Cathy and I are now in Peru. Out first stop is Pisco’s port St Martin. Pisco is famous for a brandy like drink that is good straight or as a substitute for whiskey for example in a pisco sour. Take it from us, this is a nice drink.
Our goal today is to see the famous Nazca Lines. These huge geoglyphs are hundreds of meters long and are best seen by air. They were created by the Nazca, a pre-Inca civilization, by scapping away the sand down to the rock, making animal shapes and long lines that look like runways for alien ships. As we are here in the driest desert in the world, the Lines remain remarkably intact. We fly over the Lines in a small plane and the steep turns made over each pattern by the pilot left us a bit queasy. That said, this is a must visit. Its hard to take good pictures from the plane, so I have included a public image of various animal geoglyphs, and one from our ship of the Paracas Candelabra.
Our original plan was to fly from Pisco to Nazca, and then fly over the Lines, a 4 hour return trip to the ship. Unbeknownst to us, this is changed to 3 + hour drive from the ship to the Lines and a 9 hour round trip. We reboard our ship with 5 minutes before gangway removal. Just a bit stressful. Our driver is a candidate for F1. A big plus is we spend the day in a private car with our driver and our guide who is an archeologist who specializes in Inca mummies. Lots to learn, and I think we have now passed Archeology 101, And just to be clear, we did not travel in the mototaxi (tuk tuk) pictured below, I just found it interesting.
We cruise overnight to Callao, the port city for Lima. This day, Cathy and I take a walking tour of old Lima. We agree that this has a Spanish colonial feel to it. An interesting fact is many of the first Spaniards were Moors and so there is a bit of Arab in the architecture, for example, wooden grates over the balcony windows so the wives and daughters could see out to the street but could not be seen by passing men.
We are very lucky to be in old Lima on Palm Sunday. 65% of Peruvians are practicing Catholics. Hundreds of devotees are in procession around us. They wear purple as devotees of a Peruvian woman Saint who cured the sick.
Next we travel by speed boat to the Balestas Islands to see and swim with the sea lions. This colony is over 6000 strong. Today the sea lions are not venturing en mass to join us swimmers, however one does come over to check me out. An added thrill is to see some Humboldt penguins. The Humboldt Current from Antartica keeps the water cold at 65 degrees, even though we are just south of the Equator. Good in-water prep for our late April opening of our cottage in Canada.
Our weather so far has been sunny and with calm seas, and with some spectacular sunsets.
Stay tuned, our next blog will be from Ecuador.
NOTE:
Cathy and I are cruising for 17 days on Holland America’s Oosterdam with a few days at the start in Santiago, Chile and a week at the end visiting friends in North Palm Beach and Jupiter in Florida.
A few years ago, we took a Celebrity cruise from Buenos Aries to Santiago and this trip continues our circuit of South America.