------------------The City of Cuzco----------------

Because I've got a helluva lot more stuff to write, I'm going to keep my account of our stay in the city of Cuzco relatively brief. It was our last stop before we caught the train out to Aguas Calientes and climbed up to Machu Picchu.
Cuzco is a tourist town and not just for the brand of edgy young backpacker that we saw in Hacachina. Wealthier middle-aged folk from the US and Europe will skip Lima and fly out here before they begin their train-rides or treks out to Machu Picchu. This may only be a stopping point along the path to their final destination, but the town is ready for them, offering all manner of souvenirs and high-priced goods; there's something for travelers of every station.
I don't mean to denigrate all of the arts and crafts because of the high-price tag; some of it was quite spectacular. We stopped at one gallery where a guy made elaborate pottery, rich with traditional designs of animals and gods. The painted detail on the ceramic was such that the two-dimensional surface seemed to come pop out and come alive for the viewer. Some of the bigger plates and pots that he was selling were over four feet tall, which might have been a bit large for many travelers' suitcases. No problem. If you could afford it you could get free air-shipping.
The big stuff in the ceramic shop might have been a bit out of our league, but there were plenty of other people in town who wanted to do business with us. Unsurprisingly, many sellers wanted us to purchase products of the smokeable variety. Every city we had visited so far had come with drug-dealers but this was a whole new level.
"Weed man?" "He-e-ey amigo, good weed here." "Good pizza here, cheap menu.....I got weed. You want weed?"
When we were going down an alley, a guy actually held a bag of the green stuff aloft for us to see. "You want weed?" he shouted, waving it like a banner in his hand. It was clear that the sellers focused on selling exclusively to tourists, probably because they paid more. Peruvians they left alone. Later on, I was walking alone on a crowded street when I heard a guy shout out to me and then saw him run across traffic to get over to my side. For a second, I thought, he might have something important to tell me.
"Hey, you want weed? Coke?"
Whitey likes his weed apparently. In Peru, there is ganja for the gringos. Still there are limits. I saw an amusing little scenario play out in a supermarket when a dumb, grinning tourist came in and asked the cashier if he could buy some marijuana. He walked away disappointed but now I wish I'd tried to sell him my bag of lentils to smoke for a hundred dollars.
Even if I had wanted desperately to toke up, I would have taken a pass here because of the guidebook's warning that many dealers were actually cops looking to bust people. Drug time in Peru is serious, and the prisons are far worse than in the US.
The massage trade was another popular business for the street. Every time we walked near the Plaza de Armas there were women thrusting cards for parlors out at us, and calling out "massage Señor?" in seductive voices. Word on the street (or maybe just our guidebooks) was that such massages were likely to go a bit further than only a massage. Thus, a routine trip to the internet cafe was now a battle against temptation, and a recommitment to the righteous path.


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You even have to pay to photograph llamas in Cuzco, unless you're sneaky like me

There were a few ruins around town, including Sacsaywaman, popularly pronounced, "sexy woman". Formerly a fortification around the town, it featured big stone walls with perfectly shaped stones, designed so that they fit seamlessly without the need for grout. They formed a saw tooth shape along the battlefield to break up the enemy hordes.
Max and I went for a run the afternoon of the day that we arrived and it soon became apparent that we were above 11,000 feet. We were going uphill to Sacsaywaman and eventually had to stop, defeated by the stone steps and thin air. Things flattened out a bit at the top of the hill and the going became more tolerable. In fact, that stretch of road, lined with pine trees and with low numbers of cars, was probably the nicest place in Peru we had run yet.
Because of our late start and because good things are not meant to last, darkness soon fell around us. What looked like an obvious shortcut along a good road ended up getting us pursued by a pack of dogs. We had to scramble down a ledge and through some briars to get away. The rest of the run, we were in a state of vague paranoia about where dogs might be planning to lunge out of the shadows.

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-----------Sacsaywaman, with Big Jesus in the background------------

The next day was kind of a wash. We spent the morning trying to figure out how we would squeeze the jungle into Max and Ben's timetable--whether we'd fly out to Puero Maldonado near the Brazilian/Bolivian Border, take a tour in the Manu Wilderness for $200, or else go crazy and take a bus out to the remote town of Quillabamba right after we hit Machu Picchu.
Ultimately, we put the decision off until we could buy our train tickets for Aguas Calientes. That turned into an ordeal because the only way to buy them was going through about the most obscure, frustrating fucking website in the world (I felt great about giving them my credit card information.) After about forty-five minutes of error messages and disappearing windows, we had successfully paid them our $120 dollars for the trip out and our return back to the town of Ollantaytambo. Because of the higher volume of trekkers that took the train on the way back, It was far cheaper to get out early than to pay for the whole ride back to Cuzco.
Though we had all been talking about going to the jungle in one form or another, I had begun to think about where my path would go after Machu Picchu. More than anything, I wanted to do a trek, better yet, a real mountain in the Andes. I was antsy that I would miss out and go home unsatisfied. Especially now that we hadn't climbed El Misti in Arequipa, I felt the need to go climb something as a low-level urge in the back of mind.
The jungle would take time and money that I wanted to spend in Cordillera Blanca and Huarez. It would also mean going to low altitude again, and probably losing what ever acclimatization I had gained from my time in the highland cities. With all of this in mind, I made the hard decision to part with Max and Ben after Machu Picchu. It had been great having company, but now it was time to to the lono thing--if I was up to it.

Note on the state of the camera: I actually took the pictures that you see here after my return from Machu Picchu. Determined to revive my busted camera, I left it at not one but two camera shops in Cuzco to see if someone could fix it. I finally got lucky at a shop that specialized in repair. The guy spoke good English, told me that he thought the camera would pull through, but he would need a few days. Unfortunately, I would be spending those few days at one of the most beautiful, archaeologically significant places in the world. Reluctantly, I agreed to leave the camera in the shop. It was worth it, in the end, but it did suck to miss out on photographing such a magical place.



------------------Kite flying near Sacsaywaman-----------

The Colca Canyon Adventure

--------------------The best shot I got of Colca Canyon-----------------

While in Arequipa, we popped into a few a few of the shops that offered tours to Colca Canyon. This great rift through the Andean highlands is in fact twice as deep as the Grand Canyon and is the second deepest canyon in the world. The holder of that distinction would be Cañon del Cotahuasi, which is only a few hundred miles away and merely a few hundred meters deeper. Cotahuasi is also a lot harder to get to and we weren't in the mood to sink a day into the bumpy ride out there over obscure roads.

