Week 3&4: Fun in the dunes and some more hiking

After more or less 2 days in buses and waiting rooms, I was happy to finally arrive at the beach again. Paracas. I had seen beautiful pictures from another traveler and convinced Eef to join me there. I had planned to stay there at least 2 nights to relax a bit. When I arrived I somehow didn't like it too much. Can't really describe why, just didn't feel it. So we decide to move on the next afternoon to the oasis Huacachina and use the morning for the two tourist attractions in Paracas. We started with a boat trip to the Islas Ballestas. Together with 20 other boats we made a short boat ride to the islands, which are also called poor man's Galapagos. The amount of animals was amazing. Thousands of birds and sea lions. We also so 3-4 vultures and penguins. A good trip for taking photos, but not my highlight. After that we took a minivan into the national reserve, which is the start of the desert. Here we met nice people and had some beautiful coast views. You could have done it by bike, which we didn't do because we wanted to make it to Huacachina in the evening. Seeing the bikers out there I was glad we didn't. A lot of dust, sun and wind.

Right after the trip we went with a minivan to Huacachina, another 1 hour trip which ended up being more than two. I didn't really know what to expect, it was recommended to Eef as a cool place and of course I had heard about the dune buggy's and Sandboarding. When we arrived it felt a bit like the entrance to hell. Traffic jam into the oasis and loud dune buggy's everywhere. And the place was packed, we had just gotten the last room on hostelworld in a hostel, which was quite expensive but included already the dune buggy ride & Sandboarding. We heard that there was an international conference in Lima that weekend and everyone got 4 days off. Huacachina seems to be a great long weekend destination from Lima.
Arriving at the hostel we were already happy. A very nice place with pool, hammocks and a cool bar in the middle. And a Fußball table, wohoo :-) We immediately met nice people, had a great dinner, happy hour started and some nice games of Fußball. When the hostel bar closed at 10 we all followed the bar crew to the next place. Great fun night. The next morning half of the people decided to just stay one more night, I didn't even need a lot of convincing to get Eef stay another night as well. As the place itself was fully booked we all went to a hostel a bit further up the street, checked in and went back to our original place to meet up with everyone and enjoy a bit more the pool. Guess what, it became an even more epic party night. Just when we got annoyed by the local boys getting a bit too intense we met a group of locals from Lima who took care of us. Dancing with the girls was great fun (although I will probably never understand how they can move like that) and they shared their beers and protected us from annoying guys. When we left the bar it already started to be light again and they still wanted to bring us save to our place. Unfortunately we had some issues with getting the door open and I got the great idea to watch the sunrise from the dunes. Finding a partner in crime I made it half way up and fell asleep. Only 30 minutes I would say. But that was long enough to get both our phones stolen. Great job! Ah well, annoying and inconvenient, but I have most of my data backed up and I still got my tablet. Could have been worse (passport, credit card, ...).

