Moo's Mid Life Crisis: Peru - Lima, Paracas and Huacachina Oasis

After the Amazon it was back to Quito (where I parted ways with mum and dad), and then on to Peru for 3 weeks.

It was quite incredible that at 6am I was quietly and excitedly watching the smallest breed of monkey have breakfast in the amazon, and by 10pm I was (what can only be described as) rally driving through Lima in Peru, in a battered old bus, listening to the Spice Girls and Michael Jackson at full blast. Quite a contrast!

I can firmly say that I was really not a fan of the quality of driving in Peru. I've been told that South East Asia and India will be worse, but I'll just have to wait and see.

I have almost no photos from Lima. I've said it before and I'll say it again, I'm not a big fan of cities and towns. I did sit in a nice clifftop park for a morning to do some blogging and catch some sun. The cliffs were actually a big surprise for me as they were very impressive, and I'm now annoyed I didn't take any decent photos of them. (Luckily I googled and other people have! Have a quick look here.)

I had a few days to myself (mostly resting and relaxing) and then joined with the group for the 3 week tour. A small, mixed group, Richard and Sylwia (Jamaican and Polish - both work on the cruise ships in the Caribbean), Lee (English - software type) and Rod (Peruvian - our guide). It was a little worrying to realize that just the 5 of us would be spending the next 3 weeks together, but everyone was lovely, it was a really fantastic group and incredibly fun.

I think it was Sylwia who coined the phrase "cuatro y medio" ("Four and a half" in Spanish) to describe us (Rod is rather petite). We used the phrase any time we went into a restaurant and it never failed to gt a laugh from the staff and cries of indignation from Rod.

At one stage we played hangman to pass the time, using phrases that were appropriate for the holiday. Below is my utter fail entry which caused unreal levels of hilarity for about 20 minutes as we analysed just how wrong it was. Remember, Sylwia and Rod were both playing in English, not the native language for either of them. I attempted our favorite Spanish phrase and managed to spell the first work in Italian and the second in French. No wonder they had a hard time getting it. Literally tears of laughter rolling down our faces for 20 minutes. I'm going to blame the bad spelling on a) by poor language skills and b) the fact that we had just finished doing the Inca trail and I was shattered.

Peru is a big place so there were a few long bus trips. Luckily the transportation was pretty good, when we had our own bus there was loads of room to stretch out. First day was down to Paracas, a small seaside resort. Pretty fishing boats and some birds on the beach.

The irrepressibly happy Rod

Black Skimmer - These guys look like high speed Puffins

Our next day was another long drive, but we had a few stops along the way. First was a Pisco winery. Pisco is a brandy-like alcoholic beverage used in the famous Pisco Sour cocktail (which is very tasty). As it's an artisan type winery, the grapes are crushed by foot, fermented in special clay vessels (I forget the name), and distilled in a wood fired thingamajig. The resulting liquor is then variously flavored (you can see some of the variety below) and quite tasty. The tasting session got me rather tiddly, and I bought a bottle.