Down the coast - Bus, Islands, Paracas national Reserve

Wow. I'm behind on blogging. Lima was a week and a half ago in the time domain, but a long ways in the fun domain! There's a lot to tell, but I'll start from the top. Fortunately the first place I went out of Lima has proven to be my favorite in all Peru so far: Paracas.

The bus ride down was interesting. You slowly make your way out of the massive sprawl of Lima and get to see more and more what the climate of the area is. In Lima you know it's dry, but can't see how absolute the desert is without the benefit of a large river which has been used for irrigation for over a thousand years (Pre Inca).
The following 3 or 4 hour ride down the Panamerican Highway was very different than what I would have seen on Greyhound or anything in the US. We stopped at about 3 toll stations, a gas fillup, received a small meal and drink, had the option to buy food, and of course, watched dubbed American movies nonstop. Unfortunately the sound was not a headphones afair, so I spent more time trying to figure out what Jason Bateman was saying in the (well) dubbed Spanish version of Identity Thief than writing in my journal or looking at the desert. All but the most expensive coach buses here seem to do the same. And man, there are some LUXURY buses here (more on that later).

I made the uninformed, poor choice of staying in San Andres. Don't stay there. Or Pisco. In a few years when the airport is built, it might be a great recommendation, it has the potential to be a great mix of fishing village and cute tourist town. Now it's just very dirty, dangerous at night, smelly and the place I think I got food poisoning! There was also a 7.0 earthquake about 100km away right as I was walking to my room. I was strongly questioning the wisdom of not moving on to a different place by the time I set my things down.

San Andres. Maybe stay here a few years from now. But the sunset was beautiful

Gripes aside, my hotel manager was extremely gracious and helpful. He booked me for a tour of Paracas Reserve and Islas Ballestas the following day!

I took far, far too many photos to show here, but suffice it to say that the islands were beautiful. Also covered in birds and gguano So much so that they have been havesting the guano (most of a meter thick some places) for hundreds of years.

Interesting fact: the word guano actually comes from here. It was a Quechua word meaning "any form of dung used as an agricultural fertilizer" (Wikipedia, and the guides).


Need to run now! In Cuzco and need to meet a new friend from Belgum. Apparently everyone there is required to learn two languages of the three official languages! With luck I´ll add more to this post later.

At Paracas National Reserve

Fishing boat on the way back to Paracas from the islands

Baby sea lion and mom!

That's ALL birds

Lima tourist spots

Being Peru´s capital city, there are all sorts of famous, old things to see in Lima. These are almost all from my day of walking around downtown. Quick post :)

Across the river are a few rough neighborhoods. But they have cool, colorful houses that go up the steep hillsides! Lonely Planet didn´t recommend going over there despite a nice view from the top. 

Hogwarts library! Not quite, but the volumes were as ancient, and written on Velum and sheep and cow skins. The book in front is so large so that the chior could all see it from their seats when singing.

President´s house! My guide was nice enough to say ¨Like where Obama lives!¨

One of many magnificent churches... except this one has massive catacombs underneath.

The Catacombs... magnificent, surreal place. It looked like a set from some movie, but these are the bones of people who couldn´t afford to pay for their own burial in the 1800s. The Priests or someone got pretty decorative with the layouts though. The guide said about 25,000 bodies in all were laid to rest down there.

On top of a adobe pyramid constructed by a pre Inca civilization. The tour was bit slow and there isn´t much known about the people - I´d go surf with the hour instead. Good view though!

Lima - Daily Life

I made it to Lima! My first hostel didn´t have a computer, but The Explorers Club has one! The owners are really friendly and I´ve been working on my Spanish here and out in the city... the hard part is that most everyone in the hostels speaks English, so it´s difficult to not fall back on what we all know. 

A few pictures of where I´ve been and little things about life down here!

Flying in to perpetually foggy Lima was a little exciting, but then it cleared up to a beautiful view. It´s a massive city.

The first night was a sound sleep, and the first thing I did the following day was learn to surf! It went well - for a first time at least. 

The hostel is just down the street from the cliffs just over the ocean. 