Where we were, the canyon depth was probably only three-thousand feet up, though at the rim we were probably close to 12,000 feet above sea level--high enough so that altitude was no joke and had potentially unpleasant consequence for the unacclimatized
Colca Canyon, was up to then, the most beautiful place that I had ever seen. The rock walls of basalt and other minerals plunged down to the sparkling turquoise river below. The natural environment in and around the canyon varies from alpine desert near the top to edenic stands of trees and cactii that grew near the bottom. Even cooler, it was home to the Andean Condor. We saw these big, graceful birds slipping along the thermals at Cruz del Condor--along with two hundred other tourists shooting them out of the sky with their digital cameras. After we had left this popular, however, we still got a few views of condors as well as hawks.
Had my camera been working, I would have had a photographic field day. Unfortunately, the sand that had slipped into the workings at Huacachina had put my camera in an ornery mood. Now, the lens was permanently out of focus, and I could only take blurred out drunken snapshots of the awesome majesty around me. I was furious at myself for the earlier clumsiness, but at least Max had a camera, so it was not a total loss.

What was particularly inspiring to me was that even in it's rugged isolation, the canyon had held people, societies that went back thousands of years. Today, people still inhabit small towns built by the Spanish. Our hike led us through these villages where people still spoke their native languages, including Quechua and Aymara. Present day farmers still used the ancient infrastructure of terraces and aquaducts.
I must be careful not to enter the territory of cliché if I get overly romantic about the simple, harmonious arrangement that the locals lived in. It is important to note that it is still pretty common for people to move out of the canyon for their education, jobs and the like. Cement and tin-roofed huts suggested that there wasn't much money to go around.
Still, I saw an austere beauty to it all. They had obviously manipulated the local ecosystem with their irrigation ditches and livestock, but trees and cactii were still in abundance. There was also far less litter on the ground than what I had seen in the citiies, none of the desperate sprawl that I had seen in Lima and Nazca. People along the trails included several post card-ready local women adorned in colorful robes. Some of them sold bottled water and soda to thirsty foreigners but even where there was no opportunity for them to gain from us economically, they remained incredibly warm to the visitors to their canyon. When we passed someone along the trail, we were sure to get a smile and a "buenas tardes."

The day we would leave Arequipa for Colca, we had to set an alarm 3:00 in the morning in order to make the tour, which was supposed to pick us up at the hostel. We lurched out of our bunks, gathered our packs in the cold darkness and walked down the hall to some chairs by the door where we could wait.
We jumped up at the sound of the doorbell, but when I unlatched the entrance, it turned out just to be some German guy coming back from the clubs. It was now 3:30 and we were starting to worry about our tour showing up. The bell rang again--only this time it was a Scottish guy. He seemed fairly awake and aware considering the circumstances. When he saw our group sitting around waiting, he decided to sit with us and shoot the breeze for a while.

At last, the actual tour guide knocked on the door and lead us out to the street where a minibus full of other passengers was idling. We tossed our packs in the back, and got our sat down in the last row of seats.
Sleep-deprived as I was, it was almost impossible to drift back off. Instead, I watched as the Arequipa suburbs went by and the bus began to climb up along a windy mountain highway. The stars became vivd as we left the town limits and then filled the sky with so much detail that it made my mind hurt to keep them all within my gaze. The moon was a tiny sliver, making the contrast off the heavens against the darkness of space all the more striking. I could dimly perceive the hulking stone outlines of cliffs to our right; to the left, the dim twinkle of the city dropping away as we climbed. The breath of all the passengers formed a layer of frost on my window which I had to scratch away in order to continue watching outside. It was worth it because I managed to spot two shooting stars.
In a surreal moment, the bus went by a burning truck. Its breaks must have failed coming down the hill and it was now blazing heartily along the roadside. A group of men stood outside the catastrophe like a group of boy scouts at a campfire.

Meanwhile, it became obvious that with each switchback going by, the van was gaining some serious altitude. At around 15,000 feet, the bus reached a flat wasteland of scrub and rock. The rising sun illuminated the gray landscape patched over by frost and frozen pools of water. It was all incredibly beautiful.
My ears had popped several times during the climb. More amusing, Ben's bag of Oreos from Arequipa had swollen up like a balloon in the lower air-pressure. I felt like I was breathing a little harder, but because I was sitting still, the effect on me was not so great. Once I got out to move around, I could tell that ordinary physical effort had got a lot harder.
Ben and I had been hydrating regularly to counteract the lower oxygen but soon found ourselves thinking less about air pressure and more about bladder pressure. Finally, we got the driver to stop and scrambled out and down a rocky ditch so we could relieve ourselves. I reflected that (disregarding airplanes) this was the highest altitude piss that I had taken yet. When I tried to hurry back to our ride, the ten feet of effort had me sucking wind and got the heart pounding. That's when I realized that altitude was real and that I felt it as much as anyone.
After our excursion, the bus began winding down into a lower valley. It was some of the most beautiful scenery I'd seen yet. Too bad the camera wasn't working.

The bus pulled over in Chivay, a local town so that we could have a spartan breakfast of rolls, jelly and coca tea. That's right, it's the same stuff that goes up your nose at the frat, only in its milder organic form. Here, locals consider it an altitude supplement, even though it probably has less of a kick than a cup of coffee. Since everyone knows that drugs are cool, I chugged my mug. Tasted a bit like grass clippings. I thought the coca cookies I'd brought were far tastier. I even distributed some to two British women I'd been talking to along the ride, thereby elevating my status from use to dealer.
We boarded the bus again, which took us off the paved road and onto jaw-clicking dirt. The constant rattling battered all the dust out of the seats and into our air. It was soon as dusty within the cabin as it was on the road outside.
Lots of people were asleep, but I they were missing out. Colca Canyon was on our right, a massive gap in the land surrounded by frowning rock faces. Below, there were fields of terraces built into the slopes. Special bridges built for aquaducts went over the road. At one point, the bus went through a 200 meter long tunnel so that it could cut through a slope. There were no lights within, save from the bus, and the space was filled with dust. We emerged on the other side and drove a few more bumpy miles until we arrived at Cruz del Condor.
At the crest of a rise, we could see the tourists in Peruvian knit caps and massive cameras, thronged about the clifftop like a conquering Inca army. The bus offloaded us at the side of the road and we went out along footpaths to swarms gathered around the edge. People looking down into the canyon hooted, screamed and clicked their shutters as the birds made their lazy swoops along the thermals. Many ran around recklessly without regard for the trails, mindlessly trampling over the vegetation. The whole scene was kind of disgusting, and I was glad to get back in the bus.

If we had signed up for the one day tour, Cruz Del Condor would have been the big highlight of our trip. After we got our pictures, we would have grabbed up some tourist trinkets from one of the stands and called it done. Fortunately we had had the foresight to sign up for the hike and the overnight stay, which meant that we had a chance to explore the canyon's depths while getting away from some of the hoards of people.
The van took us a couple of miles down the road to an adjoining farm path where we got out again to begin our hike. The guides split the bus into two groups. As it happened, we three Americans got the Spanish-speaking guide even though we had signed up for English. This was a surprise blessing however as we got a learning opportunity out of it. Because she spoke clearly and took the time to explain things along the trail, I got a language lesson to go with the tour. She was patient enough to wait for me to piece together my scraps of vocab into coherent questions so that I got practice in speaking as well as listening.
Ben and I took the lead for the descent until there was a French guy that went past us. The canyon's geology was eye-popping: massive basalt walls, rockfalls that had tumbled down the sides. It was extremely warm and bright. There was a wooden-decked suspension bridge at the bottom with a big sign welcoming us to the national park. The patch of shade it created was a popular piece of real-estate for resting hikers and women selling soda and bottled water laid out on blankets. We scooted in out of the sun, took off our bags and waited for the rest of our group.


