Day 2—Friday, July 1st—Islas Ballestas/Reserva Nacional de Paracas→Ica/Huacachina

sea lions or lobos marinos
Originally uploaded by rswells.

A 6.30am wakeup call started this cold, long, beautiful day. The day before, we signed up for a tour that would take us by boat to las Islas Ballestas and then by bus to la Reserva Nacional de Paracas. After being picked up at El Cesar around 7.30, we were bused down to our point of embarkation on the coast. We groggily boarded the small boat that took us out to the big one, named Pedro Pablo, that would cruise us around the islands. Besides the cold, biting sea breezes, gray sky, and low visibility, things didn’t look so promising when the driver of the small boat spilled gasoline on me.* Nevertheless, once we finally got our first glimpse of land again from the port side of the Pedro Pablo and the sugary coffee came around, I was awed for the rest of the ride. We came across billions of birds, a few penguins, scores of sea lions, and a shitload of guano. We never got off the boat. I took lots of photos. Our first guide, Yuri, tried his best to explain everything to the international group in both English and Spanish, but wasn’t always on point. One thing he said that did stick with me, though, was how a layer of guano measuring 6-7 meters in height once covered the islands—before someone realized the substance’s fertile possibilities.

After we got back to the buoy and onto hard land, our next guide bused with us to la Reserva Nacional de Paracas: a wildlife reserve without much wildlife, but plenty of desert and wondrous views of the Pacific. I guess I had really never been to the desert before; I felt like I had stumbled across another planet (these feelings initially crept up on me in the morning around the islands and surged back from time to time during the rest of the trip). The tour ended at this tiny, uncapitalized fishing village on the shores of a small bay that looked something like this. It looked like what I imagine the White Cliffs of Dover would look like, if they were exoticized and weren’t white. It was the kind of spot that would entice real estaters like the Donald to give up an organ—or, in Donald’s case, shave his head—just to build a modest hotel. Unfortunately, my camera ran out of batteries at this point in the day, but maybe it’s better that way—I almost feel like the less people see the spot, the less the likelihood for development. Tali and I ate a 4 o’clock seafood lunch on the rocks near the bay, near men fishing for their own meals. Our guide came over to Tali and me and pointed out one fisherman in particular, saying, “Hey look, Ernest Hemingway, Ernest Hemingway! The old man and the sea!” The old man turned around and gave a polite wave. He turned around again once he caught a respectable fish to display to us. Our guide went on to inform us that Hemingway himself had once fished off the Peruvian coast…and that Peruvian blood apparently flowed through Nat King Cole’s veins as well.

We got back to Pisco around 5.00, packed our things, booked it out of El Cesar promising to never return again, and rushed to catch the next bus to Ica. The islands and the wildlife reserve had been a real treat, for sure, but the town of Pisco brought on this foul taste to our mouths. Our bus’s windshield had a huge crack in it. We stopped at one point so that the busdriver could pass along some dinner to the highway patrol. My LONELY PLANET guidebook told us on numerous occasions that Ica was a crummy place to stay and that the oasis laguna of Huacachina—only a few kilometers away—was a much safer and enjoyable stop, so we got off the bus and took a taxi out of one town and into another.

The first two hostals we checked out based on LP’s recs were all booked up. Luckily, we found some beds down the town’s short and only road. As I said in a previous post, Israelis had stormed in to the point where menus were written in English, Spanish, and Hebrew.

Tali saw the stars for the first time in a long time that night. Because of my limited knowledge regarding astronomy—all dilettantish enthusiasm aside—I couldn’t figure out whether everything was upside down or not.

*I also should have worn socks.