This entry covers 2 to 3 November
Well the toer through Peru has finally begun. A 5 hour bus ride to Pisco gave us all enough time to become well acquainted and the team is as follows:
Carolina: the Peruvian tour guide, John: a supèr friendly Englishman, Jim & Tracey: young couple from UK and Tazmania respectively, Blair & Morene, Linda and Silvia: English speaking Canadians, Danielle, Susanne & Alain: French speaking Canadians, Barbara: a mouse of a lady from New Zealand (recently retired), Chrstina: young German lass and good old Peter from Sweden.
The bus ride confirmed the deserted state of affairs in Peru....dry like a bone with shale cliff`s diving into the ocean below. The random oasis along the way drew comparisons with what I would imagine Egypt to look like. We arrived at Posaso Hispana Hotel in Lima at dusk and had a quick stroll through the quaint little town which was ravaged by an earthquake just last year. I´m guessing the majority of the local's daylight hours are spent rebuilding the town as many buildings are still half complete with gaping holes and missing walls. Sadly, around 300 people were killed in the earthquake when the main town cathedral collapsed during a Sunday prayer session. Weaving between these tiny 3 wheeler taxis, we made our way back to the hotel to be entertained at dinner by a father and son combo playing the guitar, drum and cross between harmonica's and flutes...multitasking was the clearly the winner of the day and I think I showed these 2 up in gorging myself with seabass, pisco sours and good company.
The morning of the 3rd was spent taking an organised Pisco Sours tour thru one of the local distillaries. The process is still pretty primitive with the crushing stage being performed by 10 barefeet for 8 hours a day! The 2 ton Huaranco press sorts out the men from the women afterwhich the liquid is heated in an oven. The process is completed by distillation where 3 concentrations of sours is produced...60 to 80% (discarded), 20 to 60% and 0 to 20% alcohol concentrations are seperated and bottled. We got to sample the sweet (8%), semi sweet (22%) and pisco (42%). It was flippen hot so everyone held fire on getting stuck in especially seeing as we still had an afternoon of sandboarding in the desert to come...the dune buggies looked fit for Mars with engines the size of tractors and steel frames to givce some sort of idea what we were in for. The driving skills of the guides was incredible attacking these 50 foot wave like dunes at high speed only to drop over the other side held back only by our seatbelts. Before long we had made our way into the depths of nothingness...majestic dunes all around and a mountain range on the horizon. While I was quite relieved when the 1st duneboarding demonstration meant we only had to head down these small sand mountains on our bellies, being tipped over the edge by the guide with your chin a mere inches from eternal beardlessness...the ride was truely exhilirating. 3 more rides later with sand in every orifice we treated ourselves to a well deserved swim in the hotel pool (in the middle of the desert)!
Nasca was our next destination (thankfully not far from Pisco). On entry, we stopped briefly to climb the viewing tower just 10m off the Panamerican Highway to check out the hand and tree geoglyphs of the world reknowned Nasca Lines. We checked into our hotel and got stuck into some dinner and idle banter with the group. Carolina organised an impressive cake to celebrate John's bday which got him so excited he proceeded to start downing everything within reach at the table. That spurred Peter on who's quircky nature and incomprehensible speech under the influence an absolute pleasure to watch! Hermy was given a new name/s: Capitan Pisco / Vaso...no one really knows which name was settled upon. After an actions packed day, the bed was welcomed with open arms by all.
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