---------The river as seen through my camera from the bridge--------


Eventually everyone caught up, paid up for bottled water and soda. We crossed the bridge together and followed the path up a steep grade for about two-hundred feet until it leveled out and took a more leisurely course in the direction of the river's flow. The climate down in the canyon was mediterranean with plenty of green plant life, but also with man-made walls, steps and the aqueducts that I had mentioned earlier.
After about a half mile walk, we came into a small town for lunch on an outdoor patio. We had a German couple at our table, along with a Hungarian woman and a gaggle of French. The Hungarian and the French were roughly our age; all would be students at university in Lima in the fall. The French didn't know much English, but we could communicate with them somewhat with the limited Spanish on both sides.
The rest of the hike took us along many ups and downs, through other small canyon towns and to spectacular vistas of the high mountain walls around us. The towns were only accessible by foot or hoof for those with burros. Despite their isolation, some of them had good-sized buildings and works of stone. One had a large stone church and an event plaza. Wires supplied the homes with their electricity. I don't know for sure about internet access, but I kind of doubted it.
I was particularly impressed by the aquaducts, which rushed alongside the path in narrow concrete trenches. The waterways were everywhere, stretching up for miles to their origins in the mountains. In some places, locals had cut tunnels into the rocks to allow the water to pass through the mountainside. At another point, the trail followed the edge of a steep drop where the builders had left room for the aquaduct and not the path. In order to walk around, we had to balance carefully on the concrete curb. Looking down was optional.
Around four o'clock, we redescended into the canyon, pounding down the loose gravel trail, sending clouds of dust into the air. I waved to the brits as we fell past their group. Fast as we were hiking, some guy in running shoes without a pack came sprinting, literally sprinting, out of nowhere and flew past us. In a couple of seconds he flew around the side of a canyon wall and disappeared. I would have liked to know his story, but he wasn't going to hang around and and answer questions.
The descent ended in a bridge over the rapids and consisted of stout lumber supported by steel cables from overhead. The old girl buckled and swung quite a bit as we crossed, but unfortunately it was too wide to have the drama of a true Indiana Jones bridge.

No, we did not sleep in one of the local towns. On the other side of the bridge, there was a settlement of bamboo huts built specifically for tourists. Ben, Max and I got one with three beds, threw off our packs and chilled out for the two hours we had until dinner. Interestingly, these thatched dwellings were perfectly see-through, though I suppose there was nothing we had to hide inside our hut, so it was not a big deal. The place also had an icy spring-fed pool nearby where I refreshed myself to near hypothermia.
I got into my fleece and parka for dinner. The high heat of the day vanished with sunlight, and I relished the thought of a warm dinner alongside a steaming cup of tea. We three Americans sat with the Hungarian and the French for a long dinner inside the central pavilion. Spanish was language of choice at the table, though it was hard not to throw in English words when I got stuck trying to express my thoughts. Trying to justify vegetarianism using a second language is an interesting challenge.
After we'd scraped our plates and drank the dregs from our mugs, I stepped out afterwards to see the most striking star display ever. The southern hemisphere has a different lineup from the north and I didn't recognize anything, save Venus, which shone with the intensity of a searchlight coming over a mountain. I knew about the southern cross, but I didn't know how to look for it. The milky way appeared in such crisp detail, that I felt like I could look at it like a three dimensional object. It is crazy to think that in the days before electric light, our ancestors could look up on any clear night and see that. Maybe that's why they were so nuts.

We would get up at five o'clock the next morning to begin our ascent back to the canyon rim. I should guess that during the course of the climb, we went up about 2,500 feet. This was particularly tough going because we had rocks sliding out underneath each footfall. The effect of the altitude was palpable as well. It is hard to say how much easier our ascent would have been at lower elevation, but I'm sure that the thinner air was no help to us.
Amazingly, despite the tough conditions, I saw men and boys go running past us down the slope, chasing after fully-loaded burros. Our own hike from the base took about two hours, with Ben leading and Max and I trying to catch up.
We waited at the rim for about forty minutes for the rest of the group to catch up. After a short while waiting, I felt the warmth of the hike leave me and the sweaty t-shirt I was wearing gave me the chills. I changed into my fleece, and then put on a hat and parka. As the sun came up. a bunch of Eastern Europeans stood out in warming rays, looking cool as shit smoking their cigarettes. Actually, considering that they were smokers and had still gotten there before us, that was pretty impressive.
We hiked the rest of the way up to a small town where we had lunch and I ended up talking to the brits again. One was an art teacher and the other sold insurance. Both said that they'd found the morning's hike to be more difficult than the Inca Trail. They were both really fun, and sounded like they'd been having a grand time in Peru. Perhaps too much of a grand time based on what they told me about Arequipa.

On the way out of the canyon, our bus stopped at some hotsprings in Chivay, where I took a dip i what appeared to be a dirty swimming pool, only filled with scalding water. Some people apparently think the hot springs have medicinal properties. I agree that they could be a cheap solution for those that want to be sterilized.
Food followed swim--a twenty sole buffet lunch where the true Americans stuffed themselves with as many plates as we could fit. With the proper amount of gumption, we'd be able to get full enough to skip dinner befire we got on the bus to Cuzco.
On the way back over the pass, the Germans complained that they hadn't gotten a chance to see the alpacas and felt cheated. "So you're a liar," one of them told the guide when he told them that it was the wrong time of day for it. Eventually, he pointed out some grazing llamas as we went by. They muttered angrily that it was the wrong kind of dromedary.
The bus began climbing out the way we had came and stopped at 15.000 feet. We got out to sample the altitude, which really wasn't so bad if you weren't running. For some reason there were thousands of rock piles all around. I think it might have been a good luck thing.

It was still a few hours back to Arequipa. We had about an hour to grab our stuff and chill out before we got in a cab and off to the bus station for Cuzco.

Arequipa: The City in The Mountains

After Huacachina and the lines, we spent two nights in Arequipa, the second largest city in Peru. The town stands at a lofty seven-thousand feet (suck it Denver!) and is nestled amongst twenty-thousand foot mountains. The most famous of these is the Mount Fuji doppelganger, El Misti a mostly inactive volcano whose lower slopes are populated with the city outskirts. Basically, there were two directions to walk in Arequipa, up and down. If you keep going up and you don't mind a little cold and some oxygen deprivation, you will eventually end up at the top of Misti.
Though we didn't do anything too spectacular or dangerous while in town, we had a good time all the same. The city was far more tourist friendly town center than Lima did. There were shops full of popular Peruvian crafts, including elaborate ceramics to cuy-themed t-shirts (cuy is the word for guinea pig when it's on your plate, an ancient and popular Peruvian dish. I thought the guinea pig "Cuy Cobain" with guitar and cigarette was kind of stupid.) It's also just as common for shops to stock "keep it legal" t-shirt with a coca leaf on the front as it is to see mary jane. Woven goods were hot in the shops, giving us tourists our fix of scarves, ponchos and gloves made from wool, llama or alpaca. For my part, I bought myself a nifty Peru hat. Every other storefront offered tours out to nearby Colca Canyon, trekking, river raftting, mountain biking etc. With all these places to spend money here, it was surprisingly easy to find an ATM.



