Sunriser

We have landed in Lima with our friends Hugo and Ellen from Adventure who joined us from Colombia. The taxi ride from the airport to our hostel took us through areas where you should not walk during the day, let alone the night.

The city of 11 million inhabitants lays in the desert protected by high cliffs from the sea. To go to the beach the limeños (people from Lima) have to climb lots of stairs, and cross a highway.

We stayed at the neighborhood of Miraflores, nearby the historic center with its colonial buildings and museums.

A highlight was museum Larco.

Jos liked the golden masks the most…

Perú is very different from Colombia as we noticed right away already in Lima; less music, less dancing, less color…, Peruvians seem more businesslike than Colombians and food makes a very important part of their culture, rather than music. Lima has some of the best (and expensive) restaurants in the world, but even with a low budget one can enjoy fantastic food.

Nevertheless we are not so fond of big cities, so we soon left Lima for the Peruvian desert of Huacachina and Nazca. At the oasis of Huacachina we did sandboarding in the dunes.

The town of Ica has not much to offer other than dust and tuc-tuc traffic jams, so we took a trip to the Pacific Ocean and spend a day in Paracas, a holiday beach place for the Peruvians, where you can take a boat to the Ballestas islands to see sea lions.

Nazca, on the other hand, surprised us with its archeological treasures beyond the famous Nazca lines. Of course, a flight over the mysterious Nazca lines is a “must do” experience, but some sailors got rather “airsick” in the small plane.

What most impressed us was the Cahuachi archeological site. Only a minimal part has been excavated and made ready for visitors, but an extension of hundreds of square kilometers is full of remnants of the Nazca civilization for the tomb robbers to plunder and the occasional tourist to marvel at. It is a strange feeling to hold in your hands pieces of ceramic, cloth and even bones of people who lived 2000 years ago, left in the open for anyone to grab.

Perú is full of contrasts and, after bustling Lima and the desert, we are looking forward to quiet Arequipa and the mountains.