We took advantage of the bus company “Peru Hop” that caters to tourists and provides an easy hop on/off service between Lima and Cusco. We hopped on the bus at 6am in Lima and made our way south to our next two towns, Paracas and Huacachina.

In Paracas, we stayed at a hostel right on the beach with a very beautiful setting. We were looking forward to a good nights sleep… and then the DJ set started at 10pm. Turned out we found the party hostel in town! It was pretty humorous how loud it was, but we both still managed to sleep pretty well with some help from ear plugs. No party is a match for our desire to sleep! (Yes we realize how old we sound).

Paracas

Paracas is a little beach town about 3 hours south of Lima. The main drag is only about 10 stores long and is clearly catered to tourists. 

We had planned to take a boat ride out to the “poor man’s Galápagos Islands”, the Islas Ballestas located about 15 km off the coast. We had been promised amazing views and even a chance to see penguins that live on the islands! Unfortunately, the weather was too rough and the coast guard wouldn’t allow any boats out the day we arrived. We’ve been told that happens about 4 times a month and it was just unlucky, but everyone we’ve spoken to that’s tried to go within the last month had the same experience… we’re not sure what to believe! We were, however, offered an alternative boat ride to a much closer viewpoint so not all was lost. We saw sea lions and a great view of the Candelabro, a prehistoric geoglyph carved into the Paracas peninsula that is thought to be from 200 BC. It is nearly 600 feet high and a super interesting site. We learned that it is actually disappearing due to wind/rain and it used to be much deeper.

As is true everywhere we’ve been, there were countless dogs running around the town. Paracas was the first time we saw the hairless dogs that are native to Peru, sometimes called Peruvian Inca Orchid. The first time we saw one we were genuinely unsure if we were looking at a dog, pig, hyena, or some combination. Their bodies are completely hairless but they have a sort of mohawk on their heads. I didn’t get a picture of the big ones we saw, but including a picture of a small one – imagine this but much more buff!

Paracas Nature Reserve

We had planned to take windsurfing classes while in Paracas because it is supposedly one of the best places in the world to do it, but it turned out to be too expensive to justify. So instead the tour coordinator at our hostel recommended we take a buggy tour of the Paracas Nature Reserve.

There was about 8 of us that met up with our guide, and each pair got their own buggy. John was our designated driver, and we followed our guide out to the reserve and across beautiful sandy hills and viewpoints. We got to stop several times to get out and take pictures and watch the sunset. It was a very unique way to see such a beautiful place!

Huacachina

Our next stop was to the tiny town of Huacachina, which is the last oasis left in the Americas. It was quite a sight to see this little lake in the middle of the desert. There are only about 100 local people that live there, the town is completely taken over by tourists everyday when the tour buses roll in.

The main attraction here is to take a buggy and sandboarding tour of the giant sand dunes that surround the oasis. The most standard of these tours is a 3 hour tour on the buggies with an opportunity to sandboard down dunes laying on your stomach so you don’t fall and hurt yourself. Considering I’ve broken my wrist falling on sand before, this sounded great to me. John wanted to use his snowboarding skills and learn how to board down the hills on his feet, so he opted for a more advanced course and we went to separate tours.

For my tour, 10 of us squeezed into a large dune buggy with a professional driver whose job it is to give us a major adrenaline rush. He succeeded! We went flying over giant sand dunes, scaling huge hills right on the edge, and going down huge drops just like a roller coaster. It was truly a one of a kind experience, somewhat terrifying but incredibly fun! Our driver stopped at the top of our first dune that was relatively small (still huge) and gave us our first chance at sandboarding. He waxed the bottom of our boards briefly, then one at a time had us lay on our stomachs, made sure we had decent body position, then pushed us down the hill. Our only brakes were our feet dragging in the sand behind us – I probably accumulated half the dune on my way down in my pockets and shoes! It was a perfect alternative use for our face masks though – the one part of me that didn’t have sand by the end was my mouth and nose. After another thrilling ride and boarding down an even larger dune, our driver sped us over to a beautiful view of the sunset over the desert. Once the sun went down we all expected to head back to town, but our driver had one last HUGE hill in store for us. It was getting dark at this point and we couldn’t really tell how far down it went, but based on how fast we had already been going almost all of us opted out of this one. Three brave souls in my group took the plunge and the rest of us jumped back in the buggy to reach them at the bottom instead. They all looked pretty frazzled, but survived and were laughing about it when we reached them. Truly a wild afternoon!

John’s excursion was tilted much more toward sandboarding than buggying, and he got a professional board with foot straps and boots to make the standing much safer. Comparing videos, it looks like going down the hills on your stomach results in you going way faster than standing on the boards. We’re not convinced my version was actually any safer! John was the only one in his class with previous boarding experience, so he got extra tips from his instructor and learned to carve across the hill. He says it was fun but you go pretty slow and snowboarding is more fun!

Our plan was to continue on the bus south to Cusco, but the buses were a little too much for our stomachs to handle so we opted out of the looming night buses and headed back to Lima to catch a flight to Cusco. We’re glad we were able to see these two small towns on the way though!

Christine