We’ve been in Peru just over a week. This morning, we bid farewell to Cusco and headed back to Lima, before bussing south to the costal town of Paracas.
I have realized that for the last few weeks, I have been missing one major sound from my life: the sound of the highway. Here in Paracas, I have nature and boats. I can hear frogs, sea lions, and crickets from my balcony, and there are many birds flitting around, eating bugs out of the sky.
The last few days have been relatively low-key (and therefore, less pictures to share), so I will entertain you with some of the experiences we’ve had since we’ve been here. Hold on to your hats, it’s a facts about Peru post! Listicle-style – you get eight.
1. Peru has an incredible range of disparate climates packed into its relatively small area. The Andes were dry (so, so, so dry), hot during the day, and chilly at night. Machu Picchu is in a cloud forest, surrounded by lush green peaks and billions of evil sandflies. Today, we drove through hours of desert and coast to reach Paracas. Just on the other side of Cusco – the Amazon!
2. In general, people are friendly and helpful. One very nice convenience store owner helped us figure out Justin’s sim card top-up through a complicated mixture of my top-notch spanish, hand-waving, and google translate. It took ten minutes, but we got it! At Machu Picchu, the front desk lady looked shocked we were not eating breakfast and shoveled granola bars and juice into our arms before she would let us leave.
3. Many houses are not finished – so you see steel rebar poking out of tops of homes everywhere. Why? As long as your house is unfinished, you don’t have to pay tax to the Peruvian government. Or at least, so said our tour guide.
4. Taxis are a beast unto themselves – our driver today from the airport to the bus station stopped for gas with us in the car. On the plus side, it’s good to know that the car won’t run out of gas on some sketchy street…I guess.
5. Inca Kola is the reigning king of sodas – it’s everywhere. It tastes like cotton candy and cream soda had a baby. I am not entirely sure I like it.
6. Pisco (a type of brandy) and Coca (aka unrefined cocaine) are EVERYWHERE. Here, you can see what looks like normal tea, except for the fact that there’s a shot of brandy that goes in it.
7. People carry a lot of large things on their backs manually. I saw plenty of Andean older ladies in town with filled, colorful sacks twice as big as they were marching up and down streets. On the way to Paracas, I thought I saw an entire bush moving, but it was someone carrying twice their body volume in sticks. Slightly alarming. I would probably die.
8. Middle-aged ladies wear fancy little bowler hats 😀
My balcony is officially too nippy to keep writing this – tomorrow it’s off to sea lions and the nature reserve of Paracas!
