October 13, 2005
Day 15

I got up early again because of the noise. When I looked across the room, Morad wasn't there. Then I sat up and see him sleeping on the floor with his sleeping bag. "Bedbugs," was his response. "They must have been in my sheets. I'm bitten from head to toe." I examined myself for bites. None. I guess I just got lucky. When he told the people at the front desk, they said that it was the first time it had happened and he probably tracked them in himself. Talk about blaming the victim.

Even besides the flea problem, I don't like this hostel. The base price is cheap, but they sure make everything else expensive. The Internet costs 1 sol/hour everywhere else in town, but at the hostel, it's 2 soles/hour. Breakfast consists of coffee and two pieces of bread. Everything else costs more. A lot more. Orange Juice is 2.5 soles for glass. You can get an entire meal for that much elsewhere in the city! It also costs 3 soles to put your backpack in their storage, which isn't very secure to begin with. I haven't had to pay for that service anywhere else. And finally, our room came with a TV set, but the chord wasn't long enough to plug into the single outlet in the room. At the reception desk, they had extension chords. I didn't even bother asking how much those were. "We said your room had a TV... We never said you could use it." OK, enough complaining.

The main goal of the day was to see the Nazca Lines. Morad and I grabbed a cab to the airport to talk directly with the agencies. Before we could even get out of the cab, an agency lady dragged us into an office. She gave the typical speech and offered to go for $55. We said that was ridiculous, so she lowered it to $40. We said it was still too much, so the lady leaned in closely and gave us a "special price" of $35. That was better, but we still had to pay an airport tax. We said we would inquire with the other agencies and return if her price was still the best. She said she'd cut the tax in half, and we finally agreed to go.

The first thing we did was watch a video about the lines. The video first showed how the giant figures drawn in the desert were discovered and popularized. It then went into the possible explanations for the lines. This part of the video was very interesting, but highly biased toward the supernatural. Were the lines created by aliens? Were they created by the Nazca people to welcome their new alien overlords? Finally at the end of the video, a lady said something sensible: The lines were created 2500 years ago by the Nazca people. This can be shown through radiocarbon dating and the fact that the Nazca pottery featured many of the same figures. To say that they were created by aliens is insulting to the Nazca culture. As soon as the pilot was ready, the video was abruptly turned off and we boarded the plane.

The ride wasn't all it was cracked up to be. After about five minutes of flying over the desert, we reached the site of the lines. "There's the parrot; there's the astronaut," the pilot said. I guess I just expected the figures to be bigger. I thought I they would cover all of the visble land, even from the plane, but most of them seemed tiny. It still is amazing that the people here created the figures over 2500 years ago, but the experience was hyped up so much that when I finally was in the plane, I was disappointed. By the end of the 45-minute ride, I started to feel queasy. Motion sickness was something I had never experienced in my life, but with the plane constantly weaving back and forth with such sharp turns, I finally felt what so many people had described to me. I think we landed just in time.

After I got back to the hostel, I had a nice nap and went out Morad and Francesca, from Switzerland, for lunch. We discussed going to the Maria Reiche Museum, named in honor of the woman who dedicated her life to studying and popularizing the Nazca Lines. Morad hates museums, so Francesca and I took the 30-minute bus ride to the museum, which was in the middle of nowhere, without him.

The first thing I noticed at the museum was that there were two llamas near the entrance. I petted them a little bit, but after my previous lesson, I didn't take any chances in posing for a photo with them. Next, our museum guide showed us some mummified corpses that were discovered nearby, one of which looked like Bob Marley. We then learned about the life of Maria Reiche and were told that the museum actually used to be her house. Finally we walked around the courtyard, which was still decorated with lots of flowers.

There was still a little daylight left, so we decided to take another bus to the Mirador, a lookout tower from which two of the Nazca figures are visible. We got there about 30 minutes after what must have been a magnificent sunset in the middle of the desert. The lines actually seemed slightly more interesting from that vantage point. After we walked back to the ground, we noticed that the lines weren't visible at all from ground-level. No wonder they went so long without being discovered!