Next up was a little city exploring. Being in a new city and country is always interesting, but it´s a new level for me down here. Some things are mostly indistinguishable from home, like the big supermarkets, Starbucks, and Pizza Hut, but that´s mostly the end. Miraflores is the really upscale, wealthy part of the capital city of Lima. It certainly isn´t ¨real Peru¨ but it´s pretty and a more familar place to begin the trip.

One of the nicest supermarkets

Starbucks in Miraflores is the same! I guess I could have tried the coffee, but I would be a bad judge. I had Soles to spend elsewhere

Tons of cute stray cats in Kennedy Park!

Chocolate museum! The US eats 55 100g bars per person each year. The Swiss win with 119.

Black Forest cake is still Black Forest cake

Park of Love lived up to its name with half a dozen couples watching the sunset

Domestic hot water doesn´t seem to be in place anywhere! This guy heats it up right before it hits your head. Not sure how I feel about 5.5 kw, 30 cm over my head, but it was warm!

Strictly no flushing toilet paper. Every bathroom has a bin!

More fun balconies! Building code isn´t too strict, so there´s all sorts of fun stuff on the roofs.

Here´s a combi! It´s a very large van converted to a bus with a crazy driver and crazy ticket collector. These guys are somewhat infamous. But it costs about $0.50 for an (exciting) 45 minute ride into downtown! I only saw one combi without dents on the outside.

Couchsurfing found me Nino! He played tour guide and Spanish teacher for a wonderful afternoon of exploring downtown! We were able to talk pretty well and he knew most of the words when I didn´t know them in Spanish. It was a great exchange and I saw most all what I wanted to downtown :)

The military police presence was surprising though. There was some fear of protests apparently so there were police everywhere and the whole 5 blocks each direction around the government palace (president´s place) was blocked by police. We convinced them I was a tourist and rolled in.

Guinea Pig! Haven´t tried it yet.

And unlike some other areas I´ve been now, there were always people out cleaning the streets and everything else in Miraflores (and Lima in general, to some degree). No mops, just brooms with rags, but it was good to see pride in your place.

The Bay to LA

San Francisco and the Bay Area was a great place to start my trip - I got to visit so, so many cities and friends, found a little bit of adventure and had a similar consistency of itinerary (about the soupiness of pancake batter) to that which I'll be living off in Peru. My half baked plans worked out well though. I stayed in San Francisco, Berkely, Palo Alto and Mountain View and had fun excursions out of all of them! Great start, and thanks to the kind hearts of my friends I was busy and happy the whole time. I'm hopeful that it will be the same in Peru, and looking forward to the new friends there.

But first I have to get there. So I drove down to LA with Paige! The drive was only 6 hours or so and we shared the driving. It went well, possibly thanks to the "Learning to drive stick - thanks for being patient" signs in the rear window. She had it down pretty well, but decided to keep the signs up for awhile since people were so much more friendly and polite... even smiling and waving if the car stalled in the middle of an intersection after a long light! (I'm going to remember this...)

Entering the mountains North of LA

We stayed at Harvey Mudd for the night (a little adventure of it's own)

"The Cube". The Claremonts are beautiful!

I discovered that the Andes Mountains are rather steep in the basement of the campus student center.

After eating some breakfast from Trader Joes, walking around campus, getting her new MotoX and stealing the WiFi for awhile, I got on the train to get down to Santa Monica and Venice Beach... I got on at about 2 and didn't arrive in Santa Monica until well after 6 (only half an hour of delays. LA area is MASSIVE and SLOW)... but I guess the upside was it all ended up being free. Train ticket machines were out of service and a nice guy on the bus gave me a free ride token.
$0 / 4hrs = good

Walking was so nice that I went the 3 miles to Venice rather than taking the bus. Just gorgeous.

First view of Santa Monica beach and Boardwalk! (Please note the immense similarity to the same location in GTA. I was impressed)

25' tall acrobatic fun on the beach! The rings looked sweet - like monkey bars for 100'. I'll be on them today without my backpacking pack! Slacklines everywhere too

Wow for miles. Santa Monica mountains in the background

Plans for my 11 hr layover in Fort Lauderdale. Beeeeach.

