big Trip. “Bus of Luxury, Bring us Paracas”

Bingo on the bus. Movie on the bus. Cushions for under our legs on the bus. What else is on this bus? Exit directions.

Paracas looks gorgeous as we pull in: beached oceans lined by houses finished and under construction. As we walk the streets undercover hostal employees already prey upon us. One joins us as we opt to walk rather than taxi the 1km from where the bus dropped us back to the town of Paracas. With our packs on, the sun and at least one person from every local business is more than direct in greeting us. We cannot walk unencumbered. As we look at hostel after hostel to find the one that suits us best, we cannot hear our own thoughts as words of offers and amenities are tossed at us like bags of potatoes. (I’m from Maine.)

Luckily, my Spanish is poor enough so that I can blur out a lot of this, but I don’t like being approached every second! Given that their livelihoods are on the line and this is how the hostels and other businesses compete, I understand their actions. In hopes of catching a break, we walk past a chunk of hostels and head towards the water. I was disappointed when we walked down the coastal stretch in hopes of finding a hostel with good views, only to find that we had jumped out of the frying pan and into the fire! We were in restaurantland. Every restaurant waiter came out with a menu and tried to usher us to eat.

Paracas lunch included a few new treats for me, and one new item on the menu for both Alisa and me. We ordered ceviche (raw fish with lemon sauce) and chicharrones de calamar (fried calamari), and shared both. The ceviche was weird to eat, but the spicy lemon sauce with the raw fish tasted quite good. As much as I liked it, I was glad to split the dish since there was an entire fish and the taste did become redundant. That’s where the chicharrones de calamar came it: the fried calamari dish perfectly complemented the ceviche dish and I enjoyed it even more – enough to order it for dinner from the restaurant next door!

After lunch we walked about 3k through the mostly deserted desert streets, with wind and dust in our face to the Reserva Nacional de Paracas. And back!

Who knows what the next partial day in Paracas will be, before we hit the road to Huacachina?!

Lima

Monday, September 29th, 2008

Day 92 on The Big Trip. “Lima Prima”

Tote broke. New daypack.
Lima seems familiar; Miraflores district is comfortable. Two bus tickets to Pisco for 7:30am tomorrow.