First week over, Lima - Paracas - Nazca - Cuzco

We were on time at the airport and had no problems to get our flight to Amsterdam and Lima. Fortunately, we could choose a special seat at the very end of the plane where just 2 seats are in one row :-) and, as we thought, boarding a large aircraft is done from back to front, so we would be the first ones to board... (well, this didn't happen).
Most of the people don't understand this concept... this means that when the first call was done to boad the plane, literally EVERYONE rushed down the finger-dock and queued up ;-) so we waited untill all others were in the plane before we joined in.

 The flight was long and we had some turbulance, but nothing to worry about, more like a giant roller-coster :-) and we arrived pretty tired in Lima. Fortunately, we have booked the rooms already, so we just went to Miraflores, had dinner and went straight to bed.

Next day was planned easy going: having breakfast, getting to the beach, testing the GPS sensor (hey, it's actually great!) and buying things we might need. As Swiss people are used to hike, we wanted to buy a map of the colca canon, but it's diffucult to get them; we had to go to the National Geographical Institute (where a solider is checking the entrance) and we finaly managed to get them. The last thing we did was visiting an ancient pyramide, made before the inka emire arouse, in Lima.

Next morning, we cached the Cruz del Sur bus to Paracas, where we have been awaited by Alfredo (a guy that sells everything: accomodation, tours, events, etc) and we signed up for a boat trip to the Islas Ballestas, a national park which is hosting thousands of birds, sea lions, seals, etc. In short, a very nice trip for 2 hours. After that Alfredo wanted to sell us a tour to the Peninsula de Paracas, a desert national park, but we decided to hick (which is IMPOSSIBLE as Alfredo said, it's too far! you have to book a tour! ;-) ) but we managed to get there and back and we enjoyed it a lot (the GPS was on as well) ! Although we did not see everything, we have seen pretty nice spots...

Our next stop was Nazca, well known for it's lineas de nazca, Maria Reiche, Erich von Daeniken, and a very dry desert... and we can agree, it is dry there... 4 h by bus throught something you usually entitle as "the middle of nowhere" ending up in a (ugly) city that lives from farming (there is a river close) and from the Nazca lines... so what to do there? in the evening we went to a presentation about the theories of the lines and figures in the hotel where Maria Reiche lived for about 25 years (very nice and private show, 3 visitors). So we were prepared to next day's task: flying over the lines:

First of all: it's a very big area, so you just get to see some of the figures and there is liturally hunderts of lines and squares in the desert! and it's amazing to see!

Secondly, it's even more fun, when your are not quite sure if the captain of the plan is really sober or if he just had a bad day (he looked ok but a bit grumpy) and it's getting better, whe he and his co-pilot both start hunting the wasp in the little 4-seat plane while flying... but it went well in the end. and to see the lines and e.g. the Monkey they are doing pretty hard turns to show you the lines... cool!

Last but not least, it's even more fun to have 2 people "filling the paper bags" next to you (we were fine but the two others had a fragile stomac) but nevertheless, it was a great experience (and NO, I didn't take a picture of the puking guys!)

After the flight we spent a lot of time to organize our trip to the jungle: we'll leave tomorrow for 8 days into the rain forrest, so keep an eye on the gps tracker, before we return to Cuzco where we are at the moment. So don't be astonished if we don't update the blog or answer mails since we are going to a place where addresses can't be found with google-maps and google street view hasn't been there...

 

Jungle Trail

And "One more thing": we had a 14 hour night-bus trip from Nazca to Cuzco... it's actually a bit lengthy and I'd say the sharp turns of the bus while you try to sleep are more challenging for you stomac than the nazca flight ;-) but we handled it well but we are tired now!