Friday, June 14, 2019

Day 3 - Ballestas Islands, Paracas National Reserve, Huacachina

'cause it's a long road to wisdom
but it's a short one to being ignored
Flowers In Your Hair - The Lumineers

Now that I am writing about day 3, I realized that day was very eventful. We had a lot of things to do. First was taking a boat tour to see Ballestas Island. There are only 2 departures for this, 8 AM and 10 AM. Since we wanted to join the free Peru Hop tour through Paracas National Reserve, we chose the 8 AM time. We woke up earlier to make time for breakfast and I had a really big breakfast. Ordered pancake and hot chocolate. The pancakes were big. In general, I think food serving in Peru is big. It's value for money but it's just too much and very often I couldn't finish my meal and it's a waste. Me and Gioia often talked how Peru perhaps may have a sugar problem. When you order coke, it always comes in a bottle. I never saw a can one when I was there. Soda in the bottle portion is just too much sugar for one person. We wised up and always ended up sharing a bottle together. Anyway I may have eaten too much during breakfast since I finished all the food and it could be my downfall during the boat trip :(

After breakfast, we went to the meeting point and there were many people waiting too. I read about how sitting at the back of the boat may get you drenched, so I told Gioia we needed to try to sit at the front and we sat at the first row. Nobody was drenched in our boat though so perhaps it just happened randomly. As we left the dock, we actually saw dolphins swimming nearby. The guide alerted us to it and the boat driver tried to steer the boat as slowly as possible. I thought this was a good sign, but unfortunately I struggled later on during the boat ride. Anyways, on the way to see the Ballestas island, we passed the Paracas Candelabra. It was quite something and I'm surprised that it has managed to keep its shape all this time.

After that it's a further ride to Ballestas islands which are this group of little rocky islands where there are wildlife, mostly birds. First the guide alerted us to a group of penguins. Honestly this was the only group of penguins I saw. Maybe there's a season for them and this was not quite the season.

Somehow after this, I got seasick. It was disappointing because I did take motion sickness pill before the ride. I can only attribute it to the fact that breakfast was too heavy. So there I was trying not to vomit which I somehow succeeded, but at the expense of not standing up and taking pictures much. By the way, I have to admit that all the pictures I've shown you and put on Flickr so far have been disappointing. It's not a true representation of actual scenery and I am super disappointed at myself. So here of Ballestas islands, I have only a few pictures and since I didn't really bother to aim and shoot, many of them are bad :( The sad thing is that I also couldn't notice things more attentively to see all the different animals :( If the guide had explained the species of the animals, well I wasn't paying attention at all. There were a lot of birds. Birds all around. Thank God no bird pooped on us. You can't actually step foot on Ballestas islands, but there's a section where the locals can come to and collect the birds' poop. These are used as fertilizers.

Another animal that we saw were seals. There's a little few who were on rocks and there was also another group on the island's beach. Forgive me for not having better pictures.

For pictures from Ballestas islands, you can go here. I truly was trying my best to not vomit and on the way back I actually got sleepy - a known side effect of the motion sickness drug I took. So then I tried my best to not fall asleep. By the time we arrived back at the pier, I was okay. I am rather disappointed that I didn't have a more fruitful visit to these islands :( Anyways after that, we checked out from our rooms and had the hostel kept our luggages. By the way, you can make fun of us, like I can hear my mom telling me to pack less. Mom is a proponent of travelling light and she thinks one should always aim to have carry-on luggage only. Me and Gioia were not that. We had big luggages. I would argue we're Asians and Asians are difficult and we need our stuff but many Asians would disagree with my representation of us :D Anyways, so the hostel only have stairs and at the 3rd floor, we struggled with getting our luggages up and down and I'm sure it was stupidly comical. I would agree if you label us as dumb tourists :D We only have ourselves to blame but I really needed my stuff. I had bruises on my knees due to this luggage thing.

Anyways after that, we joined the free Peru Hop tour to Paracas National Reserve. Another benefit of joining Peru Hop is that they have free things like this. I don't know if there's a ticket price to enter the National Reserve, but we didn't pay anything. Paracas National Reserve is vast and I think it's really beautiful. The landscape was nothing like I've seen before and again sorry, my pictures don't do this justice. It's like there are hills of desert and I'm sure depending on the sun and time of day you'll see different colours. The colours that day were like yellow, orange, a bit of pink. I'm not describing this well, it's just beautiful, really beautiful with the blue sky. It's so vast, I don't think you can walk in here. I saw some people cycling but it's a hot desert so I don't know how far I could have gone if I had done this. Then there's some people on ATV and I thought that would be so fun. I kinda regretted not finding out about that and doing that. Inside the National Reserve, we stopped at some viewing points. The first one was to see the Cathedral. I know it's not clear from this picture, but there are tiny shapes dotting the rock and those are birds.

