It seems I am destined to lie in dentists’ chairs around the world. My teeth are like the United Nations – they are sporting Hungarian, Thai, British and now Peruvian work. Since I’d lost that filling on the Inca Trail, there’s been practically nothing left of my back molar, so Mike convinces me to go see his dentist brother-in-law, Lucho, who apparently knows what he’s doing. I try to tell Mike that it’s not as simple as that, that it takes years to build the trust between dentist and patient, but he just doesn’t listen.
So I agree to a free checkup and Lucho confirms what I’d already suspected – that I need a crown, as well as a root canal and another urgent filling. Am dubious about the root canal, because according to Lucho, there’ll be very little left of my tooth, so he’ll have to rebuilt it using an artificial pin and a crown, but in the end I agree to the back crown at least.
I’ve had a phobia of dentists for as long as I can remember. Though I myself have never experienced serious pain at their hands, I’ve heard horror stories told by my parents of dental surgery in the Soviet Union, which was performed without any anaesthetic and which you’d regard as a session in a torture chamber. When I was a kid, I thought that by the time I was old (i.e. sixteen), I’d be over it. When I was sixteen, I figured that my fear would disappear by the time I hit twenty. I’m almost thirty and I still find myself lying rigid in the chair, mouth wide open, eyes bulging with the anticipation of pain that may or may not come. Going to the dentist is so undignified – it’s just like a visit to the gynaecologist. The only difference is the orifice in question; the discomfort and the vulnerability are about the same.
Lucho isn’t using the sucky tube thing, so I find myself spitting blood every minute; I must’ve lost about a gallon. I may have to rename myself ‘Bleeding Gums Kaminski’, like ‘Bleeding Gums Murphy’ in The Simpsons. Lucho thinks it’s hilarious that whenever he stops the procedure, I sit up and ask him: “Is it over?” There’s no pain, though, and after chomping down on a mould filled with yellow putty and fitted with a temporary crown, I’m released until the next visit. Lucho tells me that I may have a sugar-free sweetie for being so brave. I get the impression that he and Mike are making fun of me.
Dental adventures aside, I keep writing. Sometimes the writing is methodical, i.e. I focus on a particular part of the chapter, like Nazca, and try and work through that, but most of the time I find it difficult to focus on anything for too long and resort to flicking through the text, pausing at bits that I feel like updating at the time, and figuring I’ll fill in the gaps later on.
The map work is progressing nicely, though in order to complete the city maps, I first need to make a final decision as to which hostels and eateries to include for each city, and I’ve been known to agonise for hours over the merits of a particularly good dessert spot versus an equally good kebab joint. You can only include so many.
Have just re-read the chapter brief prepared by my editor, with suggestions for where to cut text and where to expand. Feel very protective of my Nazca section when I read that James suggests leaving the Nazca Lines but cutting all the outlying archaeological sites. I will argue against that vehemently; as it is, Nazca is viewed very much as a one-day destination, when it’s got so much more to offer. I wonder if I’d have liked Nazca as much if I hadn’t had an excellent guide and if I didn’t enjoy looking at human remains…
Since it’s the weekend, Mike, Monica and myself go out and explore more of Lima’s culinary delights. We visit Mar Azul, where the signature ceviche comes covered in a rocoto sauce; it’s tasty, but the ceviche purist in me rebels against the sight of bright red ceviche, as opposed to just chunks of white fish in lime juice. We meet up with a Couchsurfer who stayed at Mike and Monica’s before I arrived; she and her new friends meet us at a random little market stall which specialised in all things fishy, so it’s more ceviche for me, as well as seafood-fried rice. I thought I could go on eating the two indefinitely, but I think I may have reached saturation point as far as rice with miscellaneous tentacled things is concerned; I don’t understand why an average portion of rice should contain about seven pounds of boiled octopus. Yum rubbery yum.
What I haven’t lost the taste for is chicharrón, so will make sure to fit it more deep fried pork belly sandwiches before I leave. So much to eat and so little time.
I’ve begun to put down roots in Lima, so am not looking forward to having to uproot myself and fly home in two days. Still, I’ve got my hot date with Leo tomorrow (or mildly hot, since Mike’s coming along too)…
Monday, 28 June 2010
Saturday, 26 June 2010
Days 77-79 - sweet home Lima.
The travels may be over, but the work continues.
I immediately fall into my old Lima routine: when I’m not enthroned on my bean bag, surrounded by a mess of maps, notebooks, guidebooks and other assorted paperwork, typing while looking over Miraflores far below, Mike and I go foraging for food.
When I was here two years ago, we frequented the same jugería every morning for a pint of fresh juice and a butifarra sandwich, before he’d resume his work as a freelance translator and I got back to my typing. He tells me that that jugería had gone downhill since, so instead we visit La Lucha, just around the corner, and though I never eat breakfast at home, my day here seems incomplete without a spicy chicharrón (deep fried pork belly) sandwich.
Leo had told me that Gastón Acurio, the superstar chef, has released a book detailing all the best neighbourhood eateries in Lima, the holes-in-the-wall that only locals know about – the best place in town to eat a speciality, like ceviche de conchas negras, for example – and that this book is technically only available to people who open accounts with Banco Continental. Mike informs me that you can also get it on the black market, and since it would be an invaluable research tool if I were to come back to Lima, I drag him to the centre of Lima to help me search for it.
We check out the Metropolitano – the brand new swipe card-operated bus system with its own lanes which stretches north-south along Lima; for the next couple of weeks, it’s free, while they’re trying it out, and they have wardens in yellow vests, telling people where to stand and how to use the system. The queuing is orderly, we completely bypass all the traffic, and it makes going into the centre of Lima a pleasure rather than a chore.
There’s an enormous TV screen set up in the main plaza, flanked by giant inflatable Coca-Cola bottles – ‘blatant self-promotion on the mayor’s part’, according to Mike. A massive crowd is watching the World Cup game, while another, smaller crowd, is watching the changing of the guard. The goose-stepping is out of synch, just like last time.
Mike takes me to some discount book shops, where they sell a mix of illegal photocopies (including the book I seek) and proper versions. The search takes two minutes. I should’ve set him a more difficult task.
Foraging for food often seems to take up the entire day, since Lima is so huge, and Mike’s favourite places are so far apart. On the first day, we then catch a bus to the Jesús María area, where no tourists venture, just to find Cevichería Mary, a local institution famous for its leche de tigre – fish juices mixed with onion, lime juice and spicy rocoto pepper that in other places you’d knock straight back, but here it’s like a mini ceviche in a cup – it comes with battered, fried calamari. I try the leche de pantera – the same thing, but made with little black molluscs (conchas negras) only found along the north coast of Peru. My drink is the colour of muddy water, but it tastes amazing, and leaves you feeling energised.
In the evening, we go to another local institution – an anticucho stall on a street corner that’s been given the seal of approval by Gastón, so we get there early, when they’re just rolling the grill out; a few minutes later, the queue stretches around the block. There seems to be a street food revival, because beef heart kebabs are as ‘street’ as you can get, but the queue here consists of well-to-do yuppies. And oh my gaaaaad, are the kebabs good! We stick around to watch the mesmerising spectacle of the two chefs who systematically oil the grill, making huge flames shoot out, chop the kebabs, and deftly flip them so that they don’t burn, all in a shower of sparks.
Mike has less work this week than normal, so we’re free to wander the city at our leisure, going straight from breakfast to a juice stall at the local market, then walking off the food on the way to lunch at Pescados Capitales, for example – an excellent upscale fish restaurant where we lament the lack of good fish and seafood in the UK over exotic ceviche with peach and mandarin and seared tuna steak, or going to Lima’s Chinatown for a superb all-you-can-eat buffet. Then it’s another long ride or walk in search of dessert – the best ice cream in Miraflores at an Italian place frequented by the Mafia, or La Maga, the hole-in-the-wall offering the best tres leches pudding (also approved by Gastón). Then we typically have a siesta before settling down for several hours of work in the afternoon and evening.
I visit the local South American Explorers’ Club clubhouse to see what kind of facilities/information they have to offer and come away satisfied; they give me ample information for the Basics section of the Peru chapter – the part dealing with all the practicalities. I'll definitely send young Georgia their way (the new writer covering Lima and the north half of Peru).
I give Mike and Monica some time to themselves by going to see Sex and the City II at the nearby cinema. Those are two and a half of my life that I’ll never get back. I was a big fan of the series, but they were really pushing it with a second film; the plot is cringeworthy, and the women are really beginning to show their age – ‘Carrie Bradshaw’ in particular has a chicken neck.
