Sunday 14 December

Sunday 14 December

Down the coast from Lima

Breakfast was corn pancake and maple syrup, and we headed off through the suburbs of Lima. Lima was a surprisingly large city - about the population of London - with quite a lot of sprawl along the roads. We were in a 19 seater bus - generous as there were only five in the group - with two drivers, Luis and... Jesus!

Shortly we came to the old ruined site of Pachacamac, which was an ancient Inca settlement at the end of the road inland. Built on a hill, it was constructed from sand bricks - no danger of rain to wash it away. (Only about 10 mm of rain falls around Lima each year.) It was quite difficult to understand all the context, but there were some impressive buildings, such as the old temple. The location was impressive, looking out over a couple of islands in the Pacific.

We headed south for about an hour or so, and stopped at the town of Pucasana, a small fishing harbour. We were taken out for a boat ride to look at the birds and sea lions - Inca Terns were looking impressive, but the highlight was the Peruvian Pelican, which the driver attracted with some old fish to feed them. The atmosphere in the harbour was great, looking at the fishing boats and tuktuks going about their business. We had lunch in restaurant by the harbour - delicious ceviche and fried seafood, served with large grains of sweetcorn and sweet potato wedges, and washed down with non-alcoholic sweetcorn drink (chicha).

We drove south for several hours, with sand dunes on the left and the Pacific on the right - some nice beaches but very much underdeveloped except for little strips of beach restaurants with identical signs identifying their owners. In a few places by rivers we saw cultivated fields, one or two of quinoa, but more sweetcorn and squash, and lots of asparagus. As we got towards Pisco, there were vineyards with grapes ready to be harvested. We stopped briefly in a town where people ate huge portions of chicken, seafood and rice through picture windows while I made faces at them, and popped into a large supermarket for essential supplies for the group - cough sweets and cold beer.

Our stop for the night was Paracas. We stayed in a beautiful new hotel with a very long pool (too cold for me to swim in though) - it felt still quite empty but felt very luxurious.

For dinner we went out to a strip of restaurants on the beach. I had a great plate of octopus fried in garlic (really delicious) with rice, and we enjoyed a bottle of red wine. Not at all bad - the basic one was a little acid though. One of our group overordered and had a huge bowl of soup with a whole crab, so we had his ceviche. A drummer came and gave us a show, and a guitarist a less successful rendition of Yesterday. Three men were drinking at the next table and as they (and I) got more drunk and confident, I went over and chatted with them. In which we discussed how I look German and how we were great friends. One of them even showed me his tattoo on his upper arm - a swastika - but I didn't manage to work out why. A great evening, but I thought pisco sour was a bit overrated...