I really enjoyed this visit to the National Reserve. Below you can see pictures of the desert landscape and if I recall correctly, the red beach. For more pictures from Paracas and the National Reserve, you can go here. In the National Reserve, we also saw vultures! It was like, oh my God! You can see it in that Flickr album.

After that, we went back to town and before long we set off for Huacachina. It's another small town. This town is enclosing a small lake or one (me) may call this lake a pond, and all around it's the desert. We arrived later than expected and so we didn't have time to explore the town. As usual I googled a lot when preparing for a trip and it's always my belief that the town is small. It is and the hostel that I booked is not far from drop off point, but when you're dragging your luggages on a dirt road then you are looking like dumb tourists :D By the way, I had problems with my luggage's wheels during this trip. I had my worry they wouldn't survive, but by God's grace we made it back to Singapore. Now I'm having problem finding a place to get this fixed. Anyways, back to the town, actually in Paracas and Huacachina, there were quite a number of roads which are dirt roads, so be prepared if you want to drag your luggages like us :D

In Huacachina, since we're staying just for one night, I booked 2 private rooms in a hostel. I chose Banana's Adventure Hostel because it provides free activities with your room booking. Rooms were also on the 3rd floor, so again I had to haul my luggage. Gioia had one of the staff helped her. Room was better than the Paracas' one, but it's still so so. It was the biggest room I had in this trip though, so much space. For the free activity we chose the sand dune buggy and sandboarding. Both things I really was not sure about. Hence the reason I chose this hostel. At least I didn't have to pay extra to do these. The room was for double occupancy, but since we were single we actually had another free activity to select from that day, like the barbecue dinner. That was unexpected. The thing was we were already quite tired and tired me always do not want to socialize so we didn't sign up. Since we arrived late in Huacachina, we actually didn't have much time before the sand dune buggy. We had a late lunch at another hostel in front of our hostel. I chose chicken noodle soup. Portion was big and I couldn't finish. It was quite healthy and bland. Good if you're not feeling so good. The seasickness that morning shook me a bit. Then it was time for the sand dune buggy.

I was really not sure about this because I know it's gonna be like a roller-coaster ride and I don't like that. Gioia likes this kinda thing though. Because I don't, I told her let me sit in the middle. We waited some time for the people to get organized and then it was a walk out back to where the buggies were. They're parked quite up in a mound of sand so we had to walk up and I had to tell you it's not easy to walk up on sands. I figured out that it's easier to step inside the hole left by people in front of you. It's still quite a workout that walk :D The buggy can fit if I'm not mistaken 11 people including the driver. The ride up and down the sand dune was actually not bad. It wasn't as scary or as roller-coastery as I expected. I heard there had been accidents so the driver was perhaps taking it easy and I was appreciative of that. It didn't stop all the other kids to scream though whenever we're going down a mound. The thing about me is, I'm so OCD focused on trying to control things that I actually cannot control that I'm always quiet in concentration during rides like this. My excuse is I'm trying my best to stay alive :D So the kids especially the girls behind me screaming, I really didn't enjoy that. A thought came for the first time ever that how I wish I couldn't understand English so that I couldn't understand their commentaries. Anyways, after some time, we stopped. It's a mystery how the driver knew where to go when there's no landmark. This was my first desert and looking at all the sands and mound, it's really something different, it's like, wow! By the way, I only took my ixus for this because I heard the sand can be bad for your camera, so photos are really not that optimal.

