Category: Peru

We had a sea day with a lovely sunset and then arrived in Lima. A cute little, red tugboat helped shunt us into place at the dockside. Diane and I joined a group on a tour of Lima. We are going to be in and out of Lima quite a bit over the next couple of months. A guided tour seemed like a good way to make our initial acquaintance. As guided tours go, it was pretty boring. The traffic is terrible. Lima does not have any sort of mass transit system and it certainly felt like we spent most of the day in a traffic jam. The central square was closed because the president, Dina Boluarte, was in her office and did not want to be disturbed by demonstrations. Everyone got off the coach for a walk around. Diane and I found a small café for beer and pizza. Then there was confusion about where to meet which wasted a lot of time and some people got quite grumpy. We drove down to the Miraflores area. Popular with tourists who enjoy the walk along the cliff tops. This is where most of the larger hotels are. We also spotted a statue of Paddington Bear – who, as is well known, originates from “deepest, darkest, Peru”. In the evening we enjoyed a fabulous sunset over the docks before setting a course south.

Next morning we arrived early at Pisco. The national drink of Peru and Chile, takes it name from this city. Peruvian Pisco Sour uses pisco with freshly squeezed lime juice, simple syrup, ice, egg white, and Angostura bitters. In Chile it is made slightly differently. But we were not here to drink, we had come to see the Nazca lines. I have known about these lines for years. Ever since reading Von Däniken’s best-selling book “Chariots of the Gods”. He speculates about ancient astronauts using the lines for navigation, or a landing site, or something like that. This is, of course, complete nonsense but nonetheless it instilled a lasting sense of awe into my pre-pubescent brain. Now we were going to take a flight over them.

A half hour drive brought us to a deserted airport. Very strange place. A brand-new airport. The bollards at the entrance still had protective plastic film on. Obviously built to be quite a big airport but, apparently, only used by a couple of small aircraft flying over the Nazca lines. Despite the size, there was then a lot of confusion. We waited around for the best part of two hours but eventually got put into a small group, assigned seats and walked out onto the tarmac. The plane was not my ideal for sightseeing. A dozen small seats. Small and very scratched window to look out of. Diane and I were flying on Aerodiana airlines. We sat back and tried to enjoy it.

The weather had improved since the morning. Sadly, it was still rather hazy with a flat light. This combined with the plastic windows meant that my photographs were really struggling to show any detail. It took quite a bit of post-processing to make them look anything other than featureless desert. The flight out, across the desert, was interesting. There is virtually no rainfall here. Less than a millimetre last year. Where the ground had been irrigated it appeared to be very fertile. A stark contrast to the dry, hard dessert right next to the fields. The first thing I noticed as we started to get closer to the Nazca lines is that there are lines everywhere. Not all of these were ancient lines with arcane meaning. Some were simply vehicle tracks, or footpaths, riverbeds and even a modern tarmac road. Most Nazca lines run straight across the landscape, but there are also figurative designs of animals and plants. This is what we had really come to see. Our co-pilot announced when we turned onto the first of the figures and I am fairly sure than many of the passengers could not see it. Only when we had passed several of the shapes could we really begin to see them. The plane did a well-planned dance so that we flew over each figure, first to one side and then to other. There are about a dozen main figures. They are all quite close together. In total the flight was well over an hour but I think only about fifteen minutes of that was actually flying over the shapes. On balance, it was interesting to see the lines and flying is the best way to do it. Nonetheless, I felt a sense of anticlimax. The photographs were not very good but I suspect the real problem was that it was never going to live up to my childhood expectations.

Advice from the British Foreign Office was to avoid Columbia and Ecuador. Not the whole of each country but certainly the bits we were intending to visit. Instead, we had two sea days. Life was quiet. We crossed the equator. Naturally, Poseidon came on board to gives his blessing to the initiates. Diane and I stayed well out of the way. I felt there should have been some sort of party for those doing pole-to-pole. Didn’t happen. We had a couple of nice glasses of wine in the bar.

Then we arrived at Máncora in northern Peru. Later, I discovered that we were the first cruise ship to ever call at Máncora. Of course, we don’t think of ourselves as a cruise ship. It is an expedition ship. But with three nice restaurants, a bar and comfortable cabins it could easily be mistaken for a cruise. There was nowhere to moor up. We had to anchor off. First task of the day was whale watching.

The whale watching boats right came up to the Amundsen so that we could step on directly. About forty people to a boat. It was cramped. A bit too cramped for me. I need a bit of space to swing the camera around. Felt like every shot I took had someone or something in the way. In the end I did manage a few photographs but it was awkward. There were whales. That was the main thing. Over the course of a couple of hours we spotted two humpback whales with calves. They behaved very differently from the humpbacks we had seen in Iceland. The mature animals were very sedate unlike their offspring who both kept leaping into the air. A breaching humpback whale, even a smaller young one, is quite a sight. Difficult to photograph in the best of circumstances. I needed to guess where they were going to pop up. If I stood up it was a lot quicker and easier to bring the camera to bear. But then someone would complain that I was in their way. It was great to see some whales. It always it. But this particular trip was also a bit frustrating.

In the afternoon, we could use the RHIBs to go ashore. There was a little jetty which made landing easy enough for Diane. We had a short walk down the beach. Máncora, population 10,000, is a resort town. The Pan-American Highway is the main street. It is a popular surfing destination amongst Peruvians but not so well known further afield. The beach was busy. People were swimming, driving jet skis, surfing and just lazing around. We had a beer and wandered back to the jetty. Waiting for the RHIB back to our ship I saw frigate birds, boobies, pelicans, cormorants, and large turtles. A fisherman was cutting up fish at the end of the pier. He was throwing unwanted fish bits alternately to the local dogs sitting patiently around him and the giant turtles swimming under the deck.