Am beginning to fret a little about the amount of work I have to do over the coming month; progress seems slow, and I’m hacked off with my predecessor for clearly not putting enough effort into the updating work two years ago. To me, it's important not just to fulfil the norm, but to actively improve the existing guidebook, and I wonder why not everyone seems to share my view. The maps in particular take a very long time, because I’m particularly finicky when it comes to maps and wish to get every single detail right. I spend at least an hour poring over the road map of Peru in order to make sure that all the now-paved main roads are marked on correctly on the Rough Guide Peru map. I really need to get a move on, because not only do I have to finish the two chapters by the end of July, I also need to plan my next major venture – the trans-Siberian journey, due to commence at the beginning of August. Aaargh!
I immediately fall into my old Lima routine: when I’m not enthroned on my bean bag, surrounded by a mess of maps, notebooks, guidebooks and other assorted paperwork, typing while looking over Miraflores far below, Mike and I go foraging for food.
When I was here two years ago, we frequented the same jugería every morning for a pint of fresh juice and a butifarra sandwich, before he’d resume his work as a freelance translator and I got back to my typing. He tells me that that jugería had gone downhill since, so instead we visit La Lucha, just around the corner, and though I never eat breakfast at home, my day here seems incomplete without a spicy chicharrón (deep fried pork belly) sandwich.
Leo had told me that Gastón Acurio, the superstar chef, has released a book detailing all the best neighbourhood eateries in Lima, the holes-in-the-wall that only locals know about – the best place in town to eat a speciality, like ceviche de conchas negras, for example – and that this book is technically only available to people who open accounts with Banco Continental. Mike informs me that you can also get it on the black market, and since it would be an invaluable research tool if I were to come back to Lima, I drag him to the centre of Lima to help me search for it.
We check out the Metropolitano – the brand new swipe card-operated bus system with its own lanes which stretches north-south along Lima; for the next couple of weeks, it’s free, while they’re trying it out, and they have wardens in yellow vests, telling people where to stand and how to use the system. The queuing is orderly, we completely bypass all the traffic, and it makes going into the centre of Lima a pleasure rather than a chore.
There’s an enormous TV screen set up in the main plaza, flanked by giant inflatable Coca-Cola bottles – ‘blatant self-promotion on the mayor’s part’, according to Mike. A massive crowd is watching the World Cup game, while another, smaller crowd, is watching the changing of the guard. The goose-stepping is out of synch, just like last time.
Mike takes me to some discount book shops, where they sell a mix of illegal photocopies (including the book I seek) and proper versions. The search takes two minutes. I should’ve set him a more difficult task.
Foraging for food often seems to take up the entire day, since Lima is so huge, and Mike’s favourite places are so far apart. On the first day, we then catch a bus to the Jesús María area, where no tourists venture, just to find Cevichería Mary, a local institution famous for its leche de tigre – fish juices mixed with onion, lime juice and spicy rocoto pepper that in other places you’d knock straight back, but here it’s like a mini ceviche in a cup – it comes with battered, fried calamari. I try the leche de pantera – the same thing, but made with little black molluscs (conchas negras) only found along the north coast of Peru. My drink is the colour of muddy water, but it tastes amazing, and leaves you feeling energised.
In the evening, we go to another local institution – an anticucho stall on a street corner that’s been given the seal of approval by Gastón, so we get there early, when they’re just rolling the grill out; a few minutes later, the queue stretches around the block. There seems to be a street food revival, because beef heart kebabs are as ‘street’ as you can get, but the queue here consists of well-to-do yuppies. And oh my gaaaaad, are the kebabs good! We stick around to watch the mesmerising spectacle of the two chefs who systematically oil the grill, making huge flames shoot out, chop the kebabs, and deftly flip them so that they don’t burn, all in a shower of sparks.
Mike has less work this week than normal, so we’re free to wander the city at our leisure, going straight from breakfast to a juice stall at the local market, then walking off the food on the way to lunch at Pescados Capitales, for example – an excellent upscale fish restaurant where we lament the lack of good fish and seafood in the UK over exotic ceviche with peach and mandarin and seared tuna steak, or going to Lima’s Chinatown for a superb all-you-can-eat buffet. Then it’s another long ride or walk in search of dessert – the best ice cream in Miraflores at an Italian place frequented by the Mafia, or La Maga, the hole-in-the-wall offering the best tres leches pudding (also approved by Gastón). Then we typically have a siesta before settling down for several hours of work in the afternoon and evening.
I visit the local South American Explorers’ Club clubhouse to see what kind of facilities/information they have to offer and come away satisfied; they give me ample information for the Basics section of the Peru chapter – the part dealing with all the practicalities. I'll definitely send young Georgia their way (the new writer covering Lima and the north half of Peru).
I give Mike and Monica some time to themselves by going to see Sex and the City II at the nearby cinema. Those are two and a half of my life that I’ll never get back. I was a big fan of the series, but they were really pushing it with a second film; the plot is cringeworthy, and the women are really beginning to show their age – ‘Carrie Bradshaw’ in particular has a chicken neck.
Am beginning to fret a little about the amount of work I have to do over the coming month; progress seems slow, and I’m hacked off with my predecessor for clearly not putting enough effort into the updating work two years ago. To me, it's important not just to fulfil the norm, but to actively improve the existing guidebook, and I wonder why not everyone seems to share my view. The maps in particular take a very long time, because I’m particularly finicky when it comes to maps and wish to get every single detail right. I spend at least an hour poring over the road map of Peru in order to make sure that all the now-paved main roads are marked on correctly on the Rough Guide Peru map. I really need to get a move on, because not only do I have to finish the two chapters by the end of July, I also need to plan my next major venture – the trans-Siberian journey, due to commence at the beginning of August. Aaargh!
Wednesday, 23 June 2010
Day 76 - Ballestas Islands and the Paracas Reserve.
By 8am, we’re lined up by the pier, next to several other groups all set to visit one of the two main attractions – the Ballestas Islands, home to numerous species of sea birds and animals, sometimes described as a ‘poor man’s Galapagos’. An enterprising fisherman is feeding a bunch of pelicans, who follow him around like a pack of dogs; he brings them close so that tourists can take photos and hands out his cap for a tip.
Since I’ve been to a similar marine nature reserve in Chile, I’m not quite as excited as the gaggle of tourists next to me, but feel that it’s my duty to check it out, in spite of the warning that the nautical conditions may fluctuate between mirror-still sea and nausea-inducing ten-metre waves.
When we actually do set off, after an hour’s delay due to fog, it’s somewhere in between: we bounce along small waves until a flash of fins to our left alerts us to the presence of a school of bottle-nosed dolphins. “We are lucky,” our guide tells us. “They were away for three weeks, but now they have come back.”
We sail past a giant cactus petroglyph on the sandy hillside; some say that it’s been put there by 16th century pirates as some kind of navigational tool. The islands themselves are twenty minutes away and I smell them long before we get there. The stench of guano is impressive, as is the sight of thousands of nesting Peruvian boobies, cormorants, seagulls and terns – grooming, fishing, squabbling, of Humboldt penguins waddling around the low cliffs, the giant stone archways, and the packs of sea lions asleep on smaller islets. The sky is dark with birds above a further island; we don’t get too close, as it’s an important nesting ground. The nearer island has a couple of decrepit-looking wooden huts, where a couple of people live permanently, making sure that no one lands on the islands, and a low stone wall runs along the border of the first island, making me wonder who put it there, and whether people used to live here, centuries ago.
Back on the mainland, it’s immediately time for a tour of the Paracas Reserve – the vast stretch of desert immediately beyond the village. I love the desert and particularly enjoy being let loose in a section where we go looking for 40 million-year old fossils, as this all used to be underwater. I find a few petrified spiral shells; they crumble into bright white crystals in my hand.
There’s a viewpoint overlooking what used to be a natural monument – a giant stone archway eroded by the sea, known as the Cathedral. It collapsed after the immense 2007 earthquake, but the remaining stone island is still home to clamouring Peruvian boobies. Far below, I can see sandpipers running away from encroaching waves, then turning around and pecking at the sand as the sea retreats.
The tour is pretty controlled, but we do get some free time, which I use to sit and stare at the sea, enjoying the smooth texture of shells and pebbles in my hand. I feel oddly comforted by the steady roar of the large Pacific waves.
At lunch at El Che in the village of Lagunillas, I get talking to Ann, a thirty eight-year old Italian-American photography professor. She’d taught English in Vladimir, in Russia, but was forced to leave before completing the year because she was denounced by some market traders as a Chechen rebel because of her dark hair and olive skin; it was 2004, just after the Beslan atrocities. She knew enough Russian to argue with the special forces, but they wouldn’t believe that she was American, even after she’d shown them her passport, and wouldn’t let her call the US embassy. Only when they took her to the school where she taught was the matter cleared up, but the US embassy then advised her to get the hell out of Russia. Well, I guess I don’t have to worry about going to Russia as a Russian and not as Her Majesty’s subject; even if you have a foreign passport, if they want to disregard your basic rights, they will do so, it seems, so it makes no difference.
