Here I am inland in Peru. It is 6.00am my time.
Yesterday was a very long day. Started of at 8.00am with a quick trip to the Nazca airport to book a flight over the Nazca lines. It was a great 35 minutes.
The lines are drawn in the sandy rock and are believed to be 1000.s year old. The lines run for kms but it is the figures that can be seen that are the real draw card. I got into snappy mode on my camera and clicked 400 photos. Need to sort them out later.
After that excitement my guide Carolina showed me around the town of Nazca. I have a peruian sim card in my phone but i am not sure if the connection is activated yet. Have a local lunch of potato with nice sauce, followed by rice and quinoa, and a purple corn drink. They boil the corn cobs with some herbs then add some sugar – and when it cools it is a lovely purple drink. That cost me 10 sol (about nzd3.50) .Full dinner of raw fish cost me about nzd 7.00.
On to the double decker bus for the ride from Nazca to Arequipa at 2.30pm. We went non stop for 11 hours!!!!
The first 4 hours i could see the desert – at first because we were by the sea was all sand – and i mean sand for as far as the eye could see and then some more – miles and miles – or should i see hours and hours of sand. And this bus was not wasting time on the long flat straight Pan American South Highway. Speed limit is 90 kph and he pasted every truck in sight – thousands of them.
Now after the sand came the bare rock and very large hills. (Because we are still a long distance from the Andes – i dont think we can call them mountains) again hours and hours of them.
Then i got dark. And they still when on for hours and hours. All i could was the trucks we pasted and the bus lights on the rocks beside me.
The bus serviced us two meals. First one was noodles and chicken with tomato sauce, potato with sauce and piece of chocolate cake. Followed up with local cola. No choices and no English. Second meal was even worse -bread roll with a small piece of ham and a nice pudding and cola. Not great choices for me.
Now how do you full in ten hours on a bus -well you show two movies – (in spanish) and play bingo -(in spanish).
It was a real experience. Now getting your bag off the bus – this was another new experience. Thet called out the number of your luggage ticket and waited till that person gave in their part of the ticket butt before they called out the next number AND this was all at 12.30 in the morning. Needless to say, i had my ticket in hand as soon as i saw my bag. How do you say 34629 in spanish? I didnot find out. My pick up had me back to my hotel and i was in bed not long after 1.30am.
Then the hotel gave me a wake up call at 5.30am -which one you organised that #÷#$=//%_=
I was wake so here i am writing about it. Today i am off into the mountains – will be staying in Chivay at 3651 m tonight.
Chau