Huacachina

So we left Lunahuana in search of the city of Pisco. It seemed like a straight-forward ride: we catch a bus going to Pisco and we arrive in Pisco. However, the bus ride seemed to take longer than expected (which is usual for South America) and when we asked the driver if we were getting close to Pisco, he would say that we were almost there... When we finally arrived in Pisco, we actually were dropped off in Ica, an hour and a half past our desired destination! We had no clue what we were going to do in Ica, as it was next on our list and we hadn't planned any kind of itinerary or place to stay! So we quickly pulled out the iPhone Lonely Planet and picked a hostel in a neighbourhood just outside of Ica, called Huacachina.

Our cab driver took us toward some giant sand dunes and drove around the corner to reveal the beautiful little oasis town of Huacachina!

And here is the pretty, yet very noisy hostel that we stayed at our first night.

Huacachina is one of the most unique places we had ever been to in all of our travels. AMAZING sand dunes surrounded this oasis town. The scorching heat can be beat by dipping into one of the many pools in the city, or even with a dip in the lagoon in the middle of the town (although this was typically a local activity).

The big draw to Huacachina are the dunes. I´ve been to the Sahara desert, and I can tell you that the sand in the Sahara doesn´t even hold a candle to the Huacachina! These are some of the largest dunes in the world, and what better way to enjoy them than to strap a board to your feet and slide (or fall) down them. Above you can see Lydia posing with one of Huacachina´s sand buggies that are used to take the tourists out to the dunes for sand boarding fun.







What we didn´t realize, however, was that the dune buggy ride out to the dunes was actually going to be the most exciting activity of the tour (and that is not to take anything away from sand boarding). This ride was absolutely RIDICULOUS! My heart has never pounded so hard (coming from the person who jumped of a 100m bridge in Ecuador)! First off, the buggies were all equipped with harness seat belts and complete roll cages, so safety wasn´t an issue, but safety caveat aside, our driver was absolutely insane! He was taking us up and down and side to side on these monster sand dunes with angles at about 80 degrees! We would fire up to the top of a dune, without seeing what´s on the other side, then all but fall down to the bottom, only to peel around to the next. Words can´t describe just how crazy this was (nor can the above video), but just know that it was INTENSE and FUUUUUUUN!!!!

By this time, our adrenaline was a pumping!

And again, Tyrone + either booze or adrenaline = picking up Lydia;)

Our bodies were so pumped full of adrenaline that we gained the ability of flight (granted only for about 2 seconds before we fell to the ground).

Our crazy-ass driver, posing with his tool of insanity.

The rolling sand dunes were simply stunning. Our driver took us out to the proverbial middle of nowhere for our sand boarding fun.

For the first couple of dunes, we were given the option of going down the dunes snowboarding style (standing on the board) or toboggan style (lying down on the board). Later in the day, however, the dunes got bigger.... much bigger, so we were told that toboggan style was the only safely doable option.

Lydia getting ready to eat some sand.

The dunes towards the end of the day were so incredibly big that a picture doesn´t give you the best perspective of the drop that we were taking. I would guess that the dunes we were dropping down were over 100m high, meaning we would reach speeds of about 100km on our sand boards (luckily it was nothing but fluffy sand to catch us if we fell).

Lydia ripping down a sand dune (toboggan style).

After the craziness of the sand boarding, our driver took us to the top of a dune to enjoy the tranquility of a desert sunset.

We have seen some fine looking sunsets on our trip, but it´s hard to beat the colours of a desert sunset!

The Ica/Huacachina area of Peru is also known for some of the country´s best wines. This of course meant that Lydia and I had to take another wine tour. For the wine tour, Lydia and I hired a local taxi driver to take us to the various vineyards of the region. The top Peruvian vineyard, Tacama, just so happened to be in the area, so we made that our first destination.

The Tacama vineyard in Ica, Peru.

As an added bonus, we were able to take in several other beautiful sights on route between the vineyards.

The many vineyards of the region can be broken down into two basic categories, industrial producers (i.e. Tacama), who create large amounts of wine and pisco for national/international sale and artisanal bodegas, who use more traditional methods to create wines sold at the local level. Above you can see an old fashioned wine press used by one of the artisanal bodegas that we toured.

Lydia at the sampling table.

The two of us at one of the artisanal bodegas.