Lunch goes on far too long, and Ann is cross about missing the opportunity to shoot the boats in the desert – that’s the kind of conceptual photography she’s into, she explains. In the morning, she didn't go to the islands, choosing to stay in the village and photograph the fishermen bringing in the day's catch. Her presence caused immense confusion, since tourists normally only come here for two things. "But why aren't you at the islands?" she was repeatedly asked.
I finish my rounds of Paracas and am glad to have found a couple of decent places not mentioned in any of the guidebooks.
That’s it. Research over. For the three-and-a-half hour journey to Lima, I’m engrossed in my book and trying to ignore “Hannah Montana - the Movie”. Met by Mike (wearing a dashing cap) at the Oltursa bus terminal and taken to my home away from home – his and Monica’s apartment in Miraflores. Even though it’s been two years since I’ve been here, when I sink onto my beanbag in front of the TV, it feels like I’ve never been away.
Looking forward to a week of rest, writing, and numerous culinary adventures.
Since I’ve been to a similar marine nature reserve in Chile, I’m not quite as excited as the gaggle of tourists next to me, but feel that it’s my duty to check it out, in spite of the warning that the nautical conditions may fluctuate between mirror-still sea and nausea-inducing ten-metre waves.
When we actually do set off, after an hour’s delay due to fog, it’s somewhere in between: we bounce along small waves until a flash of fins to our left alerts us to the presence of a school of bottle-nosed dolphins. “We are lucky,” our guide tells us. “They were away for three weeks, but now they have come back.”
We sail past a giant cactus petroglyph on the sandy hillside; some say that it’s been put there by 16th century pirates as some kind of navigational tool. The islands themselves are twenty minutes away and I smell them long before we get there. The stench of guano is impressive, as is the sight of thousands of nesting Peruvian boobies, cormorants, seagulls and terns – grooming, fishing, squabbling, of Humboldt penguins waddling around the low cliffs, the giant stone archways, and the packs of sea lions asleep on smaller islets. The sky is dark with birds above a further island; we don’t get too close, as it’s an important nesting ground. The nearer island has a couple of decrepit-looking wooden huts, where a couple of people live permanently, making sure that no one lands on the islands, and a low stone wall runs along the border of the first island, making me wonder who put it there, and whether people used to live here, centuries ago.
Back on the mainland, it’s immediately time for a tour of the Paracas Reserve – the vast stretch of desert immediately beyond the village. I love the desert and particularly enjoy being let loose in a section where we go looking for 40 million-year old fossils, as this all used to be underwater. I find a few petrified spiral shells; they crumble into bright white crystals in my hand.
There’s a viewpoint overlooking what used to be a natural monument – a giant stone archway eroded by the sea, known as the Cathedral. It collapsed after the immense 2007 earthquake, but the remaining stone island is still home to clamouring Peruvian boobies. Far below, I can see sandpipers running away from encroaching waves, then turning around and pecking at the sand as the sea retreats.
The tour is pretty controlled, but we do get some free time, which I use to sit and stare at the sea, enjoying the smooth texture of shells and pebbles in my hand. I feel oddly comforted by the steady roar of the large Pacific waves.
At lunch at El Che in the village of Lagunillas, I get talking to Ann, a thirty eight-year old Italian-American photography professor. She’d taught English in Vladimir, in Russia, but was forced to leave before completing the year because she was denounced by some market traders as a Chechen rebel because of her dark hair and olive skin; it was 2004, just after the Beslan atrocities. She knew enough Russian to argue with the special forces, but they wouldn’t believe that she was American, even after she’d shown them her passport, and wouldn’t let her call the US embassy. Only when they took her to the school where she taught was the matter cleared up, but the US embassy then advised her to get the hell out of Russia. Well, I guess I don’t have to worry about going to Russia as a Russian and not as Her Majesty’s subject; even if you have a foreign passport, if they want to disregard your basic rights, they will do so, it seems, so it makes no difference.
Lunch goes on far too long, and Ann is cross about missing the opportunity to shoot the boats in the desert – that’s the kind of conceptual photography she’s into, she explains. In the morning, she didn't go to the islands, choosing to stay in the village and photograph the fishermen bringing in the day's catch. Her presence caused immense confusion, since tourists normally only come here for two things. "But why aren't you at the islands?" she was repeatedly asked.
I finish my rounds of Paracas and am glad to have found a couple of decent places not mentioned in any of the guidebooks.
That’s it. Research over. For the three-and-a-half hour journey to Lima, I’m engrossed in my book and trying to ignore “Hannah Montana - the Movie”. Met by Mike (wearing a dashing cap) at the Oltursa bus terminal and taken to my home away from home – his and Monica’s apartment in Miraflores. Even though it’s been two years since I’ve been here, when I sink onto my beanbag in front of the TV, it feels like I’ve never been away.
Looking forward to a week of rest, writing, and numerous culinary adventures.
Day 75 - onwards to Paracas.
Tranquil morning by the lagoon. I check out several hostels and decide that I’m done with Huacachina. I debate taking a bodega tour to see how local wines and piscos are made, but decide that being drunk before lunch is not the best idea.
Since I’ve been told that all major bus companies stop in Paracas (an area which comprises the Paracas nature reserve and El Chaco the village that acts as a springboard for trips to the Ballestas Islands marine reserve), I decide to save some money by taking a Soyuz bus (4 soles) v. Cruz del Sur (20 soles).
Surprise! Soyuz doesn’t stop in Paracas; it stops at some godforsaken fork in the road known as Cruce Pisco, from where you have to catch a combi (shared taxi) to Pisco proper before you can catch another combi to Paracas itself. Since Pisco was wrecked by the 2007 earthquake and is known for being a bit of a rough place, and since most people who come to Pisco only come there to go to Paracas anyway, I decide to skip Pisco altogether. End up catching a combi to Pisco and then to avoid the hassle of changing transport, I agree to the combi driver’s suggestion that he drives me straight to Paracas for 15 soles. I end up saving 1 sol and give myself a very restrained round of applause.
We pass through an unattractive part of Pisco – adobe houses that have seen better days, trash in the gutters – and then pass through the seaside village of San Andrés – shacks advertising ceviche, little boats bobbing on the tide, pelicans flying. There’s a strong smell of the sea, followed by the stench of rotting garbage as we pull out of the village and ride along the coast amidst piles of rubble.
Paracas is supposed to be quite upscale, and the guesthouses here cost a wee bit more than in places I’ve stayed recently, but it’s not much to look at. After checking into the Refugio El Pirata, I have a quick wander round the waterfront. Some sellers have jewellery stalls set out, pelicans wait patiently for scraps from a fishermen, but there are very few people out and about, it’s overcast, and the whole place has a desolate air about it. The deserted playground at the other end of the waterfront, with its broken, rusty swings only adds to the impression.
After nearly three months of non-stop travel and research, I’m somewhat weary mentally. After a quick lunch at an excellent cevichería behind my guesthouse, where I have the best arroz con mariscos yet – with tiny melt-in-your-mouth scallops – I retreat to my cosy room and stay there until the evening, napping on my comfortable bed (the last few beds have had terrible mattresses and I woke up every morning a broken woman), and reading, totally engrossed in “A Girl With a Dragon Tattoo”.
There’s no nightlife here whatsoever, as I discover, taking an evening stroll. In the words of Leonard Cohen: “The place is dead as heaven on a Saturday night.” More importantly, there seem to be no places to eat on a Sunday night, though after some searching, I discover that one of the cevicherías does chicken. Nothing but roast chicken.
Early night in anticipation of the morning trip to the Ballestas Islands.
Since I’ve been told that all major bus companies stop in Paracas (an area which comprises the Paracas nature reserve and El Chaco the village that acts as a springboard for trips to the Ballestas Islands marine reserve), I decide to save some money by taking a Soyuz bus (4 soles) v. Cruz del Sur (20 soles).
Surprise! Soyuz doesn’t stop in Paracas; it stops at some godforsaken fork in the road known as Cruce Pisco, from where you have to catch a combi (shared taxi) to Pisco proper before you can catch another combi to Paracas itself. Since Pisco was wrecked by the 2007 earthquake and is known for being a bit of a rough place, and since most people who come to Pisco only come there to go to Paracas anyway, I decide to skip Pisco altogether. End up catching a combi to Pisco and then to avoid the hassle of changing transport, I agree to the combi driver’s suggestion that he drives me straight to Paracas for 15 soles. I end up saving 1 sol and give myself a very restrained round of applause.