Amongst the highlights of our stay, we checked out the Santa Catalina Monastery, which went back to the fifteenth century. Back in the day, it had been a party school. Partying may not be the first thing that comes to mind when you think of monasteries, but apparently all of the women who went there came from the rich, influential families of town who kept their respectability by packing their girls off to study there. The girls may or may not have been interested in God, but they were out to have a good time too—probably broke a few vows if you know what I mean. There might be a profitable independent movie in this for someone.
The place took up a large city block and was built like a maze we could wander. I got some photos of its bright-painted walls, and its walls, which looked really cool against the high-altitude blue sky. We also found a beam of light, that just might have been the holy-ghost. I got a few good blasphemy pictures of myself and others. The reserved spot I have waiting for me in hell just got a few degrees hotter.






Dining in Arequipa was delicious and we also found it to be cheap in a lot of places. We tried out an all-vegetarian restaurant, which had appeared like a yuppie oasis before our eyes. We got the menu, the multi-course meal. For the price of five soles we got soup, a tofu dish, pineapple custard and a refreshing purple glass of chicha morada corn drink.
At the opposite end of the price to value spectrum were the cities two Irish pubs. Let me qualify by saying, that I think its awesome that there are Irish pubs even in high-up, isolated place like Arequipa. Too bad that they sucked.
Beyond the fact that I really like Guinness, The idea of getting a pint in South America appealed to my appreciation for the surreal. Giddy with expectations of creamy, dark Irish goodness, Ben, Max and I went into the pub that was closer to our hostel to get our lunch. Unfortunately, we were already seated and munching on complementary bread when it came time to order so we felt obliged to stay.
"Quisiera un Guinness por favor?" The waiter seemed not to understand. "Tienes cerveza negra?"
Of course! We must want Cusqueña Premium. There's no Guinness here, but the fridge is full of the darker, crappier malt version of cusqueña. Disenheartened, we ate our lunches dry.
That night, we cruised up to the other Irish pub. Guinness! They had Guinness on tap! It would only cost twenty-five soles—a nine dollar pint. In other words, it would cost the same as our two nights in Huacachina. We walked away with low spirits but fortunately there was a place nearby that had some excellent pisco sours that we could cheer ourselves with.

Running in Arequipa was an improvement from our previous (mis)adventures in Lima and Ica. I might even go so far as to say that there were times that I even enjoyed myself. Arequipa's seven foot altitude, pretty much tied it with the Grand Canyon Rim as the highest place I'd stood (never mind the sense of accomplishment that comes with climbing Mt. Washington.) I was a little nervous about trying my legs and lungs out in the thinner air but didn't feel as limited as I had feared. The run, basically half uphill and half down, elevated my heart-rate to skull pounding intensity as we ascended the city's outskirts going towards El Misti.
Views of Misti, and down into the town with its surrounding mountains and desert plains, lent our runs a sense of epicness. It was also a plus to be out of the worst traffic and crowds of people.
The main aggravation and lurking fear we had to worry about were dogs. Dogs wandering on the street, dogs barking at us from rooftops. On our first day in Arequipa, Max and I decided to add ten minutes to our run and got cornered in an alley by a snarling mutt. I had to yell at it and threaten it with a piece of wood from some road construction before it went away. The next afternoon, the three of us were finishing our run when two dogs charged out from behind a wall and danced around us, barking and nipping until we shouted them down. Oh yeah, one of our party, probably not me, had gotten bitten while running in Ica. Thank God the teeth hadn't broken the skin or else we would have had to have tracked down a doctor to administer the necessary, painful round of rabies shots. Considering all the dogs I've seen in Peru and the dog-related grief I've had on this journey, I think money for someone to spay and neuter the population could be one of the best donations Peru could get.

Nazca and The Nazca Lines

We had leisurely start to our day. Instead of a buying a hostel breakfast, we opted to cook for ourselves in the kitchen. I finally remembered how to say 'bowl' in Spanish: 'plato onda.' We filled ours to the brims with an oatmeal/qinuoa mixture that went well with sugar.
Before we went to the lines, we had to do some planning for the remaing time we had in Peru. We decided we would divide our days between Arequipa, Colca Canyon, Cuzco (with Machu Picchu) and finally the jungle. As for me, I silently resolved myself to go to the Cordillera Blanca during the week I´d spend in Peru alone.

With our schedule worked out, the next question was how we would see the lines that day. No one felt like shelling out for a plane ride so we decided that we would go out to the mirador (viewing tower) which was about 12 miles outside of town. There were supposed to be a slew of minibusses in the town center waiting to take us out there, but when we got to the pickup area, we were unable to understand who was going where. There were trucks filled with fruit, motorcycles and mototaxis, all belching fumes within a confused and shouting morass.
We wandered up and down the strip for a while, trying to figure things out. We were close to giving up when some guy with a car asked us if we wanted a ride out to the miradore. For the privilidge, we would pay him twenty soles. We realized that we were taking an unregistered cab, but the price was excellent because he didn't have to pay the highway tolls that an official taxi would. We later found out that most rides to the mirador cost fifty soles a pop. As usual, sketchy equals good value.
The guy ushered us into his car and I took a seat behind the felt dashboard and strange stuffed animals. We had hardly driven a minute when he stopped and shouted at a woman who was looking to go to Ica and got her to cram into the backseat with Max and Ben. Now that the car was fully loaded with four passengers, our driver stood to make the most money.
The cab sped along the Panamerican Highway through a desert waste that was far dufferent from Huacachina. Rather than the beautiful smooth sand we had seen before, the plains of Nazca were filled with broken, jagged rock, the kind that the Nazca and Wari civilizations had removed thousands of years prior to reveal the sand beneath and create the lines.




"This better not be it" was what I said when I saw the viewing tower standing by the side of the highway. It was a skeletal, banged up construction of wood and metal and only about 60 feet up. The sign said that it could hold no more than ten at a time so we were lucky that there was only one other group out there.
There was a small souveneir stand at the base of the tower and a guy who collected the two sole fee.
"Are you from Ireland?" he asked me in soft English. "You have beautiful eyes; I can hardly see them."
I was thrown a bit off guard, but thanked him, and told him that I'd been to Ireland though I was from the USA. I hadn't been wearing any shamrock or Guinness apparel, so it had been an interesting assumption.
At the top of the tower where we could clearly discern the outlines of a tree and a pair disembodied hands below. There were also the more striking straight tracks in the sand, which stretched out into the desert for miles. If anything, the nonrepresentational, parallel lines, built later than the drawings, held an even gerater mystery. As I looked down from the tower, these strange and ancient lines (insert History Channel narrative here) raised the still unanswered question: Why?
The guy that had taken our money at the base of the tower came up and explained some of the archaeologically significant details of the marks before us. He also told us how beautiful we all were.