Definitely the funkiest artisanal bodega that we went to on the tour was the one pictured above. It was a museum/personal collection of funky Peruvian artifacts, animals, shrunken heads, and many barrels of home brew wine. Making this place even more ´funky´was the fact that our one-toothed tour guide for this vineyard ¨got high off his own supply¨ (the guy was fall-over drunk). This worked out well for us though, as he was more than willing to share his supply of wine with us! Even more funny was that fact that after we had finished drinking with him, he liked Lydia so much that he got a picture with her for his cell phone.

The first hostel we stayed at in Huacachina ended up being a bit of a party place, so we moved to the above hostel on our second night. It was a beautiful hostel; however, the staff turned out to be idiots. The brilliant hotel management took a reservation for our room, while we were staying in it, meaning they kicked us out of the hostel, because they had to accommodate the new guests! I have never heard of anything like this before!

Beautiful room, terrible staff! As the hotel took our room from under us, we had to keep on keeping on. Next on the agenda was Nazca.

To end our Huacachina story on a pleasant note though... after we were miffed about getting prematurely evicted from our hotel room, we ended up catching a taxi to the bus station with the same driver we used for the wine tour. The guy was an absolute sweetheart! After taking us to the station, he told us that he really appreciated our company and gave us a bottle of wine as a parting gift. This is coming from a guy who works his ass of for his family (who we met on the tour), making about $10 a day, working 16 hours a day and 7 days a week! An amazing gesture that put a big smile on our face as we left for another adventure.

Happy Easter!

HAPPY EASTER!!!

We would like to take this time to wish a very happy easter to one and all... but especially our dear Elle Bell! Elle is so special, that our friend from the animal kingdom decided to sing a special song for our special girl!

Lunahuana

After getting our kicks in the big city of Lima, Lydia and I were ready to go a little off the grid and head south to the town of Lunahuana. Why does one go to Lunahuana, you ask? There are three answers to this question: 1 - pisco (South America´s 40 proof wine); 2 - wine (although we later found out that this wasn´t a reason to stay in Lunahuana); and the 3rd answer is ADVENTURE!

Lunahuana is about 3 hours south of Lima. It´s nestled in between deserted mountains, with a great river barreling down through its core. It somewhat reminded us of a post-apocalyptic version of Gold River (Lydia´s home town). Further to our post-apocalyptic Gold River metaphor, our hostel in Lunahuana had a bird shed, just like in Lydia´s parents yard!

Let's not kid ourselves, however.... Lydia and I were not in Lunahuana for bird watching.... we were there for PISCO! What better way to try this potent grape hooch than to go on a tasting tour. For a ripe old price of about $10, Lydia and I spent the day getting driven around in a hired car, going from bodega (Spanish for small vineyard) to bodega, taking shot after shot of pisco and wine. As an added bonus of Lunahuana, they are also known for chocolate coated pecans. The bodegas were nice enough to not only dish out shot after shot of free booze (don´t worry, we also bought a couple of bottles to make up for their expenses), but there always seemed to be lovely ladies shelling out chocolate pecans as well (pun intended)!

Honey is another commodity of Lunahuana. At one of the bodegas we visited, we were shown a hive where the honey is produced. This picture is really cool in that it shows the royal guard of the hive protecting the all-mighty queen. The hive was 100 times what is depicted here, with only 1 queen, so you can appreciate just how cool this is!

After a couple of piscos, I tend to pick-up Lydia a lot. Don´t ask me why.

One of the granjeros teaching us about his pisco puro.

Unfortunately, going hand in hand with venturing off the beaten track in a developing nation is food poisoning. After a night of sampling pisco and food, and making friends with a 70 year old ex-Italian Mafioso (who had a 20 year old fiance and admitted to carrying a gun in his Hummer, and who kept buying us drinks and inviting us to swim in his hotel pool the next day), I found myself to be a wee bit incapacitated for about 3 days. Luckily, our hotel had about 6 different HBO channels, so we were able to easily pass this time watching TV with Licky. We also didn't particularly want to venture outside, since we didn't want to run into the Mafioso again and be forced to drink 10 more pisco sours!

In our last day of Lunahuana, we made use of Lunahuana´s final commodity: adventure. Tour companies in Lunahuana offer all sorts of rafting, horseback riding, and atv adventures. We decided to take them up on a white water rafting trip, and had an absolute blast doing so. Unfortunately, the person who was supposed to email us the pictures of our rafting adventure never came through, so you are just going to have to imagine just how great it was!

