Paracas, Peru

We say goodbye to the beautiful town of Huaraz, located in the mountains, and take an overnight bus to Lima. We sit in the bus for about 8 hours - quite comfortable! Once we arrive in Lima, we hop on another bus for another 3 hours to Pisco! This is where the famous Pisco sour comes from. The national drink consists of a strong liquor (similar to Grappa), lime juice, sugar, and egg white. Of course, it is also mixed with ice to create a foamy crown. It tastes really delicious!

In Pisco, we stop at the market to enjoy a cup of coffee and fresh fruit juice. Then we continue on to Paracas. On the way, we pass by an oil refinery and a smell that suggests a animal feed factory - it stinks terribly.

Once we arrive in Paracas, we intuitively go to the cheapest hostel in town, called "backpackers buen samaritha". We meet some funny Argentinians with whom we drink, joke, and laugh!

Paracas is not our favorite place... it's a bit like a ghost town, made specifically for tourists, but that's okay. We'll stay here for 3 nights.

On the first day, we go to Pisco. We do our favorite activity - exploring the market and trying new foods. Today, we discover "causa" - a delicious potato puree filled with chicken and mayonnaise salad! Today, we also do a bit of shopping - Irli gets new "zapatitos" (little shoes) and I get new "zapatos" (shoes)! How nice :-)

On the second day, we decide to take a tour to the Ballestas Islands, the reason why so many tourists come here. We wake up at seven in the morning. A bus stops in front of our door, we get on it, drive for about 2 minutes, and already find ourselves among about 1000 people who have the same plan as us! What have we gotten ourselves into. A tourist trap. But oh well, we get on a motorboat and put on orange safety jackets with the words "ballestasexpedition" written on them - we have to laugh.

On the way to the islands, we pass by a giant cactus (possibly made by aliens) - it's a 60 cm deep drawing in the sand and no one knows where it came from, but it has probably been there for a while!

The Ballestas Islands are impressive. We see millions of different birds, pelicans, penguins (they only exist in Peru and Chile, they're quite tiny, black and white). On the rocks around the island, many sea lions are chilling, which we see for the first time alive and in the wild. Overall, the tour is cool even though we don't feel quite comfortable. Iris: why didn't we just ask a fisherman to take us out to the sea? Well, after two hours, the fun is over and we have a delicious breakfast at the hostel. After that, we decide to walk to the national park. After about half an hour of walking on the main road in the scorching heat, next to the dunes, we stick out our thumbs at one of the few passing cars, and the car immediately stops. We get in with two nice young men, who naturally ask us where we want to go... hmmm, we're not so sure, so we say "playa roja", the red beach! The men explain that they're on their way to work and we can come along. We reply with our favorite phrase: "porque no" (why not). A few minutes later, we're sitting on a motorboat and heading out to sea with two bosses of a small shellfish farm. The men go to their two boats every day where their crew "harvests" mussels and check if everything is okay. What an adventure, we eat shellfish straight from the sea (disgusting), but it doesn't get any fresher. We're so excited that something like this happened to us and the men take us back to the town. There, we have a cup of coffee and another Pisco sour because it's so good! The guy in the bar is really funny, when he asks us for our names, we use our amazing line: "somos acroiris y primavera sin acro y sin prima" (we are a rainbow and spring without acro and without prima), to which the man replies "yo soy sotero sin novia" (I am Sotero without a girlfriend) hehe, the best response so far ;-)

The next morning, we continue on to Huacachina