Pisco, Nasa and on to Arequipa

I awoke Saturday morning to the bustle of workers at Casa de Peschiera. The wedding reception will be held at the house on the farm, and workers are busy preparing the house for its 300(!) wedding guests. Luis and I ran some errands in Chincha, and had brunch at an amazing restaurant (next to a gas station) in Chincha called El Batan. Luis´s mother used to tell people regularly that the best way to ensure a clean kitchen was to allow the customers to see it. Among those she told was the man who would go on to open El Batan, and its immaculate kitchen is on display for any who dine there. Order the Chicharron if you ever make it there.

After a night in Chincha, Luis, Andrea and I ran some errands in and around Chincha. Their wedding ceremony will be held in a church the next town over, and we visited this town in the heart of Peru´s Afro-Peruvian community to drop off some paperwork for their wedding. The church is a beautiful colonial building right on the town´s Plaza de Armas, and we even had the pleasure of watching a danceoff between four young Peruvians (for the bargain price of a few soles).

From there we went to Pisco, where I booked a trip to the Islas Ballestas and Paracas National Reserve and got a hotel room. Luis, Andrea and I dined at a Cevicheria in Pisco, and then I was finally on my own in Peru. I ended up at a disco with the Peruvian guys who work in the tour office, which was pretty fun but made getting up for the 730 tour a little rough.

The Islas Ballestas (Crossbow Islands) are commonly referred to as "the Poor Man´s Galapagos," and are a breathtaking set of rocks inhabited by seals, seabirds and penguins. En route, there is an island with an ancient candelabra carved in a sandy hill, thought to be an ancient homage to the cactus that grown in the coastal desert of Peru. One of the more interesting parts of the tour was meeting a German girl on the tour who is a real life archaeologist and spent the past half year in Bolivia excavating a site in the jungle lowland. The tour continued to the Paracas reserve, and I caught an early evening bus to Nazca.

This morning I took a gut wrenching flight in a single engine Cesna over the Nazca lines. A series of images drawn across the desert floor over a thousand years ago, they are a mysterious and awe-inspiring sight. The tour continued to the Chauchilla Cemetary, a collection of underground tombs containing remnants of Nazca people, wrapped in thousand year old clothes, patiently sitting up in a fetal position, maize and sweet potatoes by their side.

I´ve got several hours to kill in (very hot) Nazca, then I´m off to Arequipa on an overnight bus. I´m hoping to do some hiking in canyons and check out the mountains.

Preview: A life saving call and ambulance ride on the Panamerican Highway. Coming in a later post.

Note: I think I left my camera cord in Lima, so I don´t imagine I´ll have any photos for a week or so. Go to Google Images and check out the Nazca (Nasca) Lines though, very cool. And no, space aliens did not build them!