We spent a bit more time in the tower and then went back down to the Panamerican Highway. It would be a long walk back to town if we couldn´t get a ride. Still, we weren´t interested in hitching just yet and there was a small hill down the road we could climb for a different (free) view of the lines. With the hot sun beating down, we trekked along the bizzare landscape. The three of us looked like a trio of post-apocalyptic refugees setting out to meet our destiny. Meanwhile, cars and busses whizzed by us and the sky was crisscrossed with chartered planes filled with tourists that wanted to see the lines from above.
The hill basically gave us the same view that we had from the tower, but provided a nice place where we could sit and watch the mountains and the lines. Eventually we went back to the highway and wondered how we would got back. We were about to set back for the tower, when a Soyuz bus pulled over. We ended up paying two soles to get to Nazca.






We spent the rest of the day in a leisurely, unambitious fashion. We got our luch at some tiki tourist trap, toured a museum of Nazca artifacts and went back to the hostel. Ben and I opted to skip the daily run and instead try to get to the top of the small mountain outside of town with its cross on top. Sound familar? Like Cerro San Cristobal in Lima, this looked deceptively easy. In fact we needed to cut around people's backyards, irrigation ditches (some of these were literally ancient)and walls. In the back of my mind, I was waiting for the viscious dogs to come leaping out of nowhere. As we cut accross a massive field of broken stone and rubble, Ben and I realized that there would be no way for us to climb the hill and get back before nightfall, so we turned around.
I should also mention that Nazca is home to the biggest sand dune in the world. Standing at over six-thousand feet of elevation above the town, it is taller than Mount Washington, the highest mountain in New England. We could see the megadune towering over us when we went outside the hostel. If the sands of Huacachina were any model, climbing that bastard would have taken more time and energy than we could have set aside for a mere day-hike.




That night, we caught our ten o'clock bus to Arequipa at midnight. I did some writing in the station and sampled one of the cheap, artificially flavored cookies Ben had bought earlier. It started out sweet but then the component chemicals dissolved, bringing out a horrifying aftertaste of mothballs.
Despite the fact that it had arrived late, the Tepsa bus more than reedemed itself with its mindblowing luxury. We settled into our fully reclining seats and had staff wait on us with boxes of mango juice and blankets so that we could sleep during the eight hour ride. Another plus was the onboard bathroom, even though every time I looked up, the occupied light was on. Perhaps a couple had been earning their membership to the meter high club. No matter, I leaned back in my seat and was soon asleep.
When I woke up, the sun was coming into the cabin. We were driving down from a desert pass, and the bus wound between massive walls of stone. I also had some fine views of sandy planes and cacti growing along the side of the road. In a short while, we came into in Arequipa, hailed a cab from the bus station and arrived at the hostel. We were a day late, but glad to have had the diversion.

More Desert Wandering

An account of another vision-quest in the desert, a change of plans, our arrival in Nazca at night.

The morning of our second day in Huacachina, Max, Ben and I returned to the place where we had eaten breakfast the day before. This time, the tunes were less power-ballad oriented and put a heavier emphasis on 80's pop. The result of this was that when I wandered the desert later, a good part off my journey was set to the beat of Whip It and Beat It.
Around 1:00 PM, I filled up a 2.5 liter water bottle and set off to conquer some of the local dunes. First I climbed up on top of the dune that we had been up two nights before and then descended to the valley on the other side. As usual, each footstep brought 20 foot avalanches of sand and filled my boots. Still, there were places where I could tell that the sand was more hard packed, and began to seek them out so that the walking would be easier. I found a way up the next dune that was still steep as hell, but firm enough so that I could put my feet down without sinking in.
The top was another ridge of sand, which I walked along for about half an hour. For some reason, there was a brick up there and with nothing better to do, I picked it up and chucked it down the other side. It took at least two minutes for it to roll the entire way down, setting sand flying in its wake as it tumbled end over end.



I took pictures and wandered aimlessly amongst the dunes for a while and then began heading further out. In the distance, I could see the biggest dune of all and knew that I needed to conquer it. I had plenty of water and plenty of time, I wasn't going to get lost because I was had noted where the bigger dunes around Huacachina were located, and was careful not to let them out of my sight. I could use my compass for some basic orienteering, though I would be a bit limited without a map.
Conveniently enough, there was an open plane between the bigger dunes, where footing was easy (actually, it might have made a nice run.)The walk was a gradual uphill. After about a mile, I could look down and see the big dune that I had climbed earlier below me. Beyond that, I could see the distant sprawl of Ica glittering in the distance. I waiked out for about another hour and then I was ready to begin my main ascent of the hill.
I hadn't realized starting out, but this was in fact, the same hill that we had buggied up the day before. Tracks in the sand showed our crazy ascent and the drop where we had plowed into the stomach-busting dip. We hadn't gone all the way up though, so the summit would be something new.
I began my ascent on the north side of the dune where the sand appeared to be the firmist. To my right side, I could look out and see the different world of desert beyond with its orange sand and stange black, stony crags. By this point, it was late afternoon and the landscape was cast in their mysterious shadows.




I got to the top, and took a few pictures of it all. I was pleased to see that there had been no other footprints to reach this point. Mysteriously enough however, there was a white cylinder resting in a depression partway down the other side. My curiosity was tweaked, so I ran down to check it out. A bag of sand. It was dissapointing that it hadn't been filled with, say, Spanish dubloons, but when I think back on things, it could have actually been a billion dollars worth of cocaine waiting for a pickup. I didn't cut it open to find out, but I suppose I wouldn't have had the crime savvy to put it on the market.
I walked back to Huacachina along a slightly different route which took me over some more dunes. A few people whizzed by in buggies and looked at me like I was some kind of alien. Walking! Imagine that! I smiled and tipped my cap to them.




Back at the hostel, I had about an hour to decompress and shower off before we wanted to get into a cab to the bus station in Ica.
When we got there however, we found that all the tickets to Arequipa, the city we wanted were unavailable. There were however, tickets available for Nazca, the city near the famous lines. It would be about four hours (as opposed to the 12 we had planned for) and would take us partly on the way to Arequopa. We decided that we had had our share of Huacachina and it was time to move onwards. Even if none of had been too stoked for the Lines, at least it meant that we were checking something off the required list for Peru. Hooray!
In a few minutes, we got aboard a Soyuz bus and went into the city. Perhaps arriving in a bus station in a strange city in the dead of night without a hostel booked sounds a little dangerous, but yeah, I guess you could say that we're just that edgy.
It was totally dark outside the bus windows, but in its place I had an unobstructed view of a godawful American movie dubbed in Spanish complete with Iranian bad guys and this woman that cried in every scene. I was rooting for the Iranians--or maybe a fiery bus accident.