We pass through an unattractive part of Pisco – adobe houses that have seen better days, trash in the gutters – and then pass through the seaside village of San Andrés – shacks advertising ceviche, little boats bobbing on the tide, pelicans flying. There’s a strong smell of the sea, followed by the stench of rotting garbage as we pull out of the village and ride along the coast amidst piles of rubble.
Paracas is supposed to be quite upscale, and the guesthouses here cost a wee bit more than in places I’ve stayed recently, but it’s not much to look at. After checking into the Refugio El Pirata, I have a quick wander round the waterfront. Some sellers have jewellery stalls set out, pelicans wait patiently for scraps from a fishermen, but there are very few people out and about, it’s overcast, and the whole place has a desolate air about it. The deserted playground at the other end of the waterfront, with its broken, rusty swings only adds to the impression.
After nearly three months of non-stop travel and research, I’m somewhat weary mentally. After a quick lunch at an excellent cevichería behind my guesthouse, where I have the best arroz con mariscos yet – with tiny melt-in-your-mouth scallops – I retreat to my cosy room and stay there until the evening, napping on my comfortable bed (the last few beds have had terrible mattresses and I woke up every morning a broken woman), and reading, totally engrossed in “A Girl With a Dragon Tattoo”.
There’s no nightlife here whatsoever, as I discover, taking an evening stroll. In the words of Leonard Cohen: “The place is dead as heaven on a Saturday night.” More importantly, there seem to be no places to eat on a Sunday night, though after some searching, I discover that one of the cevicherías does chicken. Nothing but roast chicken.
Early night in anticipation of the morning trip to the Ballestas Islands.
Sunday, 20 June 2010
Day 74 - Huacachina and the perils of dune buggying.
Depart Nazca in the morning, though not before calling Leo and inviting him to lunch in Lima, since he’s going to go there in week or so to pick up a group of New Zealand students. Oh dear, this has all the markings of a bona fide crush: I can't stop thinking about him.
Take a wretched, ancient Soyuz bus to Ica. For the duration the two-hour journey I am subjected to a loud Nicolas Cage movie where he turns into something undead with a flaming skull. Smooth transition from bus terminal to the village of Huacachina; I catch a taxi straight from the bus terminal and Lucho the taxi driver feeds me biscuits.
Huacachina used to be a posh resort area based around a picturesque lagoon amidst giant sand dunes; in fact, you can still see it on the 50 sol notes. Now there’s nothing posh about it - it’s a magnet for adrenalin-mad backpackers who flock here in droves to go sandboarding and to ride the dune buggies. In fact, every second vehicle in the village is a dune buggy. When I first heard ‘dune buggy’, I imagined something like a golf course buggy, chugging sedately up and down the dunes, but it turned out to be something quite different.
A metal contraption with large wheels roars around the corner and skids to a stop by the tour agency. Think large open-plan car with a reinforced steel frame and heavily padded seats with harnesses, like the kind you’re strapped into on a roller coaster. There are eight of us; I’m in the second row and the thing takes off at great speed and roars up the nearest dune. We’re bouncing all over the place, especially the British girls in the back who keep swearing; didn’t realise what exactly they were signing up for. It really is like a roller coaster ride; the buggy rushes up to the dune’s crest, only to drop straight over the edge, taking our stomachs with it. Cue lots of screaming and hysterical laughter. The sand’s in our hair and in our eyes as the buggy rushes along at great speed, up and down the dunes, screeching around corners, sometimes barely balancing at a forty-five degree angle, plunging down near-vertical slopes again, setting off another chorus of screams. I love it, and cackle gleefully to myself, imagining my friends back home stuck in their office jobs. This is my office.
At the top of a particularly large sand dune, the sand boards come out. Our belligerent, unsmiling driver waxes them and shows us that we can go down on our stomachs if we’re not great on our feet. I’ve done sandboarding before in San Pedro, in the Atacama Desert, and recall falling over a lot, so I try the other way. Hurtling down a steep sand dune, head first, doesn’t seem terribly sensible, but then again, neither am I. An exhilarating alternative. I try standing on my feet when coming down the second dune, fall over, spit the sand out of my mouth and screech: “Puta madre, me caí!”, just like I’ve been taught by my San Pedro instructor. It means: “Bugger, I’ve fallen down!”
One of the British girls is particularly fearless and she’s the first one down every dune, even though she’s never done it before. Other groups join us and soon the dune side is crowded with skidding, rolling, sliding bodies. Sand clouds are everywhere.
We roar off to another dune, and another, even steeper and bigger one. Afterwards, a bunch of sand-covered creatures piles back into the buggy, the sand stuck to our sun cream, inside our clothes, in places where you wouldn’t imagine sand could get into. The sun sinks behind the dunes as our driver runs us up and down some more dunes at a reckless speed, rattling our bones and scaring the heck out of us. Dune buggy rides are not for the faint-hearted.
Hostal Salvatierra, where I’m staying, is a basic place with a warren of huge, basic rooms, a swimming pool and a patio dotted with listless dogs. Huacachina has a great many hostels for a tiny place and seems to exist solely for tourism.
Over a hamburger dinner at Desert Nights, I am hailed by a vaguely familiar-looking guy with a beard. Then I remember: he’s the British guy who climbed Huayna Picchu ahead of me, draped in the England flag on the day of the first World Cup match. Geoff invites me to join him and a motley crew of backpackers, and I end up having a lively dinner with Ruud the Israeli guy, Ed from Cambridge and a girl who thinks that my being a travel writer is the coolest thing ever. We swap travel tips and I ask Ruud why Israelis seem to always travel in groups. He says it’s because they tend to travel with a friend or two and then meet up and join up with other Israelis. He doesn’t like travelling in groups, and feels that many Israelis miss out on things they want to do, because they won’t do them alone, and if the group doesn’t do it, no one does. I agree that group travel can be a challenge; I also prefer to travel either alone or with just a single friend; there are fewer decisions to be made that way.
Geoff and Ed do card tricks. I go off to do my writing. Itchy feet. Moving on again in the morning.
Take a wretched, ancient Soyuz bus to Ica. For the duration the two-hour journey I am subjected to a loud Nicolas Cage movie where he turns into something undead with a flaming skull. Smooth transition from bus terminal to the village of Huacachina; I catch a taxi straight from the bus terminal and Lucho the taxi driver feeds me biscuits.
Huacachina used to be a posh resort area based around a picturesque lagoon amidst giant sand dunes; in fact, you can still see it on the 50 sol notes. Now there’s nothing posh about it - it’s a magnet for adrenalin-mad backpackers who flock here in droves to go sandboarding and to ride the dune buggies. In fact, every second vehicle in the village is a dune buggy. When I first heard ‘dune buggy’, I imagined something like a golf course buggy, chugging sedately up and down the dunes, but it turned out to be something quite different.
A metal contraption with large wheels roars around the corner and skids to a stop by the tour agency. Think large open-plan car with a reinforced steel frame and heavily padded seats with harnesses, like the kind you’re strapped into on a roller coaster. There are eight of us; I’m in the second row and the thing takes off at great speed and roars up the nearest dune. We’re bouncing all over the place, especially the British girls in the back who keep swearing; didn’t realise what exactly they were signing up for. It really is like a roller coaster ride; the buggy rushes up to the dune’s crest, only to drop straight over the edge, taking our stomachs with it. Cue lots of screaming and hysterical laughter. The sand’s in our hair and in our eyes as the buggy rushes along at great speed, up and down the dunes, screeching around corners, sometimes barely balancing at a forty-five degree angle, plunging down near-vertical slopes again, setting off another chorus of screams. I love it, and cackle gleefully to myself, imagining my friends back home stuck in their office jobs. This is my office.
At the top of a particularly large sand dune, the sand boards come out. Our belligerent, unsmiling driver waxes them and shows us that we can go down on our stomachs if we’re not great on our feet. I’ve done sandboarding before in San Pedro, in the Atacama Desert, and recall falling over a lot, so I try the other way. Hurtling down a steep sand dune, head first, doesn’t seem terribly sensible, but then again, neither am I. An exhilarating alternative. I try standing on my feet when coming down the second dune, fall over, spit the sand out of my mouth and screech: “Puta madre, me caí!”, just like I’ve been taught by my San Pedro instructor. It means: “Bugger, I’ve fallen down!”
One of the British girls is particularly fearless and she’s the first one down every dune, even though she’s never done it before. Other groups join us and soon the dune side is crowded with skidding, rolling, sliding bodies. Sand clouds are everywhere.