After the Mirador experience, it was almost completely dark and the buses that passed by us on the Panamerican Highway would have a hard time seeing us. The employees at the Mirador saw this and offered us an interesting solution: They would drive us back to the museum, where there were street lights, on motorcycles! As I stared down the long road ahead of me wearing no protection except my sandals, I couldn't help but think of "The Motorcycle Diaries," where Che and his buddy kept falling off their old motorcycle every time they went around a corner. It was a wild ride, but neither of us fell. After saying our "Thank You's" to the motorcycle drivers, we waited fifteen minutes for the next bus to take us back into town.

Later that night, I went out with a bunch of people to what I believe is the most expensive restaurant in town. Still, they did have really good food there. After a long day, I finally went to bed in hopes of finally getting a good night's sleep.

Nazca Lines Photos
Museum Photos
Mirador Photos

October 12, 2005
Day 14

This was a travel day. I got up early because there was so much noise. Every morning here there are barking dogs, honking horns, and Cock-a-doodle-doing roosters. This begins at sunrise, so it has been very difficult for me to get enough sleep lately. It's a very noisy culture.

My morning was spent updating my website. I had a lot of pictures to upload from the Islas Ballestas tour, so it took several hours.

In the afternoon, Morad and I took a bus to Nazca, home of the famous Nazca lines. We found a hostel to stay in for $5 per night for a double room with a private bath. Not as cheap as Huaraz, but still I can can't complain.

Before we could even get to our room, we were taken to another room and given a big speech about the Nazca Lines flight. We had been asking various people about the price for a few days, so we already had a good idea of what to expect.

Back in Huaraz, a crazy bartender told us that most tourists get charged about $60, but if you go directly to the airport, you can go for as cheap as $10 if there is a vacant seat on a plane. He then proceded to extend his arms in roughly the shape of airplane wings to show us what a wild ride it would be. I left there wondering if it was the plane or him who was flying.

In Pisco, the same guy who sold us the islands/national reserve tickets for $12 offered us Nazca flight tickets. He gave us a brochure that quoted a price of $79. When we laughed in his face, he revealed that he had in fact given us a competitor's brochure and that his company only charged $55. We told him thanks, but we were going to shop around in Nazca.

When the tourist agency guy sat us down at our hostel in Nazca, he gave us a $55 quote. We said that it was too expensive, so he reduced it to $40. It's funny how they always lean in and lower their voice when they lower their prices, as if they are risking their job just for us. We still said that we could go cheaper. He said, "No way you will find cheaper tickets." We told him that we would shop around and go with him if that was indeed the case.

It was already getting late, and I was still exhausted, so I just went to bed early in hopes of finding a better deal tomorrow.

October 11, 2005
Day 13

I had to get up early again today for another touristy event, but it was well worthwhile. At 7:30 AM, I left the hostel with Miki from Israel, Yuna from Holland, and Morad to go to the Islas Ballestas. Sometimes known as "the poor man's Galapagos," the islands are host to thousands of sea lions, seagulls, pelicans, and boobies (yes, it's a real name).

As soon as we got to the port, I realized that this was a huge tourist trap. Until that point, I had barely seen any tourists, but the coast was crawling with them. I guess it would be hypocritical of me to complain too much, though, considering that I am a tourist as well. Still, I was immediately turned off by expensive restaurants with fake-looking decorations. There was even a "traditional" native band playing, but they looked like they bought their clothes at Wal-Mart. Obviously, I didn't think too highly of the place at first.

I changed my mind as soon as I got on the boat. Right away, we spotted a bunch of dolphins splashing around. Even though there were about twenty other tourist boats next to us, I still enjoyed watching them. I got a few pictures, but the dolphins weren't jumping high enough to get anything spectacular.

Our next stop was the Candelabra, a 150-meter tall drawing in the rocks whose origin remains a mystery. Our guide seemed to think that it was 2500 years old, which would put it at the same time as the Nazca culture. This makes sense because the Nazca Lines look very similar to the Candelabra, but our guide admitted that nobody knows for sure how old it is. It doesn't erode because it sits on the side of the hill that the wind never hits. The rain doesn't wash it away because there is no rain. Despite being a few miles out at sea, it's still a desert! This lead me to believe that either the people who made the Candelabra were geniuses who realized that it would never fade away, or they were idiots who wasted their lives creating hundreds of Candelabras, only one of which survived.

