Last days in Peru

Sunday we walked to Barranco and visited the Peruvian version of the Bridge of Sighs. The hour walk along the Pacific coast was easy and provided many beautiful views of the seashore and surfers. We had lunch in a Chifa (local chinese restaurant) and for supper, we met with Marjolaine and Marisol.

Monday was our last day. We visited local markets to buy a few last minute souvenirs and packed our bags.

It’s over!!!! but we are looking forward to being home and planning our next trip.

Linda & Jean-Claude

Lima

Yesterday we shopped in the morning and in the afternoon we visited the Larco museum.

At night we went to the water park. This park is located in the middle of the city and has numerous fountains. All are lit at night. At 7:15, 8:15 and 9:15 there is a water and laser light show which is fantastic. We are told this fountain show is much better that the one in Las Vegas.

The park provides a beautiful venue for brides and for young girls celebrating their 15th birthday to have photo sessions. The quince años (15 years) coming out event is extremely important for young hispanic girls. Those who can afford to, go all out: big parties, limousines, beautiful dresses etc…

As you can see there are even fountains where people can stand and be surrounded by water.

Linda & Jean-Claude

Paracas

We slept in Paracas and visited the National reserve. This reserve is a vast desert with amazing white, yellow and red sand. It is located by the sea and has stunning costal views.

We ate at a restaurant in the reserve. As you can see the pelicans seem to be pretty tame.

We also visited the Islas Ballestas, or the poor man’s Gallapagos. A set of small islands off Paracas. Although we dud not get off on these islands, the boats get startlingly close to them.

We saw penguins, many differents species of birds, seals etc… Very impressive. We also saw the candelabra, a figure carved in the hillside. Nobody knows how old it is or who created it, but theories abound: from pre Incas to pirates.

The bamboo structure is the bus stop at Paracas.

We will now go back to Lima for the last few days of our trip.

Linda & Jean-Claude

Ica

Today we visited Ica. This city is located in a desert area of Peru. When I say desert, I mean Sahara like sand dunes and oasis.

We took a dune buggy ride up and down the sand dunes around Ica. We even sand surfed. It was a thrilling ride in an incredible surrounding.

We also visited a wine and Pisco production farm and we tasted some pretty powerful alcohol.

Theres nothing like a dune buggy ride, sznd surfing and a Pisco Sour to wake you up after an overnight bus ride. I must say that the bus ride was fairly comfortable as we had “Cama” seats in the VIP section of the Bus. Something like the first class bed seats in airplanes.

Linda & Jean-Claude

Arequipa day 3

We spent our last day in Arequipa shopping and visiting sites we had not yet seen. Arequipa is an interesting Colonial city. When you walk in it’s streets you only see the facades of buildings. Each one of these buildings usually has a beautiful interior courtyard. That is what you have to take the time to discover if you want to see the beauty of this city.

Linda & Jean-Claude

Arequipa day 2

We are back in Arequipa. We had breakfast and Linda has her Spanish lesson. We then visited some more interesting sites: the cathedral, the monestary San-Theresa and we walked around the pedestrian Mall to do a little bit of shopping. I also got my hair cut.

We had supper at Zig Zag. The food was out of this world. Best meal I had in my life so far: Cream of tomato soup, Quinoa and shrimp salad. Linda had a filet of porc and for desert an ice cream, strawberry and Grand Marnier flambé. With wine, this supper set us back $40.

Tomorrow evening we take an overnight bus for Ica. Ica is a small oasis town in the middle of a sand desert, not unlike the Sahara.

Linda & Jean-Claude

Colca Canyon

We spent the last two days visiting the Colca Valley and the Colca Canyon.

We are staying in a nice little B&B. The scenery is totally different from anything we have seen yet. Part of this area is volcanic and has moon like terrain. Other parts of the valley is agricultural. Most of the growing is done on terraces that have been carved on the sides of mountains.