I think I'm quite ready for another adventure

Thanks to Bilbo Bagins for the title! It's time to go places again! The last time I was writing for this blog was in at the end of my 6 months of "Studying" Abroad in New Zealand. There were so many wonderful weekend trips to mountains that blew my mind and I met a large handful of people who grew to be among my closest friends in just months. I learned things about engineering, culture, climbing, biking and adventuring. Even how (not) to sleep in a public park (with some good outcomes). This trip is certainly shaping up to have many of the same features; it even started with the same picture out from of the house. The plans are very loose and but I have a few things I definitely want to see. Topping the list are two WWOOF farms out in the rural mountains, Machu Picchu, Lake Titicaca, The Altiplano, and Bolivian Salt Flats and somewhere in the Amazon. These pretty well traveled places, but I intend to get off the beaten path as well. 

Off to Peru, August 2014

Off to New Zealand, February 2012

I'm not sure how often I'll have internet, but when I do get it, the first thing I'll do is start uploading photos (I hear the internet is slow, it'll take a bit). Catch those on Google plus. A selection of those pictures will appear here too with some stories of when they were taken. I hope you enjoy it, and I'm looking forward to getting to write it! To start, here's some of my trip to San Francisco on the way to LA to fly out.

Some highlights of the trip down were getting to meet Victor from Spain on the ride down. We shared the back seat of a little 4 seater car for the better part of 13 hours, toured the Arboretum full of New Zealand and Australian trees on the UC Santa Cruz campus the following day and played on the Santa Cruz beach in the sun.

I bused and trained up to SF to stay with Stephanie, a friend from Elementary school. She just moved into an apartment in the very heart of SF, right between Union Square and Chinatown. The cable car was only 3 blocks away, so my metro pass went to good use hanging off the cars as grinned my head off. I managed to consume every type of bun I saw in Chinatown as well... jury is still out on that decision, but I don't think my stomach was upset for more than a few hours.

Elizabeth, Myself and Stephanie had a little High School Reunion over ice cream in San Fran

By far the best way to learn your way around a city is to bike the entire thing. So of course I rented a decent little Trek road bike for 24 hours and went to town (well, out of town really). I did about 70 miles and spent most of the day biking or hiking... it was my favorite day all summer! Rode down Lombard, went through Sausalito, fixed a flat, rolled the long way over to Tiburon and through some estuary paths, rounded out that peninsula, then came back and went through the one way tunnel to the Marin Headlands (aka Narnia).  I was just in heaven. It was hot and sweaty, but there was hardly a cloud (amazing for summer here). I rode up to the top of the road facing the Golden Gate and crushed down the 28% grade. Little scary on a bike you don't know well, but it did the job. Didn't break my speed record... but got close.

One way tunnel! Cars wait 5 min, bikes just go :)

The Lyford house on Richardson Bay. The grounds are owned by an Audobon Society. Cool!

Bike counter! I was the 3000th biker of the day!

Rode down Lombard!

The next day, I met Abbas, a college friend, and we toured around SF more, ate the more exciting side of Chinatown, sprinted uphill after the cable cars until they let us on (highlight for sure, worked 100% of the time - twice).

We also starred (...as extras) in the final scene of Jukebox the Ghost's new music video for their song The Great Unknown. Check youtube again in a month or two and the video should be up!

He was nice enough to put me up in his brand new apartment in Berkely for a night. He assures me that it won't be as messy in a few days - send me the pictures :P. Either way, Berkely is beautiful. I was in awe. We went up the tower on campus (well worth $3) and had a spectacular view of the bay, San Fran and hills all around. The carillon there is really impressive too. It's definitely larger than the UR one and three short concerts are played daily, with a longer one on Sunday. Pretty organized!

And I'm up to date! I took Bart and CalTrain (my favorite) across the bay and down to Palo Alto where I spent the night with a good friend I've known since middle school. It was a great stay and I'm even more envious of the perks tech company employees get. He was nice enough to throw a few free beers, granola bars and a great lunch my way. I even have a guest badge now saying that my occupation is "FUNemployed". 

Next up, Mountain View, two more good friends and a sweet hike for tomorrow (Big Basin waterfall loop).

I'll write again in a few days, probably from Venice Beach in LA on Tuesday :)