As it happened, if we had worried about getting hostels, Nazca apparently had no shortage. One guy was particularly aggressive about trying to get us to go to certain hostels (Our guidebook calls his type a tout.) We blew him off at first, but then found that one of the hostels he was promoting had been one that we had been trying to find anyway. Meanwhile, we booked our tickets for the next ride of town which was 24 hours from now and with a new company, Cruz Del Sur.
The tout waited for us to finish our business with the bus company and then lead us to the hostel. A guy there showed us a room for the three of us with hard beds and pillows that might have been filled with gravel. All for the rate of 20 soles for each of us. The adjoining bathroom was a plus though and it's always nice not to be sleeping on the street wrapped in garbage for
warmth.

Running, Wandering and Surfing The Desert

Yesterday we arrived in the desert and today we really experienced it.
After a late morning wake up, we started with what was maybe an eight mile run along the road from Huacachina towards Ica. We were each feeling sore from the heavy miles that we had logged in Lima, perhàps also from last night's climb. The hill that we hit along the road coming out of the oasis wasn't big, but was trying all the same. It was also the first real incline that we had run up since arriving in Peru.
The famous lagoon, which is featured in the back of Peru's 50 nueva-sole bill, was behind us. To our right, there was the massive sand dune we had climbed the night before with an even bigger dune rising up behind it.



The majesty of the road was short-lived however. As soon as we passed the billboard telling us we were leaving Huacachina, the houses closed in on either side of us. Terrifyingly, many had dogs lining the roofs to bark and snarl at us as we went by. We turned around at outskirts of Ica because the roads were getting choked by honking taxis and clean air killing busses. Dogs were everywhere. On the way back, we saw a kid chasing a group of his friends while dragging a dead rat on a string behind him. Lovely.
Going back, we tried to add distance to our run by exploring some sandy sideroads, but they all dead-ended amongst abandoned shacks, piles of debris and partly burned trash heaps. Also, we heard a distant pack of dogs barking in the distance that weren´t likely to be leashed or friendly. We were a bit discouraged, and turned back early.

On a more positive note, we had a real treat in store for us when we got back to the hostel: warm showers. It was nice to get clean without going to the brink of hypothermia in frigid water.
Refreshed, we sat down for a delicious and cheap outdoor breakfast at a place in town. I ordered tropical pancakes, which turned out to be a soft crepe decorated with a latticework of choclate sauce. It was filled with all manner of delicious fruit, most of which I couldn't recognize. To wash it down, a tasty glass of banana juice.



Outside meanwhile, we saw the sun (the sun!) come out of the clouds and into the blue sky, illuminating the palm treas and warming us in our seats.
So many wonders and luxuries here, and yet if not for the music, the experience could hardly have been called complete. No, it was not reggaetone playing over the outdoor soundsystem; it was "Total Eclipse of the Heart," it was the Titanic theme song! What could better complement the beauty of the morning sun than Beyonce's voice, cranked through your skull at top volume? Needless to say, that breakfast, the whole day that we shared, was something extra-special as a result.



After breakfast, we wandered around the palms by the oasis for a bit and then decided to go up the dune behind the town. We found it considerably easier going when we went up the ridgeline rather than attacking the slope directly as we had the night before.
At the top of the dune, we had a splendid view of the oasis, knew that we could run down to it in thirty seconds though it had taken half an hour to climb as far. Instead, we took funny pictures, including one of me pretending to die of thirst and some shots of Max and Ben leaping through the air and commiting suicide off the edge of the dune. You could afford to jump far and come down hard because the sand cushioned the impact.





The top of the dune offered us another incredible view of our surroundings. To the east lay Ica and the tall mountains beyond. There was a ramshackle town to the north, with a road leading out forever into the great nowhere. West was most impressive as we could see nothing but the blank face of the desert, row upon row of dunes receding until we saw the final, distant ridges of sand. An occassional dune buggy tore across the landscape with the din of its engine and screaming passengers. For all their bluster and noise, they were only blips against the vastness.



We had our own appointment with the buggies, but it was not until 4:00, several hours away. When we got off the dune, I felt exhillerated but unsatisfied by our adventure. As long as Huacachina and Ica were still visible, I couldn't feel as though I had experienced the desert to its fullest. I let Ben and Max went back to relax in the hostel, and began to walk westward, away from town. Using the compass I had with me, I took a bearing on the oasis so that I would know the general direction back if I became disoriented. This wasn't really necessary since I could always follow dune buggy tracks, but I felt safer taking extra precaution.
On the march out, I passed a second oasis, much smaller than Huacachina and also reeking of shit. I speculated as to whether this could be the final resting place for the all the tourist turds flushed out of town. If so, I can can say I made my own contribution to the ugly puddle and its awful reek.
I began climbing up the next hill, sweating and grunting up the rise as sand poured into my boots. In the great struggle, I could still hear the reggae pumping (with everything else)out of the oasis. As soon as I walked down the dune's other side however, the sand blocked everything, and the world became silent. I was in the trough between two massive waves of sand, where there was no visible sign of humanity.
I knew immediatly that my solitude wouldn´t be worth anything unless there were people I could show it off to. In that spirit, I whipped out the camera and mini tripod so that I could have photographic evidence. I set the timer and assumed my best lonesome desert wanderer pose--just in time for a dune buggy to fly in and fuck up the frame.



I made things worse when I thoughtlessly jammed my camera into my pocket, which was full of sand. Sand and cameras are not on good terms--a fact I grew to appreciate as I tried to get the lens to retract. I could still take pictures, but it now took far more time and profanity.
Despite the setback, I pressed on along the quest for greater solitude. After I crested a second dune, I looked out and saw a virgin slope of untrammelled sand before me. It was perhaps three acres of perfect smooth, strirated by alternating light and dark ripples.
Seeing such natural perfection and harmony, the only appropriate human reaction is to defile it utterly. I stepped boldly upon that empty dune and then ran down its slope with arms flailing, boots filling with the hot sand.
There is a tiny wonder that occurs each time one disturbs the dunes which is difficult to describe here. Along slopes, the desert has a skin, a brittle surface shell above the looser sand beneath that behabes as a liquid. Each step triggers shockwaves that go uphill and break this surface into tiny pieces in a phenomenon which looks like icebergs calving off from a glacier.
The surface continues to break away for three to five feet above the footprint and the loose sand beneath streams down, filling the hapless trekkers' boots. The small avalanch then tumbles past where the foot came down to descend another ten or twenty feet like a slow moving avalanche. The rush of sand is audible as a soft hiss.
Each step I took triggered its own mini landslide for about twenty feet down the slope. The lighter colored sand that I disturbed contrasted sharply with the darker sand at the surface, making the proof of my presence all the more obvious. When I had walked a good mile away from the slope, I could sill look back and see the stark line of my descent, vivid like a scar slashed across a pretty face.




