After 6 weeks in Peru living like locals we were joined by Creed’s sister Rachel and her boyfriend Curtis, and reverted back to holiday mode. We moved to a bigger, 2 bedroom apartment, which was extremely nice, and I kind of wanted to buy it. The rooftop was an amazing place to hang out, with a pool, huge comfy sofas, and a perfect view of the ocean, especially at sunset. Unfortunately the week was a very cloudy one, and at times the rooftop was completely enveloped by fog. We spent the week revisiting our favourite food and drink spots, and trying some new ones. We sampled all the local market foods and tried beers at every brewery in town. We went to the market to buy some souvenirs, and then went back 4 days later for more.

We also did a couple of the more touristy things that we’d been holding off on doing until we had company. We took a boat tour out to the Palomino Islands which are inhabited by a huge sealion colony. It was another foggy day, and the boat road between islands looming out of the fog was quite ominous, but the guide reassured us that these sealions were very friendly because they have no natural predators in this region, so they’re not afraid of or aggressive towards humans. Because of this you can just swim right up to them. After arriving and donning awkwardly sized wetsuits because the water here is frigid, we jumped on in and swam very close to the islands. The smell is quite something, and they are very noisy – in English they’re called sea lions because the males have very furry heads like a mane, but in Spanish they’re called sea wolves because they howl at the sky all the time. We were expecting to see some babies but most of the sealions here were much bigger. Floating around in the water watching them all lounge on the rocks was a weird experience, but quite amusing. We also managed to see a couple of penguins from the boat, and enjoyed a windy ride back to the city with shots of pisco.​

After a week relaxing in Lima we headed off on a bit of a tour. The first stop was Nazca. Except, I heard the night before our bus that the flights over the Nazca lines, the whole reason for visiting this town, had been cancelled the past few days due to flooding after unseasonably heavy rain. I messaged our hotel to try to find out more, and they weren’t sure when the flights would start again. We got on the bus anyway, hoping for the best, but after continued messages with the hotel they eventually acknowledged that the airport may not reopen for a week. Fortunately the bus passed through the town that we were due to return to after Nazca, and so we were able to get off early and spend an extra day there instead. After a tuk tuk ride to our last minute apartment booking in the rain, we felt good in our decision not to continue 3 hours extra down the road, and then back again, for an excursion that would surely be cancelled. We had all been excited about the flight though, and were sad to miss it.

The next day we moved to our intended accommodation in Huacachina, a small oasis in the Peruvian desert. To make the most of the extra day, we dropped off our bags and immediately headed back out to find a taxi to take us to all the local wineries. Some we had seen and tasted back in Lima, some were online recommendations, and one was a winery that Creed had visited on his Peru trip back in 2017, and was excited to head back to. This one ended up being the best of the lot, with a tour through the machinery, an exploration of the old wine cellar, and an extremely generous tasting of wines, piscos and cremas – pisco based liquors with creamy flavourings such as chocolate, coffee or fruit. The wine in the region tends to be very sweet, and this is the way the Peruvians prefer it. All of us prefer drier wines, so these weren’t our favourite, but the cremas were all fantastic. At the end of the tour of 5 different wineries, we walked away with one bottle of wine, one bottle of pisco, two large bottles and one small bottle of crema, and a sampler pack.

Aside from wine tasting, the main attraction here is exploring the desert by dune buggy, and sand boarding down the dunes. The buggies whiz across the sand and fly over the tops of the dunes with some big bumps followed by steep descents. It’s quite an adrenaline rush, and sliding down massive dunes on a very small board is even more so. The other backpackers on the tour were very friendly, and it was a fun return to this type of travel – adventurous activities where you meet other travellers with similar interests, great stories, and positive attitudes about absolutely everything, even the stuff that goes wrong.

We didn’t need the extra day in Huacachina, but it’s a cool spot for a couple of nights and the added time allowed for more relaxation at the pool, which is never a bad thing. And, thankfully, we finally had some great weather to enjoy. The best view of the oasis is from above, so for sunset on day one we made the climb up the large dune behind our hotel, and watched the lights come on one by one, and on day two we enjoyed the view from the opposite dune after the buggy tour.

Next we headed to Paracas, a small beach side town for yet more relaxation. Again there was a last minute issue and change of plans, because the hotel cancelled our rooms the night before due to “construction”. We found 3 different back up options, and unfortunately had to walk around with bags in the heat visiting them all, because the online photos aren’t always accurate, and in the end settled for a 4^th option, a very nice hotel close to the beach.