Yesterday we went to see the condors in the canyon. It is impressive to see these giant birds glide up from the canyon on the updrafts that form in the early morning. We have also gone for a three hour hike and had a stop at a thermal spring near the Colca river. It was quite an experience to soak in warm water while watching Llamas and Alpacas graze on the other side of the river.

We had lunch at a nearby hotel, and Linda ate an Alpaca steak. It is a very fine meat that tastes somewhat like beef, but is very lean and low in cholesterol.

Today we leave the Canyon and return to Arequipa for another two days of visit.

Hope you enjoy the pictures of the canyon. I have some spectacular pictures of the condors on my camera.

Linda & Jean-Claude

Arequipa day 1

We arrived in Arequipa last night. We went out for supper at “El Turco”. Very simple fare but the food was excellent.

We walked through Plaza de Armas, there was an important religious celebration (Corpus Christi): mass, parade of a huge gold monstrance, prayers etc. There were thousands of people in the Plaza, celebrating. Unfortunately we did not have a camera with us.

This morning Linda had a 1 1/2 hour private Spanish lesson. At a cost of $6 per hour it was real bargain.

The rest of the day we walked around the city taking in the sites. I have provided pictures of some of the interesting buildings, places etc.

Tomorrow we are leaving for the Colca Canyon. This Canyon is deeper than Grand Cayon in the United States.

Sorry if we are short on details, but we are now going to try to get some needed sleep.

Linda & Jean-Claude

Hike to beautiful falls

After our meditation and breakfast, we headed out for a two hour hike to visit beautiful falls in the mountains. It was a leisurely hike with a little bit of a steep climb at the end. There is a dog here at the B&B that knows the way to the falls and guides visitors to them. We used her services as you can see.

The countryside is beautiful. The houses are built out of adobe bricks ( a mixture of mud and straw). They are interesting constructions. I understand they are comfortable as adobe construction is not only ecological, it stays cool during the hot day and fairly temperate during the night.

We had Tapas for lunch at a nearby restaurant and lounged around the rest of the day.

Tomorrow is a travel day. We have to go back to Cuzco to take a flight to our next destination: Arequipa. There will not be much to talk about tomorrow, but we are told that Arequipa is quite an interesting and beautiful city. We are looking forward to our visit there.

We will be staying at another quaint B&B called “La Casa de Los Penguinos”.

Linda & Jean-Claude

Salinas, Moray & Ollantaytambo

This morning we got up at 6:30 to make the 6:45 meditation. Our B$B offers meditation sessions every day at that time. We then had breakfast and hired a taxi for the day to take us around to the various sites we wanted to visit. It cost us under $50 for the full day services of the private taxi which waited for us at each stop.

We visited three interesting places:

The Salinas are salt harvesting terraces that were constructed by the Incas and have been in continuous use since the 1200′s. There is a small spring of hot salty water that comes out of the mountain. The water is directed to a series of evaporation pans built into the mountain side. When the pan is full the water is left to evaporate. When the evaporation is complete, they harvest the salt flower for human consumption and the lesser quality salt is used for the animals. It is a very impressive site as you can see. There are only two salt harvesting sites located in the mountains, this one and one somewhere in Russia.

The Moray site is a series of concentric agricultural terraces built by the Incas. Each level has a different micro climate and different types of foods were planted at each level. Researchers believe that this may have been used as a crop laboratory by the Incas to find the best growing conditions for each crop and to acclimatized plants that normally grow in the valley to thrive in the higher altitudes.

Our last stop of the day was a return visit to Ollantaytambo. We had visited the archeological site with the group on our way to Machu Picchu but wanted to walk around this living Inca town which still has the original Inca streets and many of their original foundations. Did some shopping and ate some great pizza while there.

Got back to enjoy some sunshine in the garden before it disappeared behind the mountains (which happens very early here). Had another great 3 course meal next to the fireplace (it’s pretty cool here at night).

Received Facetime call from Eric and Caro and got to see Élias crawling, pulling himself up and generally being very busy. Seeing his sweet smile was the perfect ending to a great day.

Linda & Jean-Claude