South America Days 1 - 2

We had an early morning flight from Quito to Lima, Peru where we started our 64 day South American overland trip going through Peru, Bolivia, Chile and Argentina with an English company called 'Dragoman'. 

We arrived at our hotel, 'Inkah Path' in Lima at midday.  We had an afternoon free to wander around Lima.  We visited the square outside the Presidential Palace and the cathedral, the square was very heavily guarded by police.  We stopped at a restaurant for lunch, our leftovers given away to beggars.  A man was waiting patiently with a plastic bag, the waiter kindly gave him the huge mound of tacu tacu rice I didn't eat.  Sadly there are lots of beggars in the city, relying on kind locals and tourists for small money or food donations.  After lunch we visited the Catacomb Museum and home of Franciscan Monks.  Very interesting, lots of paintings and bones.

We had a trip meet in the hotel in the evening.  There are twenty one of us, plus two crew, on the first leg of our trip, a very large group. First impressions, every one seems very nice.  A few are going all the way to Ushuaia like us. 

Day 2 - we had an early start leaving Lima at 5:30am.  We got to meet our overland truck 'Amber' for the first time, our transport for the next two months.  We had a four hour drive to Paracas and Paracas National Park which is widely regarded as one of the most important marine reserves and is home to one of the highest concentration of marine birds in the world.  Historically the peninsula was the home of the Paracas people from 1200BC through to around 200AD and remains of their culture can be found in the area, the most spectacular of which is an enormous candelabra/cactus etching inscribed onto a hill overlooking the ocean.

From Paracas harbour, where there were loads of pelicans, we took a two hour boat trip out to the beautiful Ballestas Islands.  We saw lots of humboldt penguins, blackish oystercatchers, guano cormorants and Peruvian boobies living alongside sea lions. The climatic conditions of the area create the perfect environment for plankton meaning large numbers of fish for the birds to feed on.  The guano, produced by the cormorants is a great natural fetiliser and is collected from the islands every seven years.

We had lunch at a restaurant in the harbour then back on the truck to head for Huacachina, a desert oasis town with lots of sand dunes, more reminiscent of the Sahara than south America.  Here we had our first activity, buggying and sand boarding.  It was great fun going up and down the sand dunes in the buggy's, scary at times though like  rollercoaster ride.  We also had a few goes at sand boarding, laying on our stomachs, not standing that was too dangerous.  Some of us weren't sure to start with, it looked scary, but we all participated and each run got slightly bigger and longer, again great fun. We stopped to watch an amazing sunset and then headed to camp and spent the night out in the sand dunes.  We had three canine companions again, the crazy dogs followed the buggys all the way to camp.  The buggy company crew cooked us a great BBQ, there was lots of pisco cola drunk (pisco is a fermented grape brandy) and then we slept in the open under the stars, beautiful.