Paracas town sits next to a national reserve, which is also very desertlike, but much rockier. The sand here has a more reddish colour, and ends in cliff faces which plunge into the ocean, with rocky formations jutting out of the water just off the coast. It’s a spectacular landscape, and the best time to see it is right before sunset, when the angle of the sun brings out the colour in the rocks. We hired another taxi here to take us out to the best sunset spot, via a couple of other points of interest on the way. We were essentially copying the standard group tour, but in a private taxi split 4 ways it was much cheaper. Sadly, the taxi driver wasn’t interested in giving us the tour we negotiated with him, and so we skipped the other points of interest and headed straight to the sunset spot, arriving over 2 hours before the sun was due to set. After a stressful argument in Spanish, we convinced him to return to a lake, and when he took us back he simply stopped on the side of the road and told us we couldn’t go any closer, rather than going to the official lake viewpoint. Giving up, we returned to the sunset spot, and took an extremely slow hike up to the viewpoints on top of the cliffs. It was a nice walk, and the viewpoints were definitely worth seeing, and waiting at them for the last hour before the sun went down wasn’t a horrible way to spend time.

Of course there was one final issue – when we descended, our taxi driver was not there waiting for us as promised. We had done the short walk as a one-way hike, but the driver was still waiting at our start point on the other side of the hills. Fortunately there was a car where we ended up, and two friendly locals offered to take us back to our start point to see if he was there. We didn’t all fit in, so Creed and I headed off with them, and left Rachel and Curtis stranded in the desert, because we’re lovely people. We found our driver, who had assumed that we were one of the other people he could still see at the top of the hill, and had therefore abandoned the plan we made with him. On this side of the hill there were still some fantastic sunset colours happening, (we should have done the one way hike in the other direction,) so instead of hopping back in the car to go and pick up Rachel and Curtis, we sent the driver to get them and bring them to the real sunset spot. They arrived with two minutes to spare, and got to see the sun disappear into the ocean with lots of pretty colours.

The rest of the time in Paracas had no stress. We found some great restaurants with delicious seafood dishes, we spent time on the beach and by the pool, and we enjoyed rooftop breakfasts and sunset drinks. Creed and I took another boat tour the next morning, out to some more islands covered in sealions. Given that we’d already done a similar thing in Lima, Rachel and Curtis passed on this one. It ended up being a very pleasant morning, with a short boat ride under beautifully clear skies, a view of an ancient rock carving that was potentially done at a similar time to the Nazca lines that we’d previously missed, and time spent very close to interesting rock formations. We saw so many sea lions, including tiny babies, a couple more penguins, and a ton of other cool birds like huge pelicans and Peruvian boobies. This time there were no weather issues, no last minute cancellations, and no arguments with the tour guide. Everything just went right, and that was a very enjoyable change from the past few days. I hope that the issues we had on this trip have not put Rachel and Curtis off travelling with us again in the future! I still had a good time – I enjoyed the wine tour and the beach time, and the sand boarding was something I’d been looking forward to since I first planned a Peru trip back in 2019.

Monday was a leisurely day back in Lima, hopping back around our preferred drinks locations and trying a couple of new ones. We ended the day with the usual pub quiz and managed to win thanks to Rachel and Curtis’ music knowledge. Tuesday was their last day, and we headed into the historic centre to check off the last few must do items: seeing the main square and old streets, visiting the witches market, and the chocolate factory. Creed and I also took a tour of the large monastery and its fascinating catacombs, something we’d missed on our previous visits downtown.

Our final meal together was at our favourite brewery. It turned out that a very important football (soccer) game was going on, so everywhere was packed with people watching it – even our Uber driver had it on his phone while driving us from the centre back to the area we were staying in. It was Lima vs Buenos Aires, and we caught the last 3rd of it. Buenos Aires were winning 2-1, and we couldn’t figure out why noone was too sad about it. In the last 5 minutes, one of the guys on the other team had a perfect shot, so close to the goal, and screwed it up, with the ball bouncing off one of his legs and onto the other. Everyone in the bar thought this was hilarious, and, again, being down a goal already, we couldn’t figure out why Buenos Aires missing another goal was a big deal. Until we remembered hearing about the same teams playing a couple of weeks ago, and realised this was part 2. When the game ended and went into penalty shootout we figured out that Lima had won the last match 1-0, and lost this one 2-1, making it 2-2 over all and the winner was down to penalties. The guy’s last minute fumble actually may have lost him the game. Every single penalty on both sides went straight in, until the very last one, when Lima’s goalkeeper was able to save the final Buenos Aires attempt. The whole bar erupted, with everyone hugging each other and high fiving, and then singing at the top of their lungs. None of us really care about soccer but it’s a huge deal in South America, and the atmosphere was fantastic, and it was a fun final night out before Rachel and Curtis headed to the airport 2 hours later.

Thanks for following along on my crazy adventures!

 Ros ♥

If you’re interested in how I got here, or where I went next, check out the rest of the story!