Sunday, May 13, 2001

Here is a quick post to recap what I had written a few nights back. You see I had written a very long post detailing my experiences in Pisco and Nasca and something happened and poof! it disappered. So I threw a fit and went back to the hostal.

Now that I have gotten over the pain I will attempt to relay some of what in that post. I am now in Puno, Peru, home of lake Titicaca (snicker, snicker), the highest navigable lake in the world. So far so good with the altitude, I was actually higher than this day before yesterday. I guess the altitude pills are working. One thing though, I am feeling a little light-headed and short of breath when i walk around, up hills or up stairs.

So backing up to the lost but not forgotten post...
As I mentioned in the itenerary, we started our trip in Pisco where we were able to head out to the islas ballestas. We stayed at a hostal named something like La Posada Hispana which was owned by a man from Spain. It was one of the best hostals I have ever seen. The place looked like a little tiki hut on the inside nd the room was 2 stories so we had an upstairs area with two more beds. I felt like I was in Tahiti or something and the room only cost about $20 a night. The guys who owned the place, Juan, was extremely nice and our guide for the trip, Jesus, was equally as cool

We woke up early in the morning and headed for the islands were we saw peruvian boobies, humboldt penguins, sea lions and their babies, and little red shrimp swimming around int he water. It was very cool. It was fairly interesting because they packed about 20 of us into a little speed boat on he ocean which could not have been classified as still. The exhaust from the boat was blowing back on us and the waves were tossing us around. Another tidbit to add is that they use te islands to colect and package guano o sell to the rest of Peru, maybe other countries as well. It is supposed to be an incredible fertilizer. In fact, they purposely shaped the rocks on the islands, which are just gigantic rocks, so that the guano is caught before it hits the water...don´t want to waste any of that grade A guano. So toss that in with the waves, the exhaust, the close quarters...like I said, it was interesting. The islands were very beautiful and since I am such an incredible animal freak, I loved the trip for the simple reason that I saw an animal at every turn. The baby sea lions were adorable and the penguins, always travelling in pairs were cute too.

Once we made it back to the mainland there was time to walk the main street, hit the bathrooms and head back on the mini-bus. The little town we were in, I think it was San Juan, had a few restaurants from what I could see and some dogs. I asked some little boy in spanish if his dog was friendly and he said no. Hmmmm.... Fine then. the only other thing I remember about the little area was that it was a fishing toen and all the men there woke up early to fish for a living. I saw a few working hard when we were headed out to the islands

Once back in Pisco we had a little time to rest. I was feeling a little naucious so it was good for em to lay down. we had also woken up so early. Soon we were on our 4 hour bus to Nasca. This is when the fun really began. Up until this point everything was incredibly smooth, relaxing, exciting- some of the people had been rude but you have to expect that.

Boom!!! In comes Nasca.

Oh boy, I know Al wrote about this as well. Let me start by saying that Nasca makes no sense, the people are rude and unhelpful, and tourists are the freshest red meat they have ever seen--worse than anywhere I have ever been. I seldom feel scared when I am travelling, but I honestly thought that Nasca had the high potential of being my final resting place, or at least Al´s or the backapacks

Let me frame this for you...

You have two pasty americans on a ratty old economy ticket bus. On the bus these americans meet a nice lady and gentleman (who I will talk about later) who happen to speak some english. Once the bus arrives in Nasca, everyone is happy to finally be at their destination. These smart little americans have it all figured out because they planned their trip so that someone who be at the bus station to pick them up

Woops! No one is there, but I´ll tell you who is there, about 50,000 blood-sucking nascan travel agents or hostal placement people (I have no idea what their official title is, I don´t think they have one because I am pretty sure they could get arrested for what they were doing). The little american boy gets off the bus and heads for the side where the bags are stored, relatively unscathed. It is when the little american girl, thin from picky eating, heads down the stairs that the real fun and law-breaking begins. It´s like they could smell her coming from Pisco. Instantly she is surrounded by easily 20 or 30 people, grabbing her, pulling her, throwing their hands up their cards up, their credentials up, ¨I work for the estrella del sur,¨ ¨No he is lying, I work for the estrella del sur!¨ they were shouting. she couldn´t even make it to the side of the bus to get her bags. The boy in his mangled spanish begged the man to open up the compartment again as the girl struggled to make her way to translate for the boy. Finally they had their bags and she was instantly surrounded again. Shouting, pulling, screaming, yelling, tuggng, begging--the boy was pushing people left and right to break her free. Finally the friendlu woman on the bus who had spoken a little english jumped in and scatterd most of the leeches away and she took the frazzled americans to their hostal. Of course this was not without a few of these ¨nascholes¨ (a new name Al and I made up) scurrying after them saying in their mangled english "Ok, you want to walk, that´s fine, we´ll walk."

Are they insane?