We roar off to another dune, and another, even steeper and bigger one. Afterwards, a bunch of sand-covered creatures piles back into the buggy, the sand stuck to our sun cream, inside our clothes, in places where you wouldn’t imagine sand could get into. The sun sinks behind the dunes as our driver runs us up and down some more dunes at a reckless speed, rattling our bones and scaring the heck out of us. Dune buggy rides are not for the faint-hearted.
Hostal Salvatierra, where I’m staying, is a basic place with a warren of huge, basic rooms, a swimming pool and a patio dotted with listless dogs. Huacachina has a great many hostels for a tiny place and seems to exist solely for tourism.
Over a hamburger dinner at Desert Nights, I am hailed by a vaguely familiar-looking guy with a beard. Then I remember: he’s the British guy who climbed Huayna Picchu ahead of me, draped in the England flag on the day of the first World Cup match. Geoff invites me to join him and a motley crew of backpackers, and I end up having a lively dinner with Ruud the Israeli guy, Ed from Cambridge and a girl who thinks that my being a travel writer is the coolest thing ever. We swap travel tips and I ask Ruud why Israelis seem to always travel in groups. He says it’s because they tend to travel with a friend or two and then meet up and join up with other Israelis. He doesn’t like travelling in groups, and feels that many Israelis miss out on things they want to do, because they won’t do them alone, and if the group doesn’t do it, no one does. I agree that group travel can be a challenge; I also prefer to travel either alone or with just a single friend; there are fewer decisions to be made that way.
Geoff and Ed do card tricks. I go off to do my writing. Itchy feet. Moving on again in the morning.
Saturday, 19 June 2010
Day 73 - flight over the Nazca lines.
By 9am we’re at Nazca airport. I’ve been told to fly in the morning because in the afternoon the wind picks up and sometimes the airport shuts down because the small places can’t cope with it. Also, the lines are at their most visible either early in the morning or at around 3pm, when the angle of the sun accentuates their outlines. Flying at midday is bloody useless because the sun is directly above them and you can barely see them at all.
The ‘airport’ is a large waiting room where about ten different flight companies are represented. The Nazca Travel desk is conspicuously empty; two years ago, they had a fatal crash, after which the company changed its name until this year’s fatal crash. The other companies have no fatalities to their names.
Though we’re pretty much the first ones there, several groups go before us, because they’ve either paid through the nose or booked the flight weeks in advance. Since there’s no public phone, I sweettalk the lady at the check-in desk into letting me use her phone to call Leo and arrange for him to meet me at the airport after the flight so that we can go straight to the Cahuachi ruins.
The four or us pile into the tiny six-seater and then we’re off, rising rapidly above the parched ground. I almost chickened out of flying, since it doesn’t have the same attraction for me that it once did, but I am so glad I did this! The pussy way out is to go up the observation tower instead, from where you can see the outline of a giant tree and part of a lizard, but it can’t compare to flying over the lines. The flight last half an hour and we follow the pattern on our boarding cards – first the giant whale, then some giant triangles, then the monkey, and so on. The ride isn’t particularly bumpy, though when we hit the air pockets, our stomachs drop our from underneath us; it’s like a long and picturesque roller coaster ride, with sick bags thoughtfully provided.
The tiny plane circles around each giant figure on the ground, so that we get a look from both sides of the plane, and when it does, that’s when the pressure in your head builds and you feel a little dizzy. We fly over green fields, the bare rock of mountains, the dry paths of the summer rivers frozen on the desert plain.
The lines are certainly impressive. I marvel at the perfect symmetry of the giant spider, of the hummingbird’s tail, the spiral of the giant monkey’s tail, the long, snake-like neck of the flamingo. I wonder about thee ancient culture that put so much effort into these giant figures that they certainly couldn’t appreciate the way we can, from the air. Why are they here?
When we land, Leo pulls up and we’re off further into the desert along a bumpy dirt road towards the Cahuachi pyramids – a giant Nazca ceremonial complex where they used to go solely for religious purposes. Along the way we stop at another burial ground, where the ground is covered with bits of ancient cloth, hanks of human hair, fragments of pelvises, shattered skulls, human tibias. Some of the bones are laid out is strange patterns, and when I ask Leo for an explanation, he tells me that the grave robbers are local farmers who also come here and mess around with the bones. I’m amazed that they’re not superstitious, that they’re not concerned that the aggravated spirits of the dead might come after them. “In the mountains – yes. But here in the coast, we don’t care.” He does mention the story of a tourist who sent back a human hand because he kept having nightmares, but even some of his friends have human skulls at home because they believe that they guard the house against evil spirits. When they try to persuade Leo to pick up a human skull, he tells them: “I don’t need a skull guardian. I have a dog.” Even I would think twice about pocketing a skull from a foreign land; as much as I’d like to own one, I’d rather not disrespect the local dead.
Out of the forty-four pyramids at the Cahuachi site, only one is uncovered; the rest remain hillocks in the desert. The uncovered ceremonial pyramid is being renovated and restored, adobe bricks being added to crumbling, wrecked walls to make up for the damage done by El Niño a few years back. While it’s under renovation until next year, we can’t get too close, though when Leo speaks the guy guarding it and tells him that I’m a journalist, he lets us walk right up to the site. Nearby, there are some holes in the ground. “The Nazca used to use them as coolers, to store food.” Only small and skinny people could be lowered into the holes; yours truly would get lodged in the middle, courtesy of the spare tyre.
These pyramids get us onto the subject of the Egyptian ones, which prompts me to say that the latter was built using the slave labour of my ancestors and I end up giving Leo an abridged version of the history of the Jews. We discuss discrimination in Peru; as an indigenous person, he himself would be subject to discrimination if he weren’t a self-taught linguist and guide. He tells me of two journalists in Lima – one European-looking, one indigenous, who went to a nightclub; the indigenous one was turned away and since the whole thing was secretly filmed, the club had to pay a hefty fine.
I tell Leo more about my work and he eagerly offers to assist me with my research. He’s got no work all day, his wife’s been in Lima for the past six months, and he’s alone. He knows good places to eat, so I offer to buy him lunch, and we stop by “Los Amigos de Miguel”, a cevichería south of the centre. Leo’s great: he introduces me to the chef/owner, who gives us ceviche on the house, topped with tasty sea urchins, we plough through seafood-fried rice and Leo tells me that the place (which is pretty full) gets absolutely packed on Sundays because Miguel’s had a loyal following for a decade and because ceviche is thought to be a hangover cure. Best of all, this awesome place is in none of the guidebooks because the other writers clearly didn’t have the benefit of a true insider’s wisdom. Ha!
I learn new food terminology. I already know of ‘leche de tigre’ – the fish juices with chilli and lime juice. ‘Leche de pantera’ is similar, but with scallop juice from black scallops. Leo tells me that both are supposed to improve one’s performance in bed. There’s salsa on the radio; Marc Anthony is singing, and Leo tells me that he’s a great dancer, and that he recently embarrassed his son at a disco. His son told him that ‘old people were not supposed to dance like that’. “He’s jealous,” Leo grins.
I do believe I’m getting a crush on my guide. Though I'm stereotypically attracted to tall, dark and handsome, Leo’s adorable – only two or three inches taller than me, and physically a cross between Gandhi and a diminutive Leonard Cohen. I’ve been listening to Cohen too much lately. He’s also sixty-five, which is a new record for me, unless you count Mr Cohen himself, who’s seventy-five and counting. Just goes to show that there’s no such thing as ‘too old to be attractive’.
When we go over to Leo’s house after lunch to feed the remnants of our lunch to his beautiful Samoyed, Princessa, wonder if there’s scope for anything to happen. I certainly wouldn’t be opposed to it. It’s not really a house - it’s a collection of rooms scattered inside a gated property amidst bright pink bougainvillea and cacti. One of the rooms is his study, where he demonstrates a tape player that predated cassette tapes; he learned to use it when he worked in a language school in Lima, and he taught himself English and Italian because he couldn’t afford to go to university. His English is certainly very good and he does language practise at home every day. We go into his bedroom and end up watching “Charmed” on cable. It’s actually pretty funny.
I keep shuffling towards Leo along the bed, but know full well that I’d never try anything unless unequivocally given a green light by the other party. I settle for sitting a couple of inches from him and enjoy the sweet melancholy of being hyper-aware of the nearness of someone I cannot have.