Leaving Lunahuana was a bit of an adventure, as we intended to head towards the town of Pisco (the namesake of the deadly beverage); however, our bus driver had other ideas, and forgot to let us off in Pisco, and instead took us an extra hour south to Ica. As it turned out, this worked out for us as we were able to spend more time in the bordering town Huacachina (probably the most fun and unique town I have ever been to). Also, from what we heard, Pisco has had a lot of trouble since it went through a devastating earthquake in 2007, which practically destroyed the entire city, so it may have been for the best that we gave it a miss.

Although our Lunahuana experience took a bit of a hit with food poisoning and shitty wine, Lunahuana made up for it with good, cheap pisco, and wicked-fun rafting! Would we go back.... probably not, but the small town definitely had its moments!

Lima

We left Huaraz in a bit of a rush, as a new friend, who is an aspiring photographer, offered us a last-minute free ride. Tyrone and I were pretty excited about heading to the coast and being warm again, but were a little leery of the "big city", as Lima has anywhere between 10 and 15 million inhabitants, according to locals. Luckily, we were greeted by an amazing sunset just outside of the city's borders upon our arrival!

Lima is full of beautiful old buildings, churches, and parks. We were pleasantly surprised by how clean the city was and how many people took advantage of the many green spaces dotted around Mira Flores (one of the nicest areas of the city).

Our second day in Lima, we found a nice grocery store (the first that carried the same foods as back home!) and bought ourself a gourmet picnic. We were told that the ocean wasn't too far away and ventured west with our lunch. Again, we were very pleasantly surprised at how beautiful Lima is, as there are miles upon miles of paths along the bluffs over-looking the ocean and long stretches of beach below. We ate our lunch on one of many park benches, whilst joggers and dog-walkers strolled by us, watching the many surfers in the waves along the shore.

After our lunch, we took a walk along the paths towards a new mall that was raved about by all the locals. Along the way, we found many parks and monuments.

We even came across the "Parque de Amour", which was even more evident after encountering this giant statue!

Finally, we arrived at the Larco Mar mall, which is an amazing building 3 stories high, and built right into the cliff-face, over-looking the beach below! All of the restaurants were built on the outside of the mall, with patios that have the most amazing ocean views! We didn't do much shopping, as the stores were pretty expensive relative to other Peruvian shops, but the mall was pretty amazing due to its views and amazing structure. We ordered ocean-side chocolate frappes, below.

I believe this is the Presidential Palace in the Plaza de Armas.

We later ventured to our 100th or so museum and found Tyrone's identical twin in bronze!!

...and a painting of a siamese jaguar prostate exam.

Since we were in a humorous mood, we decided to find a restaurant that serves "cuy", a kind of guinea pig that is a delicacy to some in these parts. It is common to be presented with entire body parts (as opposed to a fillet or drumstick) when eating cuy, and Tyrone encountered a rather un-tasty little arm, complete with claws, sticking out of his deep-friend mound of pet. Luckily, neither of us enjoyed the taste of cuy, as it reminded us of fish with the texture of sticky, fatty chicken, so we will now do our part to save the local guinea pigs by being anti-cuy-atarians!

The locals also told us about a large water-park in town that we had to visit before we ventured further south. Peruvians know how to design their fountains, as every one we have encountered is designed beautifully with different light displays. This park was full of maybe 20 different amazing fountains of various shapes, colours, and sizes! I am sampling some techni-colour tea, below :)

...and posing again...

Can you spot Tyrone in the water maze?

We stood in line for 15 minutes just to walk through this 100-foot long water tunnel... which was actually kind-of worth it.

...and then I posed some more!

One funny thing about Peru is that we have encountered a friendly resident kitty pretty much wherever we have gone! This one lived in our hotel and was named "Gatto en Bottas" or "Puss in Boots"... which was odd, since he wasn't even orange... but he took a liking to Tyrone and requested snuggles whenever we came home or sat in the lobby to use WiFi!

We both really enjoyed all of the sights and activities that Lima has to offer, and probably would have stayed a bit longer if it was in our budget (the hostals and food were a bit pricier than other places we had visited, but were still quite reasonable). Also, the people were amazingly friendly, with random people offering to walk us to hostals, bus stations, and taxis, just to make sure we got there safe and were set off in the right direction! There were a lot of people around, but it had a smaller-town feel, which we both enjoyed. In conclusion, Lima is a great place to visit!