After driving about ten more minutes, we got to the actual islands. The first thing I noticed was the vast number of sea lions. Most of them were laying around and being lazy, but the a few were yelling, and others were fighting with each other. After driving to the other side of one of the islands, we saw tens of thousands of birds. They seemed to cover every inch of land. How could all of them find enough food to survive? And how could they live on the islands without any personal space? The islands amazed me from start to finish.

Yuna, Morad, and I had a short break before continuing to the second part of our tour: the Reserva Nacional de Paracas. After entering the reserve, we first went to the visitor center, where we learned how much humans were destroying the park. Next, we started driving through the park and learned that many parts of it were being used by the government to mine salt. It seemed rather odd that the government wanted to protect and destroy the place at the same time.

After driving through the desert for twenty minutes, we reached a lookout point on the coast. The rocks supposedly looked like a cathedral, with a woman taking a breather on the top. As I walked toward the edge to pose for a picture, I noticed how windy it was. One wrong move would've meant certain death. The cathedral could've been a graveyard instead.

Our last stop at the national reserve was at a small fishing port. Along with the dozens of fishing vessels, there was a little beach and a handful of restaurants. There was no electricity at the port, so the fish served at the restaurants was guaranteed to be either fresh or rotten.

Our kind-hearted guide informed us that most of the restaurants were ripoffs designed to get unsuspecting tourists' money. However, he said that he knew of one place that was cheaper than anywhere else, and through his benevolence, he would lead us to that very place. Sure enough, as soon as we got out of the bus, workers from every restaurant began harassing us to try to get our business. "Just ignore them," our guide said, "They're just trying to rip you off." I had a feeling of comfort as I followed him into the only cheap restaurant on the port. Then I looked at the menu. The cheapest meal was 20 soles, almost $7 dollars! I had never paid that much for a meal since arriving in Peru. As soon as Morad saw how much the food was, he decided to do some comparison shopping and left the restaurant. He returned two minutes later and informed us that the restaurant next door only charged 5 soles for anything on the menu. As we got up to walk away, the waiter instantly cut the price in half. Still, 10 soles was twice as much as the other place. I wanted to tell our guide to take a long walk off a short pier, which would've actually been possible there, but it didn't really matter. He had already suckered at least a dozen other tourists into paying his restaurant's exorbitant prices.

After my five sol meal and a walk around the area, it was time to go back home. I didn't do too much at night because I was so tired from traveling. Morad and I decided to leave for Nazca tomorrow to see the giant lines drawn in the sand before heading to either Arequipa or Cusco. My Inca Trail experience is now only two weeks away.

Islas Ballestas Photos
Paracas Photos

October 10, 2005
Day 12

The overnight bus out of Huaraz was rough, as usual. In the first hour, we went all the way down the side of a mountain to sea level. Every minute or so, I would start to fall asleep but the bus would make a sharp turn and wake me up. Plus, there was a big fat guy sitting next to me and taking up half my seat. If I ever join that division of the CIA that tries to get suspects to talk, this will be the technique that I will recommend.

After the long bus ride, we arrived in Lima at 4:20 AM. The ticket window was still closed, so we had to wait a few hours at the station. We figured out that a company down the street had buses that left every 15 minutes in the general direction of Pisco, so we hopped on the first one of the day and got the hell out of Lima.

It was almost noon when we arrived in Pisco. Morad and I had to take a taxi from the Panamerican Highway, where we were dropped off, to the center of town. We were going to go to a hostel that was highly recommended by my guide book, but the cab driver told us about a new place that's supposedly way better, but won't be found in any guide book because it is so new (It's pretty common here for taxi drivers to attempt to change a backpacker's mind. That way, they get a piece of the action, too.) The driver was willing to wait at the new place to see if we liked it, so we decided to have a look.

It turns out that this place is a palace. It has a pool, a ping pong table, a pool table, a party area on the roof, cable TV in every room, and free Internet access, all for $6 per night! After the long night and day of riding in buses, we both decided to stay there and get some rest.