The spell is broken by the arrival of one of his wife’s church friends who’d come to wash the off-white Princessa and Leo and I head off to the Museo Antonini, an excellent museum which houses artefacts found at the Cahuachi site, put together thanks to the efforts of the Italian archaeologist. For other visitors, the experience must be a lot duller than mine; I have the benefit of Leo’s knowledge, and he’s really passionate about his work. He talks me through the Nazca pottery, the household tools, including hairbrushes made with cactus needles, the collection of trophy head skulls, the foreheads pierced with small holes, with ropes running through them…
Leo seems happy to hang around, so to finish off, he walks me around the centre, showing me the best places for street food, such as the anticucho lady who’s always in the same spot, always overrun with customers and always gone by eight o’clock, the chicken joint that’s always full of locals, the best Chinese food place in town…We end up in the jugería by the market, and I order a surtido especial for both of us – a potent concoction involving several different fruit, condensed milk, egg, black Cusqueña beer, honey and algarobina. It’s surprisingly good and so filling that I’m gonna skip dinner.
Leo tells me that his wife, a Chilena from Santiago, wants to move back to Chile to be with her family, and that he doesn’t want to because he wouldn’t find work there (there isn’t exactly much in the way of archaeological remains near Santiago and he’s too old to be a trekking guide) and we get onto the subject of Russia and the standards of life there.
I’m very sorry to bid farewell to Leo. He thanks me for the lovely day and I wish I had more time here and more money to spend on his guiding services. I’ve made a good friend here and it sucks to have to move on.
The evening’s a bit anticlimactic: bus timetables, hostels, eateries. My research here is done. I hope to be able to come back here for work – next year, or the year after.
On to Huacachina tomorrow…
The ‘airport’ is a large waiting room where about ten different flight companies are represented. The Nazca Travel desk is conspicuously empty; two years ago, they had a fatal crash, after which the company changed its name until this year’s fatal crash. The other companies have no fatalities to their names.
Though we’re pretty much the first ones there, several groups go before us, because they’ve either paid through the nose or booked the flight weeks in advance. Since there’s no public phone, I sweettalk the lady at the check-in desk into letting me use her phone to call Leo and arrange for him to meet me at the airport after the flight so that we can go straight to the Cahuachi ruins.
The four or us pile into the tiny six-seater and then we’re off, rising rapidly above the parched ground. I almost chickened out of flying, since it doesn’t have the same attraction for me that it once did, but I am so glad I did this! The pussy way out is to go up the observation tower instead, from where you can see the outline of a giant tree and part of a lizard, but it can’t compare to flying over the lines. The flight last half an hour and we follow the pattern on our boarding cards – first the giant whale, then some giant triangles, then the monkey, and so on. The ride isn’t particularly bumpy, though when we hit the air pockets, our stomachs drop our from underneath us; it’s like a long and picturesque roller coaster ride, with sick bags thoughtfully provided.
The tiny plane circles around each giant figure on the ground, so that we get a look from both sides of the plane, and when it does, that’s when the pressure in your head builds and you feel a little dizzy. We fly over green fields, the bare rock of mountains, the dry paths of the summer rivers frozen on the desert plain.
The lines are certainly impressive. I marvel at the perfect symmetry of the giant spider, of the hummingbird’s tail, the spiral of the giant monkey’s tail, the long, snake-like neck of the flamingo. I wonder about thee ancient culture that put so much effort into these giant figures that they certainly couldn’t appreciate the way we can, from the air. Why are they here?
When we land, Leo pulls up and we’re off further into the desert along a bumpy dirt road towards the Cahuachi pyramids – a giant Nazca ceremonial complex where they used to go solely for religious purposes. Along the way we stop at another burial ground, where the ground is covered with bits of ancient cloth, hanks of human hair, fragments of pelvises, shattered skulls, human tibias. Some of the bones are laid out is strange patterns, and when I ask Leo for an explanation, he tells me that the grave robbers are local farmers who also come here and mess around with the bones. I’m amazed that they’re not superstitious, that they’re not concerned that the aggravated spirits of the dead might come after them. “In the mountains – yes. But here in the coast, we don’t care.” He does mention the story of a tourist who sent back a human hand because he kept having nightmares, but even some of his friends have human skulls at home because they believe that they guard the house against evil spirits. When they try to persuade Leo to pick up a human skull, he tells them: “I don’t need a skull guardian. I have a dog.” Even I would think twice about pocketing a skull from a foreign land; as much as I’d like to own one, I’d rather not disrespect the local dead.
Out of the forty-four pyramids at the Cahuachi site, only one is uncovered; the rest remain hillocks in the desert. The uncovered ceremonial pyramid is being renovated and restored, adobe bricks being added to crumbling, wrecked walls to make up for the damage done by El Niño a few years back. While it’s under renovation until next year, we can’t get too close, though when Leo speaks the guy guarding it and tells him that I’m a journalist, he lets us walk right up to the site. Nearby, there are some holes in the ground. “The Nazca used to use them as coolers, to store food.” Only small and skinny people could be lowered into the holes; yours truly would get lodged in the middle, courtesy of the spare tyre.
These pyramids get us onto the subject of the Egyptian ones, which prompts me to say that the latter was built using the slave labour of my ancestors and I end up giving Leo an abridged version of the history of the Jews. We discuss discrimination in Peru; as an indigenous person, he himself would be subject to discrimination if he weren’t a self-taught linguist and guide. He tells me of two journalists in Lima – one European-looking, one indigenous, who went to a nightclub; the indigenous one was turned away and since the whole thing was secretly filmed, the club had to pay a hefty fine.
I tell Leo more about my work and he eagerly offers to assist me with my research. He’s got no work all day, his wife’s been in Lima for the past six months, and he’s alone. He knows good places to eat, so I offer to buy him lunch, and we stop by “Los Amigos de Miguel”, a cevichería south of the centre. Leo’s great: he introduces me to the chef/owner, who gives us ceviche on the house, topped with tasty sea urchins, we plough through seafood-fried rice and Leo tells me that the place (which is pretty full) gets absolutely packed on Sundays because Miguel’s had a loyal following for a decade and because ceviche is thought to be a hangover cure. Best of all, this awesome place is in none of the guidebooks because the other writers clearly didn’t have the benefit of a true insider’s wisdom. Ha!
I learn new food terminology. I already know of ‘leche de tigre’ – the fish juices with chilli and lime juice. ‘Leche de pantera’ is similar, but with scallop juice from black scallops. Leo tells me that both are supposed to improve one’s performance in bed. There’s salsa on the radio; Marc Anthony is singing, and Leo tells me that he’s a great dancer, and that he recently embarrassed his son at a disco. His son told him that ‘old people were not supposed to dance like that’. “He’s jealous,” Leo grins.
I do believe I’m getting a crush on my guide. Though I'm stereotypically attracted to tall, dark and handsome, Leo’s adorable – only two or three inches taller than me, and physically a cross between Gandhi and a diminutive Leonard Cohen. I’ve been listening to Cohen too much lately. He’s also sixty-five, which is a new record for me, unless you count Mr Cohen himself, who’s seventy-five and counting. Just goes to show that there’s no such thing as ‘too old to be attractive’.
When we go over to Leo’s house after lunch to feed the remnants of our lunch to his beautiful Samoyed, Princessa, wonder if there’s scope for anything to happen. I certainly wouldn’t be opposed to it. It’s not really a house - it’s a collection of rooms scattered inside a gated property amidst bright pink bougainvillea and cacti. One of the rooms is his study, where he demonstrates a tape player that predated cassette tapes; he learned to use it when he worked in a language school in Lima, and he taught himself English and Italian because he couldn’t afford to go to university. His English is certainly very good and he does language practise at home every day. We go into his bedroom and end up watching “Charmed” on cable. It’s actually pretty funny.
I keep shuffling towards Leo along the bed, but know full well that I’d never try anything unless unequivocally given a green light by the other party. I settle for sitting a couple of inches from him and enjoy the sweet melancholy of being hyper-aware of the nearness of someone I cannot have.
The spell is broken by the arrival of one of his wife’s church friends who’d come to wash the off-white Princessa and Leo and I head off to the Museo Antonini, an excellent museum which houses artefacts found at the Cahuachi site, put together thanks to the efforts of the Italian archaeologist. For other visitors, the experience must be a lot duller than mine; I have the benefit of Leo’s knowledge, and he’s really passionate about his work. He talks me through the Nazca pottery, the household tools, including hairbrushes made with cactus needles, the collection of trophy head skulls, the foreheads pierced with small holes, with ropes running through them…
Leo seems happy to hang around, so to finish off, he walks me around the centre, showing me the best places for street food, such as the anticucho lady who’s always in the same spot, always overrun with customers and always gone by eight o’clock, the chicken joint that’s always full of locals, the best Chinese food place in town…We end up in the jugería by the market, and I order a surtido especial for both of us – a potent concoction involving several different fruit, condensed milk, egg, black Cusqueña beer, honey and algarobina. It’s surprisingly good and so filling that I’m gonna skip dinner.