After I had contemplated the destruction my boots had caused and thought about the further damage caused by dune buggies such as the one that I would ride later. I felt self-conscious and felt bit guilty.
That was another remarkable quality of the desert: it's hard not to think about yourself while out there. In other environments such as cities and forests, the traveller is only one detail in a sea of chaotic images and patterns, whether these are the billboards and advertisements of the urban jungle or else the whorls and swoops of branches in the woods. Here, however, the land around is an empty page. The traveller is a single mote of static upon a blank screen. When there is nothing to see except the graceful contours of the desert, a human being sticks out like a sore thumb. I thought about how we define our own identities in comparison to our environments whether we are a student at a school, a drinker at a bar etc. The desert emptiness, contrasts the self against the infinite and nothingness. The fact of one's own existence assumes a new significance because it is so unique to everything else.
Okay, so now I'm spiralling dangerously close to the bullshit point of no return. I'll pull myself back from the brink a little by saying that I didn´t get any spiritual revelations. There were no angels, burning wheels or voices from above. Maybe after a week, I would have hallucinated my spirit animal and acheived oneness with the universe. No such luck. At the least, it was refreshing to shed all the audio and visual distractions of everyday life and just look at a lot of sand.

I could have mentioned earlier, that the desert also had a bit of a litter probblem. The desolation was actually interrupted by migratory plastic bags, bottles and other bits of litter left by careless people. Considering how empty the land was, this trash was a painful, visible contrast against the environment.
To alleviate some of my guilt regarding the impact that I was made as a visitor, I picked a plastic bag out of the sand. As I walked back, I filled it with all of the easily accessible junk that I could find. When I got to town, I took the full bag and stuffed it into a trash can. Of course they'd probably just empty that can into one of the shallow landfills that we'd run through earlier. Then the trash would blow back right where I took it from. I tried at least.


Okay, enough of that philosophy-stuff. I was getting worried too! Dune Buggies! Sand Boards! Xtreme sports in your face!
Our dune buggy trip was noisy, scary as hell and pretty damn fun. We got buckled in, digital cameras were sealed in ziplocked bags and those not cool enough to be wearing shades received special glasses so that the whirling grit would not fly into their eyeballs. Our ride was a hulking behemoth, forged out of cast-iron bars into an intimidating shark shape. Ten of us could fit inside, including the driver who attacked the dunes with a zeal for increasing our screams and hollers. The buggy roared like a chainsaw, farting great clouds of diesel smoke as it flew. We sailed to the top of one dune, perhaps 75 feet tall and stopped.
The driver pàssed us our sandboards, fun toys that are much like snowboards, only adapted for regular shoes. The idea is that with enough wax, you can go down the side of the dune, and pretty damn fast.
Everyone stood on top, eyeing the slope and weighing rewards and consequences. The reward is that you could be the first brave enough to make the descent, show everyone how fearless you are; the consequences that you'll probably just fall on your ass, get hurt and look stupid. There will be plenty of people ready to take pictures too.
A guy with a tatoo of the state of Wisconsin on his bicep was the first to go. Equipped with snowboarding experience and a specialized board that had boots, he made it down without difficulty. I watched a couple of others go before I decided to try my luck.
Steering was not a skill that I had, so I went for a straight vertical descent. I made it about halfway down before eating sand. I got up and managed to surf the rest of the way down--almost a victory. Then I fell again.
On their first attempts, both Max and Ben made it about as far as I had before falling. Max's wipeout was particularly impressive because he got air and tumbled for a couple times. Fortunately, we all emerged unscathed from our first rides, ready to screw up again.
We were buggied to a second dune, a taller one this time. I made the mistake of thinking that I had learned something from the last descent and pointed my board downhill.
WHAM! Exploding pain to the right side of my ass. I loosed an obscenity and got partway up so that I could execute a pathetic skid down the rest of the slope. After that, I became far more cautious going downhill, resorting to squatting on the board and dragging my arm behind like a rudder so I could steer/break.
I think I was the slow learner of the pack of us, but at least I was getting some awesome views as the sun went down in the desert. On our last hill, we watched the stunner of a sunset burn out over a set of far-off planes. This was a place we hadn't seen yet, where none of the dune buggies traveled, where ebony crags of rock reared out of the sand like breaching whales.
We loaded the boards and ourselves onto the buggy and tore hell across the landscape. Our driver did not slow for the dimming light, but instead brought his machine roaring up the face of the tallest sand dune in sight. He whirled it back around right before the top so that we had made a great crescent shape, and plunged kamikazee down the slope. My stomach floated as we fell and then whiplashed into my ribcage when we hit the next dune. Then the driver took us back and we did it again.
Someone had brought her kid along with us who was probably not more than the age of five. He screamed and screamed for the whole way back, oblivious to his mother's consolation. It was the purest distillation of agony and terror that I had heard in a while. My heart went out to his suffering. I know that when I was his age, I would have been catatonic by that point.

There was a classic rock-themed restaurant in Huacachina where we got out dinner. The music was all in Spanish and really good. If I had written down the words from the songs, I might have tried to look up the bands and bought some albums back in the USA.

Peru Lesson of the Day--
Cusqueña premium beer is worse than regular Cusqueña

To the Desert

At last, we embarked upon the long-awaited escape from Lima to seek our fortunes elsewhere. Our journey carried us eight hours down the Pan-American Highway to thec city of Ica and then via a short cab ride to the lovely tourist oasis of Huaycachina, an island of green situated amongst the desert sands. The hostel offered two nights of plush leather couches, internet access and comfortable beds, all for roughly nine American dollars. Posh bodegas took the place of the rundown buildings we saw in Lima and Ica. All around were Euro´s and Aussies; the air filled with the Bob Marley and R.E.M. they craved. Poncho-clad Quebecois and dreadlocked Germans mingled in their fashion with the Peruvian locals who sold them culture. Though my irony detector was blinking off the charts, I had to say that I kind of enjoyed the place.
First things first though, I must describe our last run in Lima and then the bus journey that took us to this place.

We started the day with a morning run of about nine and a half miles. The Terrible Shitz had descended upon a percentage of our group though I am happy to say that I had been in the clear so far. Because I know you think this is as interesting as I do, I will say that In Peru the best places to score a bathroom are the outposts of major American corporations. McDonalds and KFC have come through in the clutch for me on multiple occasions when the only other refuge would have been a darkened alley baño where I would have been lucky to find toilet paper, much less a seat.
I may rail against American cultural imperialism when safely at home amongst the beret-wearing, clove-smoking liberal cogniscienti, but abroad I'll happily sacrifice my values in exchange for a good flush.