The driver then said, alright time to sandboard, go up there. Everybody took a board and walked up and when we reached the top it was like, oh shit, what the fuck, I don't know if I want to do this. I've read that the first hill should be like the easiest and not so high, but it was high. Everyone was thinking the same because it's hesitation on everyone, boys and girls. Gioia wasn't feeling it too and she was like we could always go down and get back to the buggy with the driver. It was scary, seriously I was scared, but you know me, being defeated by fear is just not in me. So though I was like, fuck!!!, damn it, I really thought / think we needed to do this. So I told Gioia, let's just do one okay. Candle wax was being passed around and we rubbed it on our boards. I'm not sure what it did, but it was like something we or at least I did religiously. Everyone had their hesitation, but one by one all went down. Gioia went down before me and then it was me. The board is like an old piece of wood board, it must be from some old no longer usable proper sandboarding board. It had some velcro on it. You lied on your belly and hold the velcro thing for dear life. There's a staff helping to set us into the board. He told me to place myself back a bit and tuck my arms in which I forgot to do for the rest of the times I went down and then he pushed us. For all the fear I had up there, going down was actually totally okay. I can't explain it well, but the whole thing felt like it's logical, like one step at a time you're going down. Yes, it felt fast, but it was really okay, really really okay like there's nothing to be afraid off. The sand dunes are not clean though, there's plastic, and I spotted a plastic bottle protruding and I was afraid that I was going to bump into it and bad things would happen, but no such thing. Truly it's a strange thing sliding down a sand dune. You're freaking out when you're on top, but as you go down it's totally fine and then this fear happened again with the next dune.

Yes, there was a next dune. When we landed from the first dune, the driver from our buggy was there. At some point, he drove away from our first place to this place to wait for us to land. Here he's the one setting and pushing us off. At this point we could just say, yeah we tried once and that was okay and it's enough. However somehow me and Gioia went on to slide down this next dune. We're still scared, but we're doing it. Then when we landed from this second dune, somehow the people who went down first knew where to go next and where to slide from. Here there was no staff, we had to do this on our own. This also meant we really had to do this. There's no buggy waiting in which we could hitch a ride. Oh gosh! You know, there were guys in our group and they just went down first. Now that I think about it, these guys are so not gentleman like, they're not waiting to see if all us girls are okay. One of the young girl was really nice, she was willing to push us down if we needed to. I decided to slide / push myself down, which was not as easy as I thought it would be. I talked badly about the guys, but I have to say I was like bad myself because I didn't want to be the last one up there. So I really applauded the last girl who was there. Really there's something to be admired or jealous about about young people. There's a fearlessness that can sometime be seen as carelessness and vice versa :D After that, with no staff or guide around, again somehow the people at the front knew where to walk for our last dune. Our buggy driver shouted from the bottom to get us moving a bit to the right. I freaked out at every dune and this last one seemed like a long way to go. People were like taking a minute. Truly it's strange thing, you slid down one dune and you're fine and yet when you're on another dune, you still freaked out. The sun was setting and at this point I was like I just wanted to get this done and over with. So I went before Gioia. I don't know how, perhaps this time I kinda lifted my body a bit that I didn't really make it all the way to the landing area so I had to walk down a bit. Then I just waited for people to come down. Really, the last girl who was there by herself, she's super cool. I liken this sliding down a sand dune to me when I travel alone. No matter how many times I've done it, I still freak out beforehand, but once I get on the taxi to the airport, the fear would disappear. I don't know if you can remove the fear, but what matters is to never be defeated by it. It feels like there's a life lesson in this :) About mind over matter. The desert was really something. I kinda wished I had more time to just absorb where I was. There was kinda no time for that because we're too focused on sliding down.

Once everyone was down, it's the ride back. It was getting dark. Yes there's the up and down and girls at the back were screaming, but overall it was okay. I wasn't too freaked out. Once back, me and Gioia sat awhile at the bench by the lake and tried to remove sands from our shoes. Many people were doing the same. The sands got in every thing. Later in my room, I spent a good amount of time trying to get it out of my clothing. We were tired, but darn we still had to meet our Peru Hop guide to arrange for the shuttle to Nazca the next morning. I don't know why he couldn't just write our names down and take our money when we approached him in the bus. He needed to be met at 06:45 pm in another hostel. We went there, he wasn't in - arrrgghhh!!! Saw a girl with Peru Hop t-shirt and we just approached her. Luckily this girl was very effective. She had a clipboard. We wrote our names, paid her, and it was done and we could go back. We were too tired for dinner that day so I had some biscuits in my room. So that was day 3, very eventful. For pictures from Huacachina you can go here. Pictures include the view from around the lake that I took the next morning. The desert pictures are from ixus and I'm gonna be honest - I applied a lot of Photoshop filters. I do enhance colours for pictures I put in Flickr, but I don't use filters from one of those plugins. However for this Huacachina album, I used a lot of filters for many of the pictures. I'm gonna admit that these filters are very addictive.

:) eKa @ 10:32:00 PM •