Eef, me and another Dutch girl had booked the night bus to Arequipa for the evening. That meant we spent again the whole day chillin at our hostel from day one. Luckily we still had our wrist bands so no one noticed that we weren't staying there anymore, and I guess we made enough turnover at the bar/restaurant anyways. We had booked the luxury night bus, which is actually more comfortable than a plane, so we had a decent sleep. Arriving in Arequipa we made a bit of a judgement error: we followed the advice of another traveller and checked in to the Wild Rover. In general it looked good and another hostel with pool seemed fine. Nice to relax after the partying in Huacachina. Well, the first sign that we were at the wrong hostel for this were the drunk people at the pool bar (remember, it is 8am). Oh well, we had a relaxed morning and then I went with another guy from the hostel to a free walking tour of Arequipa. And I really liked it. Of course there was another free pisco sour tasting (I was the lucky one to get 2) and the local speciality 'queso helado', an ice cream that luckily only looks like cheese. I really like the city, which is in the middle of mountains and volcanos. We also went to a little zoo with alpacas and lamas and learned how the local wool production works. As a girl from the group pointed out: a Vicuña (the kind of wild version of the alpaca) scarf costs more than a Gucci bag.
Back at the hostel, Eef and me quickly decided that we will do the standard tourist tour to the colca canyon not the next day, as we didn't feel like getting up at 3 am. And that we would change the hostel. The Wild Rover was just not our crowd, a bit too crazy and annoying party people. Although the music at the open mic night was quite good. The next morning we chose a more quiet hostel and moved. The hostel was recommended for good tours and so we directly booked a 3 day colca canyon hiking trip for the next morning with them. And I decided to book a rafting tour for the afternoon. Unfortunately they messed up the booking, thinking that both of us would join. Not sure why, but it was a big deal when they picked me up for the tour. After some stressful phone calls they announced that they found another group for me, all good.
The first impression of the rafting seemed soso. The wetsuits had many wholes and most communication was in Spanish, where I would only understand half. However, it turned out to be a really fun afternoon. The group consisted out of 3 couples, where funnily 2 were German guys with Peruvian girlfriends who live in Germany as well. I ended up in the boat with a very nice couple and a good guide who taught us 4 basic commands. From then on it was: follow the commands, smile to the camera from the guy in the support kayak and have fun. It was a great track for beginners, beautiful river and the sun was shining. Great afternoon.
The evening Eef and me met up with Ying-Chu, the girl I had met in Trujillo. She just came back from the colca canyon (the 2 day version which is the same route than the 3 days, just less time for relaxing). We had a great dinner at a potato place, catching up on the last 2 weeks. The night ended early, we got picked up at 3 am the next morning.

3am, here we go. Eef, me and another girl from our hostel got picked up, unfortunately being the last ones being picked up we entered a nearly full bus. 3 hours drive to the breakfast place was not really fun. After that our first real stop was the Condor viewpoint, the reason why we had to get up so early. The condors only are there between 7 and 10, nowadays often not at all anymore. Despite the food that is put there to attract them (as we learned from our guide afterwards). We were more or less lucky. First we saw 4-5 condors from far away on the way to the viewpoint. When we arrived at the viewpoint it seemed that there is no condor, so we all just enjoyed the nice view and took pictures. Then suddenly Eef spotted one lonely condor and we could watch it glide through the canyon and with Eef's nice camera I managed to get a couple of nice shots of it.
After another hour of driving we arrived at the starting point of the hike. There the groups were seperated into the two days and three days hikers. Our group turned out to be a nice size of 7 travels plus guide. Or first impression was mixed :-) Three Irish guys from the Wild Rover plus an Australian couple, who already knew each other. How would this trip be? Party people from the hostel we just ran away from and Eef and me being the odd one out? Well, I have to say: good!

Our group started last, and took it easy. The days challenge was around 3 hours of hiking downhill, with nice views in the canyon and the oasis, where we will stay the second night. It was a beautiful sunny day (which can be a bit of a challenge, especially for white Irish guys), and we arrived at our place for the night around lunch. Lunch was good, but few (meaning just enough for me, too few for everyone else). After that: what now? Luckily our group was well prepared (well, everyone except for Eef and me), with music and playing cards. Eef and I were quickly integrated and learned the Israeli card game Yanneve (?). It was a very relaxed afternoon, my only excitement was, when the dog stole my flip flop and the little boy of the owner found it very funny to hunt the dog.
Day two was very similar, we started comparatively late, had a relaxed hike for around 3 hours with some great explanation about the plants and the tradition of the area. Our guide David comes actually from a family of Shamans and was very knowledgeable on the use and dangers of all the local plants. We again made it to our sleeping place around lunch. This was what we were looking forward to: an oasis, with 5-6 hotels including pools! Making use of the great weather we all ended up quite quickly in the pool. What a treat! After a great lunch (finally more or less enough food for everyone) and some more card games the great football game started. The locals had challenged the guys from our group to a match up to 4 goals. What a fun to watch. The locals definitely had the advantage of being used to the altitude (let's say that was the reason) and despite our 'Go Gringos' cheering had beaten our group quite effortlessly 4-2. Like that, at least some of us had really earned their dinner. After some more - guess what - card games and admiring the beautiful sky with thousands of stars we called it an early night.