After we returned from our outing, we picked up supplies at the Tottus, including some big loaves of bread that I planned to consume during the busride along with the red pasta sauce from a bag that I planned to dip it in. For old times sake, I picked out a can of lentils that I thought I´d be able to jimmy open with a pocketknife. Ever since developed a taste for eating cold soup out a can while in Ireland, I´ve taken pride in unusual culinary habits.
We had a fine breakfast of hot qunua made right, not too thin, and said our goodbyes to Rico and Helen. As a small gesture of our gratitude for letting us stay, we gave them a bottle of Argentine wine that we had found at Tottus. Rico shook our hands and told us to have a good time on our journies but to "keep our eyes open." Good advice for sure, but after our time in Lima I had actually began to feel more at ease. Crushes of people, aggressive street vendors, terrible drivers, diesel fumes and poverty--no problemo!

We took a taxi to the bus station about three miles away where we would hop aboard a Soyuz transport going south. That name sound familiar? It's no coincidence that our ride shared its name with the brand of rocket used to propel commies into orbit in cold war times. According to Rico, during the 1970´s when Peru was under a socialist dictatorship, the country received a lot of investment from the Soviet Union. I believe that Soyuz remains under Russian ownership but we didn't have to swear allegiance to Stalin or anything.
The bus was commodius, about as good as a greyhound for far less money.
It had apholstered seats and television screens that played dubbed versions of Heaven is Burning with Russel Crowe and The Bourne Supremacy. Footspace was a bit limited but it was a pretty pleasent setup otherwise.
One other complaint I had was our hot-collared busdriver. We almost missed the bus at the start when Ben ducked into the busstation bathroom. Max and I had to stall the bus driver so he wouldn´t pull away with our luggage. A second time, the guy almost pulled away on Max when he took a leak and would have left him at some desert gas station if not for the heroics of Ben and a Peruvian woman.

The beginning phase of our bus ride brought us through the same parts of town that we had travelled when we left for Patchamacac. For miles further, the highway stayed closed in by houses of mudbrick and sheetmetal until I wondered if Lima ever ended or if it stretched all the way to Chile.


After about an hour into the drive however, we began to see the wild, desert beauty of Peru. The service stations and clapboard shacks were a foil to the sand stretching out in front of us and up the Martian hills to our right. Martian is the best word I can apply to this desert, with its beige sands clumped with rocks, dried up riverbeds and empty canyons--a void lifeless expanse. When the highway cut through a hill, I could see that the earth consisted of stones fused together in dry clay soil.
There were a few terrestrial features however that would have been out of place on the fourth stone from the sun. The shacks for instance, lent the land a wild-west feeling. There was also that mist, everpresent in Lima, which followed us for a while before it disappeared and hot, sunny blue shone out in its place.




In addition to the desert, we had a striking view of the Pacific Ocean with its massive surf and empty beaches. A short ways offshore, there were jagged crags of rock. The surf had worn a hole through one big enough to paddle a kayak through.
All of this was in the absense of sunbathers or hotdog stands. The Peruvian beachfront real-estate market was as yet untapped. In America, the place would have been filled up with expensive beach houses, hotels, ice-cream delicatessans and the like. This coast was as yet unexploited, a beautiful desolation of lonely sand and waves stretching out for miles without interruption. It would be a good place to ride horses while the sun sets--you know, like in a movie.

As the road cut inland, some plantlife popped into view, including fields of grapes, spinach, and other irrigated crops. Palms mingled with thicker deciduous trees and for some reason there was even a bog out there. Maybe some of the greenery was natural waterflow, otherwise a lot of water must have been going to waste.
To the East, I could make out the foothills of the Andes. Using my keen mountaineering skills, I estimated that they were around 6,000 to 10,000 feet. Baby stuff compared to what we would see later on.



At last, the bus rumbled into Ica, a town about the size of Boston whose countless billboards, shacks and gas stations that remined me of the Lima strip. As soon as we got off, we walked away from the crush of taxi drivers trying to offer their services. Instead we went to a less-populated street so that we would get a better price. Sure enough, we ended up getting a cab to Huaycachina for five soles. The only drawback was that it didn´t have enough trunk space for our packs, and I ended up sitting in the passnger seat with all my stuff squashed in front of me. The fifteen minute ride into Huaycachina was uncomfortable to say the least.
It was dark and we were hungry by the time we got ourselves set up at the hostel. The fact that we were in tourist country was immediately apparent. We got a terrible meal at a local joint while a new-agey drum circle beat on ceasely outside. Some dude twirled firesticks for the amusement of the crowd of euro tourists. There was even some chick with dreadlocks writing stuff down in her moleskin notebook, probably going to blog away like some pretentious...okay I'll skip that comment.



We decompressed awhile and then decied that we wanted to climb the nearby sand dune, which loomed about 500 feet above the town. Night had fallen, but the hills were lit from Ica's glow. Amazingly, despite the light pollution, the stars shone through in vivid detail. The dry air must not reflect much light from below.
The climb was tough, far tougher than we had anticipated. Every step, our feet plunged into the fine silt of the dune. Small cascades of sand tumbled down in front of us as went up and the climb became so teep that we had to dig our hands into the slope in order to move forward. We stopped several times so that I could look upwards at our goal as my heart thudded in my head. After a small eternity of climbing, Ben surged to the front and almost fell over the other side.
The dune was not a giant mound, but rather a long wedge through the desert that made a sharp line at its top. We could walk along this edge and trigger mini avalanches of sand down either side.
Further off, there was another sand dune--dimly lit by Ica´s lights and illumination of the the sky. Between this dune and where we stood, there was a gulf of darkness, utterly black and undiscernable.
It was hard to tell, looking at the outlying desert and the clouds on the horizon, where the land ended and the sky began. One thing was certain however, and that was that the rest of the area was competely empty. There were no distant flits of light suggesting human habitation. Any light, even a candle miles out would have been visible to us. The miles of sand that I could see were perfectly smooth and showed no sign of plant or even stone. Certainly it was difficult to imagine any animals in this climate. Dead was not a good word for it because I doubted whether there had ever been anything living.
Against the desert, Huaycachina was thumping with a lively disquoteche and a shitty DJ going at it full blast. We were in a lonely place, but not yet so far from the rest of humanity. The edge of the sand dune marked the frontier, the border betwween the oasis clubs and infinite blank space. If one of us were to walk down the other side of that slope, the sounds from the night´s parties would eventually disappear. The stars, already stark with detail, would shine even brigher when the glow from Ica faded away. The curves of the dunes, with their alien geometry would only boggle the traveller, so that distance and direction would become meaningless values. Eventually the cold would set in; the desert would swallow the poor bastard, dry him to a withered husk and hopefully bury the grim sight so no one would have to see it.




After about 45 minutes of lying in the cold sand, we decided to head down. Waaay easier than going up. In fact we could run, sprint back towards Huaycachina at top speed. Even though it was dark, the sand had no obstacles so there was really no foreseeable consequence to running down the hill with utter abandon. Our long strides carried us back to the road from the summit in perhaps thirty seconds, despite the fact that it had taken us almost an hour to go up it.
We sat on a wall outside somebody´s house and emptied gallons of sand from our boots. You can never really get rid of the sand though. A week later there will still be a little bit of grit behind your ears.