Leo tells me that his wife, a Chilena from Santiago, wants to move back to Chile to be with her family, and that he doesn’t want to because he wouldn’t find work there (there isn’t exactly much in the way of archaeological remains near Santiago and he’s too old to be a trekking guide) and we get onto the subject of Russia and the standards of life there.
I’m very sorry to bid farewell to Leo. He thanks me for the lovely day and I wish I had more time here and more money to spend on his guiding services. I’ve made a good friend here and it sucks to have to move on.
The evening’s a bit anticlimactic: bus timetables, hostels, eateries. My research here is done. I hope to be able to come back here for work – next year, or the year after.
On to Huacachina tomorrow…
Day 72 - Nazca.
Day 72 – Nazca.
Nazca has figured in my imagination for many, many years. As a kid I read not just the Nancy Drew mystery involving the famous Nazca lines, but also a book where some unspeakable evil uses the lines as a portal into our world, and it’s up to an intrepid boy to stop it – for the life of me, I can’t remember what the book was called. And now I have made up my mind to fly over the lines in spite of my reservations about dinky little airplanes.
Am awake at 5am because I’m cold (Cruz del Sur provides crapulous little blankets), and because the air-con’s been switched off. If there’s one thing I enjoy more than stewing in my own bodily gases, it’s stewing in the bodily gases of a dozen strangers.
Watch the sun slowly rise over the bare mountains which look blue at dawn. The bus negotiates hairpin bends as it descends into the valley. The landscape here is parched, dotted with the odd cactus. It reminds me of the land around Arica in Chile.
At the bus terminal, I come across the ‘vultures’, described by fellow travellers: persistent touts who try to persuade passengers to go to their hostel, join their tour. Their tactic is to provide cheap rooms and overcharge like mad for any tours, so for a flight worth $60, you might pay $100. The Walk On Inn where I’m staying sends a car to pick me up when I call them, and I immediately set out to explore the city. My first thought is to try and organise a tour of the nearby archaeological sites today, then the flight’s booked for tomorrow morning, and then I can get out of town in the afternoon.
Nazca is dusty, but sunny and cheerful, the streets of the centre lined with colourful two-storey residential buildings and shops. Pass a bustling fruit market on my way to the main Plaza. Since it’s just past 8am, not many places are open. Make my way along Bolognesi, the main drag, checking the places on my map. Pop into Alegría Tours at the namesake hotel, since it’s been recommended in all the guidebooks.
The guy at the desk points me to a small middle-aged man. I introduce myself, flash the Rough Guide to Peru and Leo the guide immediately talks to the girl taking tour bookings, telling her that since I’m a guidebook writer, I should come along for free. She refuses to book me on the tour at all, saying that it’s a private group, and tells me to come back in the afternoon. Leo furtively takes me aside and tells me to wait at the Ovalo – the roundabout a block away. A minute later, the minibus pulls up and Leo motions for me to hop inside, explaining to the group that I’m an illicit passenger.
We drive out into the sun-bleached desert near Nazca, to the Chauchilla cemetery, one of the town’s biggest attractions after the Nazca lines. Nazca’s a bit of a one-day town; most people come here to fly over the lines, then maybe fit in one of the nearby archaeological sites in the afternoon, and then they get out of town by the evening, flying on to Cusco, catching a bus to Arequipa…
First, there’s a modern cemetery, used by local farmers. The colour of the crosses signifies the age and gender of the dead: white for children, black for married adults, blue-green for teenagers and light blue for single women. There’s an awning made of woven dried cane for buses to park under, and a path marked with white stones leads towards the uncovered tombs. Leo explains that the tombs have been looted at will by numerous grave robbers, who’ve come here to look for pottery and gold to sell to tourists on the black market. The plain is scattered with human bones and shards of pottery.
The uncovered tombs are under similar cane awnings, and Las Trancas, the community now in charge of the cemetery, has carefully arranged the surviving mummies in the pits along with their belongings, and has carefully placed the loose skulls and bones in the pits as well. Leo explains that the men had shoulder-length hair, the women had hair down to their waists, and the chiefs had the longest hair of all, so we all guess the gender of the mummies, sitting in their pits in foetal positions. These are all Nazca mummies, dating back to 400BC – 800AD. They all sit, facing east, because the Nazca used to worship the sun. Leo tells us that he’s surprised, because even yesterday some of the pits didn’t have mummies in them; this means that whoever had them in their back yards is now returning them.
“The Nazca mummified everybody – rich, poor – and everyone was buried in the same cemetery with their belongings, to be used in the next life.” A child mummy sits next to a mummy of a parrot – a beloved pet. Some of the mummies are missing their heads. Some have mortars and pestles next to them, which the women would have used for cooking. One male mummy is so wrapped up in textiles that he looks like he’s wearing a puffa jacket. I’m into mortality and human remains, so am loving the cemetery.
Moving on, we stop at a pottery workshop, where the family uses traditional techniques and museum catalogues to create replica Nazca and Moche pottery, up to and including the use to paintbrushes made of replica baby hair. The whole process is interesting, and I end up getting a Nazca plate for my parents. I don’t think they’d appreciate the explicit Moche pots which feature every type of sex imaginable – from anal to bestiality. The Moche were big on fertility.
Since prospecting for gold in the nearby hills is a good way for Nazca residents to earn money if they haven’t learned any trade and are only capable of unskilled labour, we visit a gold processing workshop also, where the guy in charge demonstrates the scale models of the equipment they use and then we go out back to where salsa is blaring from the radio and several young men are balancing on wooden boards on top of giant metal cylinders, moving from side to side to crush the rock underneath. They keep it up for a few hours, and that, combined with five days a week in the hills, is how they make maybe $200 a month.
After dropping me off at the Ovalo again, Leo makes plans to meet me for a private tour in the afternoon for ‘a reasonable price’.
Stumble upon the Cevichería El Limón, a lime-green place full of locals which does superb ceviche and seafood-fried rice. The World Cup is unavoidable.
“I’m a freelance guide. I work for several different companies, but today I’m free,” Leo tells me. We go off to the Paredones, the area on the outskirts of Nazca where the ancient Cantayoc aqueducts are located. I’m expecting something like the Roman ones in Spain, but they turn out to be stone spirals in the ground, leading down to the water. “It used to be possible to go from one aqueduct to another, but since the last earthquake it’s been forbidden.” They are still being used for the irrigation of the nearby fields.
A guy dressed in a robe with feathered headgear is leading a gringo couple around. They descend along one of the spirals to the water, where the shaman instructs the girl to wave her hands above the outstretched palms of her partner. Leo tells me that some credulous people believe that the aqueducts possess some kind of mysterious energy. As far as he’s concerned, the shaman is a charlatan who’s ripping off the couple.
He points out a desert plant with huge spikes, which local farmers plant around their fields as natural barbed wire, the carob trees which the goats and the pigs love, and whose pods are used to made algarobina – a sweet chocolaty liquid. We then go up a dusty little hillock to look at Las Agujas – The Needles. I’m expecting some tall, thin rock formations, but they are, in fact, long, thin triangles etched perfectly into the desert plain by the Nazca. Why? No one knows, just like no one really knows why they etched the giant figures of animals which can only really be appreciated from the air.
As Leo walks me around the Paredones ruins – where the Inca ruler stayed when visiting the area – he points out the pits dug all over the landscape. “These were also done by grave robbers. Since the rich and the poor were buried in the same place, they keep digging until they find a mummy buried with gold or pottery.” As we look down into the ruins, a small feathered head with round yellow eyes pops up – it’s a desert owl. I’ve never seen owls which are a) out during the day and b) which dig holes in the ground. Nearby is a burrow where it must live.
When Leo drops me off, he offers to take me the Cahuachi ruins the next day after my flight provided he’s free. “It’s best to go in the morning because in the afternoon the wind picks up and there may be a sand storm.” Debate rejecting his offer in favour of Cerro Blanco – the world’s biggest sand dune that looms beyond the town, and a hot destination for sand boarders. Hot literally; the girl at reception informs me that a trip to the dune involved a 5am start and a three-hour uphill slog. Next time, perhaps. Call Leo and confirm tomorrow, making up my mind also to stay another night.
In preparation for tomorrow’s flight, I go to the Maria Reiche Planetarium at the posh Nazca Lines Hotel. Maria Reiche was a German mathematician who devoted her life to studying the Nazca lines, and the show at the small planetarium discusses her theories and proves to be rather interesting. She believed that the lines were a giant astronomical calendar and that several of the animals are aligned with various constellations – the giant monkey with the Big Dipper and the giant spider with Orion. As for the straight lines and triangles which cross the plain, she claimed that they were aligned with the sun’s rays during the solstices. Her explanations are more credible than those of various fruit loops, one of whom suggested that the lines were created by aliens as landing strips for their space craft. The presentation ends with a look through a telescope at the moon and at Saturn and the Sikh family remains behind to take photos, while I go for one of the worst meals of the trip so far – lacklustre pizza at the Los Angeles restaurant.
