Paracas

Animals, animals, everywhere!

Candelabra

Bundled up in both my jackets, I was ready for the boat. We walked out to a misty dock and after some boat confusion, ended up in one called the Milsy. Significance? Not sure. But we went straight out into the water, and spotted a few dolphin pods straight out. Awesome!

As we were skimming along the shore, the boat slowed to show us my first geogliph, Paracas's Candelabra. It's nearly 600 feet tall and can be seen from 12 miles away at sea, apparently. But not in the fog. Pottery fragments nearby date it to 200 BCE, but they have no idea as to its purpose or message. Something I'll probably be hearing more about in Nazca with the lines. Anyway, it was pretty cool to see it etched in the sand.

Then we broke away from the shore and headed out to the Ballestas Islands, a wildlife refuge or bird poop central as we later learned. There were a bunch of little islands that we went around, seeing the different kinds of birds (including penguins!) as well as getting super close to the sea lions on the rocks jutting up.

Huacachina

Sandboarding!

After our foray into the wild, we got on a bus headed for Ica and the small desert oasis of Huacachina. This was easily the best part of the trip so far. We took a sand buggy out into the real desert and were riding up and down the sand dunes. We had roll bars because believe me, it's happened to our driver at a couple points. But he took us up to the top of one of the dunes and instead of dropping down it, he stops the buggy and pulls out some boards. I've seen a couple actual snowboards for rent that you can use for sand boarding, but these were more just heavy boards with velcro straps for your feet. I was actually the only one who tried real sand boarding--everyone else just slid down the mountain at crazy fast speeds. And it was definitely easier that way. With sand boarding, you're supposed to keep your weight at the back so you keep moving downward, which is the opposite of snowboarding. Tough.

After, we had lunch and wandered around the oasis for a bit. I thought about going swimming in it, but in the end settled for a chocolate milkshake which didn't actually taste a whole lot like chocolate. It was cool, though. Nice and icy.

Then the time came to catch another bus to Nazca. We thought we had already reserved a flight to see the Nazca lines, but apparently not. And with the airport strikes going on in Lima, the flight company said they're not sure how many flights they'll be able to get out. We're supposed to check in with them tomorrow at noon so...fingers crossed!