Turns out these people get a mini-commision for bringing people to hostals. Man you think it would ahve been 5 minutes before the market closed on the wall street trading floor with the arms, papers, screaming, tugging and pushing. Needless to say, it marked the beginning of what is sure to be teh worst part of our trip

Remember that there was someone that was supposed to be waiting for us. I asked about that and their excuse was that they were old the bus was coming later and that we were early. Have they ever heard of calling and checking? One thing for sure that Al and I have decided is that if you expect something to happen in Peru like a travel agent checking your time of arrival to make sure someone is there to pick you up, you are just as dumb as the travel agent. Expect nothing and you will receive everything. They couldn´t understand what we meant by calling the bus station and checking the time...that´s when you know you are in for quite a ride

The rest of the trip in Nasca followed suit, with mistakes. The travel lady that was supposed to pick us up or have someone pick us up was a complete air-head. Her name was Meri. Spare yourself the grief if you run across a Meri in Nasca, and you very well could (I´ll tell you why in a minute).

First of all, the people who had rescued us had lectured the hotel in spanish and a policeman who was across the street for not handling the situation better. The lady actually told me that this hostal sends those people out to get business. That tells you right there what a seedy joint we were staying in. As I said above, there were two people that we met on he bus and that came in handy as soon as we de-boarded. The lady was actually a researcher from Austria who was there studying the nasca lines and had been so for about 7 years I think. she had been summoned there by Maria reiche, the foremost researcher of the Nasca lines. Al has some links to Maria and the lines. She had lots of interesting things to tell us about the lines as we drove over them in the bus, which frustrated her. She said Peru was not interested in preserving these lines despite the fact that she believes they point to a source of underground water that the ancient Nasca people had known about and that Peru didn´t understand how important this ancient astronomical textbook laid here by the early nascans was to their people. You see it only rains 3 months of the year in Nasca-January, February and March. After that they have to make sure the water supply in their aquaducts is not too low. You would think this is reason enough to devote more money to the program of studying the lines. But from her perspective, she says they don´t feel it is important and that there is too much corruption ion the government to accomplish this. She will be voting for Toledo in one month and she thinks he will be willing to turn things around

I could go on forever about what I learned regarding the lines as Al and I hung out with her a couple of times and attended her lecture regarding the lines. I think it´s best to follow one of Al´s links. One thing I thought was interesting about what she said was that there were people in the area trying to scare her to leave. Apparently, Maria reiche has some peruvian adopted-daughter who likes to falsify documents and pretend her mother is still alive to get money. These are just not the things you run into on a daily basis in the U.S. Viva los Estados Unidos!

Turns out a few nights back someone was throwing rocks on top of her house to frek her out. You can´t miss miss her house. It´s painted yellow with black nasca lines all over it. they also destroyed her juarango tree (spelling?) which she dearly loves as it it a source of several things--food, water? You have to feel bad for the lady. She is working her butt off to preserve these people´s history and trying to find another source of water for them and they are torturing her. Strange..

Anyways, the other person we met was some travel agent guy who seemed pretty nice. There isn´t a whole lot to say about him because he never came to give us the tour he talked about

So...on to the room in nasca and the following day. The room was horrible. the toilet was broken so we had to continuously fill it with water and jiggle its insides to get it to flush. It was loud and it sounded like bombs were going off the whole night. When we woke up it wasn´t any better. The day was a mess from first light on. The little travel agent lady told us our Nasca flight would be delayed because of weather, which is fine--I hate to fly in good weather, much less bad weather. She offered me some over priced tours, we talked her down and chose the one to the aquaducts, geoglifico and the pedrones. We ate and headed out for this little tour in some guys little car. The first thing we saw was the aquaducts which was narrated in spanish by a guy with a rifle on his back. I really enjoyed seeing them and the austrian lady we had met on the bus said that seeing the aquaducts would help us to better understand the nasca lines. The aquaducts had been there for about 600 to 1200 years and were placed there by the early Nasca people. Now they are currently building a high-priced hotel right next to the aquaducts. Not good!

Next we headed for the geoglifico which was like a nasca line in the ground shaped like a sewing loom. It was pretty cool but would have been easier to see from the air. Last was the pedrones which was an old incan temple. It is still in excavation but you could make out some of the rooms and imagine what it would have been like to live there

We were supposed to head back at this point and head for the Nasca lines airport (I think it is aerocondor). But of cours

Sunday, May 13, 2001

Our bus from Pisco to Nasca was two hours late...but you know, you just start to expect those things. That's just the way it is here, kind of the system everyone goes by. In the morning we took a boat to the Ballestas Islands to view the wildlife sanctuary on the Paracas Reserve. On the way we pass a couple other islands and one of which has the candelabra, which has no association to the Nasca Lines we viewed today. On Paracas island there is an abundance of sea lions and birds. Among the species of birds I saw were Humboldt Penguins! Imagine, my first time seeing penguins in the wild.

The animals are interesting, but the rock formations were just as interesting (if not more). The island has quite a few natural arches and caves all over. Many times our boat would pass underneath one of the stoney arches, or we would pass a cave and you would hear the echoes of the sea lions inside. While the rocks were mostly a golden color, the water was a very clear green. Lots of little crabs and shrimp were floating around, while dolpins feasted just below the surface. It was a great perspective, to be out there and see all of this happening...and in the far off distance see the peruvian coast (and the mountain tops even further back.

Soon enough though, we were back to land and making our way back to Pisco. Inadvertently, I drop