Nazca has figured in my imagination for many, many years. As a kid I read not just the Nancy Drew mystery involving the famous Nazca lines, but also a book where some unspeakable evil uses the lines as a portal into our world, and it’s up to an intrepid boy to stop it – for the life of me, I can’t remember what the book was called. And now I have made up my mind to fly over the lines in spite of my reservations about dinky little airplanes.
Am awake at 5am because I’m cold (Cruz del Sur provides crapulous little blankets), and because the air-con’s been switched off. If there’s one thing I enjoy more than stewing in my own bodily gases, it’s stewing in the bodily gases of a dozen strangers.
Watch the sun slowly rise over the bare mountains which look blue at dawn. The bus negotiates hairpin bends as it descends into the valley. The landscape here is parched, dotted with the odd cactus. It reminds me of the land around Arica in Chile.
At the bus terminal, I come across the ‘vultures’, described by fellow travellers: persistent touts who try to persuade passengers to go to their hostel, join their tour. Their tactic is to provide cheap rooms and overcharge like mad for any tours, so for a flight worth $60, you might pay $100. The Walk On Inn where I’m staying sends a car to pick me up when I call them, and I immediately set out to explore the city. My first thought is to try and organise a tour of the nearby archaeological sites today, then the flight’s booked for tomorrow morning, and then I can get out of town in the afternoon.
Nazca is dusty, but sunny and cheerful, the streets of the centre lined with colourful two-storey residential buildings and shops. Pass a bustling fruit market on my way to the main Plaza. Since it’s just past 8am, not many places are open. Make my way along Bolognesi, the main drag, checking the places on my map. Pop into Alegría Tours at the namesake hotel, since it’s been recommended in all the guidebooks.
The guy at the desk points me to a small middle-aged man. I introduce myself, flash the Rough Guide to Peru and Leo the guide immediately talks to the girl taking tour bookings, telling her that since I’m a guidebook writer, I should come along for free. She refuses to book me on the tour at all, saying that it’s a private group, and tells me to come back in the afternoon. Leo furtively takes me aside and tells me to wait at the Ovalo – the roundabout a block away. A minute later, the minibus pulls up and Leo motions for me to hop inside, explaining to the group that I’m an illicit passenger.
We drive out into the sun-bleached desert near Nazca, to the Chauchilla cemetery, one of the town’s biggest attractions after the Nazca lines. Nazca’s a bit of a one-day town; most people come here to fly over the lines, then maybe fit in one of the nearby archaeological sites in the afternoon, and then they get out of town by the evening, flying on to Cusco, catching a bus to Arequipa…
First, there’s a modern cemetery, used by local farmers. The colour of the crosses signifies the age and gender of the dead: white for children, black for married adults, blue-green for teenagers and light blue for single women. There’s an awning made of woven dried cane for buses to park under, and a path marked with white stones leads towards the uncovered tombs. Leo explains that the tombs have been looted at will by numerous grave robbers, who’ve come here to look for pottery and gold to sell to tourists on the black market. The plain is scattered with human bones and shards of pottery.
The uncovered tombs are under similar cane awnings, and Las Trancas, the community now in charge of the cemetery, has carefully arranged the surviving mummies in the pits along with their belongings, and has carefully placed the loose skulls and bones in the pits as well. Leo explains that the men had shoulder-length hair, the women had hair down to their waists, and the chiefs had the longest hair of all, so we all guess the gender of the mummies, sitting in their pits in foetal positions. These are all Nazca mummies, dating back to 400BC – 800AD. They all sit, facing east, because the Nazca used to worship the sun. Leo tells us that he’s surprised, because even yesterday some of the pits didn’t have mummies in them; this means that whoever had them in their back yards is now returning them.
“The Nazca mummified everybody – rich, poor – and everyone was buried in the same cemetery with their belongings, to be used in the next life.” A child mummy sits next to a mummy of a parrot – a beloved pet. Some of the mummies are missing their heads. Some have mortars and pestles next to them, which the women would have used for cooking. One male mummy is so wrapped up in textiles that he looks like he’s wearing a puffa jacket. I’m into mortality and human remains, so am loving the cemetery.
Moving on, we stop at a pottery workshop, where the family uses traditional techniques and museum catalogues to create replica Nazca and Moche pottery, up to and including the use to paintbrushes made of replica baby hair. The whole process is interesting, and I end up getting a Nazca plate for my parents. I don’t think they’d appreciate the explicit Moche pots which feature every type of sex imaginable – from anal to bestiality. The Moche were big on fertility.
Since prospecting for gold in the nearby hills is a good way for Nazca residents to earn money if they haven’t learned any trade and are only capable of unskilled labour, we visit a gold processing workshop also, where the guy in charge demonstrates the scale models of the equipment they use and then we go out back to where salsa is blaring from the radio and several young men are balancing on wooden boards on top of giant metal cylinders, moving from side to side to crush the rock underneath. They keep it up for a few hours, and that, combined with five days a week in the hills, is how they make maybe $200 a month.
After dropping me off at the Ovalo again, Leo makes plans to meet me for a private tour in the afternoon for ‘a reasonable price’.
Stumble upon the Cevichería El Limón, a lime-green place full of locals which does superb ceviche and seafood-fried rice. The World Cup is unavoidable.
“I’m a freelance guide. I work for several different companies, but today I’m free,” Leo tells me. We go off to the Paredones, the area on the outskirts of Nazca where the ancient Cantayoc aqueducts are located. I’m expecting something like the Roman ones in Spain, but they turn out to be stone spirals in the ground, leading down to the water. “It used to be possible to go from one aqueduct to another, but since the last earthquake it’s been forbidden.” They are still being used for the irrigation of the nearby fields.
A guy dressed in a robe with feathered headgear is leading a gringo couple around. They descend along one of the spirals to the water, where the shaman instructs the girl to wave her hands above the outstretched palms of her partner. Leo tells me that some credulous people believe that the aqueducts possess some kind of mysterious energy. As far as he’s concerned, the shaman is a charlatan who’s ripping off the couple.
He points out a desert plant with huge spikes, which local farmers plant around their fields as natural barbed wire, the carob trees which the goats and the pigs love, and whose pods are used to made algarobina – a sweet chocolaty liquid. We then go up a dusty little hillock to look at Las Agujas – The Needles. I’m expecting some tall, thin rock formations, but they are, in fact, long, thin triangles etched perfectly into the desert plain by the Nazca. Why? No one knows, just like no one really knows why they etched the giant figures of animals which can only really be appreciated from the air.
As Leo walks me around the Paredones ruins – where the Inca ruler stayed when visiting the area – he points out the pits dug all over the landscape. “These were also done by grave robbers. Since the rich and the poor were buried in the same place, they keep digging until they find a mummy buried with gold or pottery.” As we look down into the ruins, a small feathered head with round yellow eyes pops up – it’s a desert owl. I’ve never seen owls which are a) out during the day and b) which dig holes in the ground. Nearby is a burrow where it must live.
When Leo drops me off, he offers to take me the Cahuachi ruins the next day after my flight provided he’s free. “It’s best to go in the morning because in the afternoon the wind picks up and there may be a sand storm.” Debate rejecting his offer in favour of Cerro Blanco – the world’s biggest sand dune that looms beyond the town, and a hot destination for sand boarders. Hot literally; the girl at reception informs me that a trip to the dune involved a 5am start and a three-hour uphill slog. Next time, perhaps. Call Leo and confirm tomorrow, making up my mind also to stay another night.
In preparation for tomorrow’s flight, I go to the Maria Reiche Planetarium at the posh Nazca Lines Hotel. Maria Reiche was a German mathematician who devoted her life to studying the Nazca lines, and the show at the small planetarium discusses her theories and proves to be rather interesting. She believed that the lines were a giant astronomical calendar and that several of the animals are aligned with various constellations – the giant monkey with the Big Dipper and the giant spider with Orion. As for the straight lines and triangles which cross the plain, she claimed that they were aligned with the sun’s rays during the solstices. Her explanations are more credible than those of various fruit loops, one of whom suggested that the lines were created by aliens as landing strips for their space craft. The presentation ends with a look through a telescope at the moon and at Saturn and the Sikh family remains behind to take photos, while I go for one of the worst meals of the trip so far – lacklustre pizza at the Los Angeles restaurant.
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