Hola todos! So yesterday I started my way on the road to Cuzco and ultimately toward Macchu Picchu. While I was in Lima I looked into the logistics of how to proceed and it looked messy to say the least; there is little info online for buses and what is more crazy is Lima doesn’t have a proper central bus terminal but every company runs out of their own depots all on different sides of the city and with info online being scarce looking at it the old fashioned way would also be difficult too, however a pal of mine who had passed through while I was in Colombia mentioned a company called Peruhop, which runs a hop on hop off service from Lima to Cuzco and even goes as far as La Paz, Bolivia. They also do a few mini tours in between places so seems ideal. Also it saves a lot of faffing round as they pick up either from your gaff or from central meeting points. Looking at it I opted for this as it didn’t work out that much more expensive than doing local buses separate and saves hassle, especially as some of these will be night buses.
Anyways Monday morning I was up and out early for the 0630 pickup from the hotel opposite where I was staying. We were quickly boarded and on way. Once you get out of Lima you see how much of a Wasteland Peru is, well it is pretty much the start of the Atacama desert here and it shows in the terrain. You have vast swathes of sandy wasteland with what looks like the occasional mining site while eventually you come to small towns with lots of irrigation fields built around where small rivers flow down out of the Andes. It is quite a place to see and could be any random planet from the Star Wars universe here. Suprisingly They actually didn’t film any of the old Star Wars films in Peru though!
After the drive through we stopped at a place called Hacienda San Jose, which was basically a slave plantation back in the day which also had a church and was run by the Jesuit order. Highly interesting place though it was bloody hot there. Don’t know but mid 30’s I guess.
They showed us round the gaff and also it’s hidden catacombs that only got found after an earthquake in 2007. It was a dark place as was used to quarantine newly arrived slaves and later used to bury them alive after abolition in the 1830’s. Walking through those tight spaces was quite freaky and haunting. It was a rather brief tour and after that we were out and on our way to Paracas.
Once in Paracas I did two tours, the Golden Shadow trek the evening I arrived and the Mini Galapagos boat trip the next day. I will cover these both as separate posts. The evening unfortunately was pretty shit largely as it had been a long day with a tour thrown in I was losing patience and end up not doing both the pisco sour class and the viajero meetup and end up going out to eat by myself and then going to a locals bar for a few brews.
Golden Shadows and Mini Galapagos coming up soon.
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