Paracas, Peru – July 16th – 17th, 2017

A Tale of 2 Perspectives:

Andy

On the way to Paracas we drove past the Pachacamac archeological site and stopped along the road so the guide, Alonso, could talk briefly about the 2000 year old ruins (and how we didn’t have the time to go in). If you’re in Lima, sounds like you should go to Pachacamac! The bus continued with another brief stop for some delicious fresh bread from wood-fired ovens. Dani wasn’t feeling well and had a couple bites of the bread, but I scarfed down the rest. Between bites of palate satisfaction, I felt bad for Dani but was pretty sure she’d come around quickly…

Our last interesting stop was at Casa Hacienda San Jose to see a plantation house with a lengthy network of tunnels beneath the property. During Spanish rule, plantations paid taxes based on the number of slaves they had working. Naturally, in order to minimize taxes, the plantation owners would send most of their slaves underground when the tax auditor came around looking. Egregious human rights infringements aside, OK clever Mr. Plantation Owner. However, 300 years ago, tax auditors didn’t just make a trip out to plantations for a few hours to check-in. Nope, first it took them a week to get there, and then they’d stay on the property for several weeks. So, hundreds of slaves were forced to live in tunnels/caves for weeks on end, in cramped, oxygen-starved, filthy, and disease-ridden conditions. The tunnel’s size, smell, crowdedness, and general heaviness was so oppressive (not to mention Dani feeling so terribly), that Dani had to bail on the tour early and get some fresh air – this was alarming since Dani is definitely not one to quit on something.

Fresh bread and Casa Hacienda slave tunnels.

With our nostrils enjoying the clean air and our eyes re-adjusted to the bright sunlight, we finally arrived to Paracas. Badly in need of rest, Dani holed up in our hostel room while Matt and I grabbed lunch with some fellow Peru Hoppers and then took an ATV tour that I was super excited about. Paracas is very near to the Paracas National Reserve: a large protected area of wildlife full desert and coastline. I had read about ATV tours through the reserve and it sounded amazing. So Matt and I boarded our ATVs and our guide took us out…to a sandy ATV track between the town and the main road. The guide had us driving around the track in a several loops and then disappeared for a while leaving us to race each other a bit and see how fast we could go. It was a lot of fun, but with the clock ticking, I quickly realized it wasn’t going to be the ATV tour I had hoped it would be. We made the most of it though and enjoyed trying to catch some air and keep from falling off. The guide returned eventually and brought us to a spot on the beach where we could see some flamingoes in the far distance, and then he brought us back to town. “Tour” over. Oh well.

Fun in Paracas! Since backyards are a luxury very few have (if any), many Peruvians simply put their dogs on the roof during the day. 

The next morning, Dani was feeling even worse and we all decided it would be best for her to skip the Isla Bellestas boat tour – which would definitely not help her feel better. I felt terrible about leaving Dani behind in such misery, but we had already paid for the tour and there wasn’t much I could do to make her feel better. So Matt and I boarded the boat tour and immediately came upon dolphins in the bay. Then seals. And then a few sea lions. More dolphins! Fishing boats covered in pelicans! Dani’s missing this! We made it out to the tiny Islas Bellestas which are a natural bird sanctuary and are home to millions and millions of birds. The birds produce poop (AKA guano) and every seven years, a company comes out and scrapes all the guano off to sell it at $1000 per ton (BIG $$$ in Peru). We weren’t allowed off the boats, but you could still smell the islands and they were absolutely carpeted with birds. I’ve never seen so many! We even saw a penguin and a bunch more seals and sea lions. On our way back to Paracas, we saw more dolphins and sea lions fishing. We also saw the Candelabra, which is a 600 ft tall geoglyph carved into the side of the coast-line. The age and purpose are disputed, but it is thought to be about 2000 years old and can be seen from 12 miles out at sea. It was impressive, to say the least.

Isla Bellestas. The black on the hill of the top-left photo is not a different soil color, but birds! The Candelabra is shown in the bottom-middle photo.

Wildlife at Isla Bellestras.

Back in Paracas, Dani was doing even worse, so we tracked down a local clinic with the help of the hostel owner while Matt headed off for a bus tour of the National Reserve. Diagnosed with a stomach infection, Dani was instructed to take the Cipro we had. We slowly walked back to the hostel and I packed up our stuff while Dani continued to try and rest and nibble on some bread before we hopped back on the bus to our next stop.

Paracas National Reserve. Photo cred - Matt since we were at the Dr.

Dani

I felt sick the entire way to Paracas. We stopped several times, which I mostly used as an opportunity to sit on the bus and continue to feel nauseated. My own motion seemed to make matters worse, so staying as physically still as possible was the main objective. I did get out at the Casa Hacienda San Jose to see the slave tunnels, but once inside the tunnels the herd of people squeezed into a small, dank and dusty cavern made me feel both claustrophobic and anxious that I was going to vomit on the crowd…. I ended up turning around and trying my luck at sitting perfectly still.

Once in Paracas, Andy and Matt went out to enjoy themselves while I stayed put in the concrete jail-like room and slept. With a mild-grade fever, we were not sure that taking the antibiotics we had with us was the right course of action. With no doctor in town (or so we thought), I decided to tough it out and continually hoped that if I slept long enough I would wake up feeling a bit better. Unfortunately, it worked the other way around, with the symptom severity increasing. When bloody #2 came out, we started to be more desperate and asked the hotel owner for help. She walked us to an open clinic, where we met with a doctor for the bargain price of 13 soles ($4) while Matt took the Peru Hop bus to the National Reserve. The doctor said I had a stomach infection and to take the Cipro we had with us. In hindsight, taking the meds 2-days earlier may have enabled me to see the bird and animal-life splendor of Isla Bellestas. Instead, I missed Paracas completely and in order to stay on schedule I had to suffer through another bus ride while trying not to puke or defecate all over our new friends. Oh the joys of travel…