The next morning was the dreaded one: in order to climb the 1000m back out of the canyon before the sun comes around meant leaving at 4:50 in the morning. Well, that was the plan at least. Everyone was at the meeting point at 4:50, except for, well, Eef and me. I still don't know if she didn't set the alarm right or just turned it off and turned around. What woke us up was someone knocking on our door at 4:52 :-) As we had slept in all our clothes and didn't have much stuff with us anyways we were out of the room within 3 minutes, walking to the meeting point with our toothbrush in the mouth. With only about 10 minutes delay we were on our way up the hill. It wasn't that bad actually, the first third of the hill I think I wasn't really awake yet. In my standard way, very slow but without stops, I made my way up. We all ended up with a quite good time, between 2,5 to 3 hours is not too bad for that climb. We only had to walk the last 15 minutes in the sun, which helped a lot. The only annoying thing: when again another traveler had decide that the climb was too much and rented a mule. That meant to step as much as possible out of the way (not on the side of the slope!) And try to be not hit by a mule and not to breath in all the dust. Up on top we made our last group picture, this time together with our guide David. He conveniently changed his 'sexy lama, sexy alpaca, sexy condor...' calls to a 'sexy David', resulting in a great group picture with everyone laughing.
The breakfast we finally got after 30 more minutes hiking (on flat grounds luckily), was delicious. Then we had to get back in the bus, where nearly everyone ended up sleeping, except for Eef and me, who just realised that after 2 weeks together or ways will part tonight. We used the time for a bit of a review of our travels together, with a lot of happy memories. On the way back to Arequipa we stopped at one or two more viewpoints and another highlight: natural hot pools. While we had heard that in other groups no one had gone in, for our group there was no question. Within no time everyone was in the pools and it was amazing. Same was true for the buffet stop for lunch. The guys from our group didn't even ask for the price, they had already a plate full. Happy faces all around me, enough food and MEAT! :-) I had decided to join the buffet as it was ready available and I didn't want to wait. It turned out a good choice, the food was really good and even I managed to eat 2 plates.

Arriving in Arequipa it was time to say goodbye to Eef, she took the night bus to Cusco. I had decided to take it easy and stay another night in Arequipa. As our hostel had again trouble with the administration (first they wanted me to pay the tours which I had already paid for and then they tried to over charge me for the room), I had decided to join the others from our colca canyon group at the dragonfly hostel. We all checked in there and decided quickly it is pizza night. We picked up or pizza, bought some beer and saw a cool dance performance and fireworks on the way home. Not bad. We ended up eating pizza and drinking beer at the hostel and, surprise surprise, playing cards.

The next day I booked a bus to Puno, Lake Titicaca for the next morning. The trip is only 6 hours, so a night bus would have meant to arrive in the middle of the night. This meant another relaxed day in Arequipa. And it was a nice one. We took our time, had a game of pool & Fußball at a kiwi bar and went grocery shopping. We had decided to cook spaghetti and make a fresh (vodka) smoothie at the hostel. As the kitchen was only available until 6pm we started early. Of course accompanied with some beers and card games. Like that we managed to make it until late that evening. I've tried to teach them Mäxle, which was a mixed success. I see three reasons: my abilities to explain the rules (minor), the annoying habits of digital dice on a smartphone and the eagerness of Irish people to drink. Well, it was fun and at some point I couldn't avoid the unavoidable anymore: the group had decided to go to the Wild Rover hostel for some partying. Oh no! Well, what can I say. If you don't stay there and just party, it is not that bad. Except for still the same weird drunk people from 8am the first day :-) After I don't know how many jagerbombs (who likes these anyways), I thought it is a good idea to order a big water at the bar. And that I got, a 2.5 liter bottle. Looking good on the dance floor :-)
Getting up the next morning at 7 am to catch my bus to Puno was very annoying, but the water had done it's job.