I spent most of my day uploading pictures and updating my blog, but I did get a chance to look around town a little bit as well. Pisco is very different from Huaraz. Instead of being in the mountains, it is in the middle of a desert. The houses look different, the sky is more hazy, and the don't appear to be many indigenous people here, whereas they were in the majority in Huaraz. Even the taxis are different here. Most of them are 3-wheeled motorcycles with covers. I saw a few of them in Huaraz, but they are everywhere in Pisco.

Tomorrow, I will be going on a tour of the "Poor Man's Galapagos" with a bunch of visitors in town. There should be some great photo opportunities there.

The complete photo album for this entry is here.

October 9, 2005
Day 11

After waking up late today, I had to get all of my stuff together in preparation for leaving Huaraz. I had been in the area for over a week, so naturally everything of mine was in a big mess, and getting it organized took a few hours. Next, I finally got around to reading the magazines I had brought with me on the plane when I started my trip. Then, I got some lunch and attempted to upload some pictures onto my website. This failed miserably as the Internet connections around here tend to be much slower than what I'm used to back home.

Having gotten nothing major accomplished all day, I decided to get my ticket out of town. I met up with Morad, and we started walking to the bus stations. The good thing about traveling around Peru is that buses are always available, no matter where you want to go. The bad thing is that there are several bus companies, each company has its own station, and they aren't necessarily close to each other. We quickly found out that nearly every bus going to Lima that night was booked solid. After checking with several companies, we finally found an overnight bus for $10, which is medium-priced for the 200 mile trip.

While buying the ticket, we ran into some people we met last night (Huaraz is small enough that this has actually happened several times already). Tania decided to show us the land she is going to buy outside of town. It's a quiet piece of property that feels like the middle of nowhere, even though it's only ten minutes by bus from the center of town.

We also visited a nearby trout farm. There were ponds for trouts of every size, and the trouts that are the perfect size for eating go for about 30 cents each, so stop by and bring a bucket if you are in the area and hungry. The old lady running the joint showed us how she feeds the biggest trout. I knew that trout was a popular dish in this area, but now I know where the town's supply comes from!

After the visit to the boonies, I tried one last time in vain to get some work done on my website. I know I'm falling behind, but hopefully I'll be able to catch up in Pisco. Traveling in the third world isn't always convenient, but that's where the adventure comes in.

Morad and I left town at 10:15 PM to go to Lima. The bus actually left on time and there were no people trying to sell me stuff, so I'm glad I forked over the extra $3 for a decent bus. After arriving in Lima, we'll try to get a bus ticket to Pisco.

October 8, 2005
Day 10

I got up early again today to go to the Chavin Ruins. The bus terminal was very chaotic, which is the standard here. Different people kept telling me to wait before going to the other side of the terminal and frantically talking to other employees. I paid for a bus ticket the previous day, yet it didn't seem like they actually had a seat reserved for me. Finally, after waiting through thirty minutes of pandemonium, I got on a bus. Unfortunately, Morad got thrown on a different bus, but it was still quite interesting because my bus was full of 11- and 12-year-old kids.

In Peru, after finishing elementary school, kids get to go on a five-day-long field trip called "promotion." This group happened to be going to Chavin on the same day as me. They were a good group of kids who asked a lot of questions and quickly adopted me.

Our first stop was Lagoon Querococha , at an altitude of 3980 meters (13,058 feet). Next, we saw a natural rock formation that bore a striking resemblance to the map of Peru. Also on the way to Chavin, we went through the Kahuish Tunnel, which sits at an altitude of 4516 meters (14,186 feet).

The Chavin ruins aren't very spectacular looking at first, but look a little closer and they become more interesting. The Chavin culture used aqueducts to irrigate water, built their main plaza with exact right angles, and carved a four-meter-high rock known as the Lanzon de Chavin in a well-ventilated underground chamber. Add that to the fact that the Chavin existed 2000 years before the Aztecs, and the sight seems even more interesting.

After I finished visiting the ruins, I talked to the kids on my bus some more. They are from the Santa Ursula school in Chimbote, and I'm going to try to send them some postcards from my travels. If I met you that day and you can read English, I say "hi."

Later that night, I went out to some dance clubs in Huaraz. I think I'm the worst dancer in Latin America, but it was still fun. I met a lot of people that night and was reminded again of what a festive atmosphere Peru has. I got to bed at 4:30, but I left when the party was still going strong.

The complete photo album for this entry is here.