If you are planning a trip to Peru and you read no further, make a note of these words “Peru Hop” and research them.
We travelled a lot as a family but had kept to English speaking countries outside of Europe, so Peru was a new challenge for us. My research highlighted a couple of new things, like Tripadvisor and Trustpilot as we didn’t have smart phones back in the day, so life was a lot easier.
I was looking for some adventure south of Lima and into the northern reaches of the Atacama desert, we were also keen to visit the mysteries Nasca Lines and Tripadvisor threw up the perfect solution, courtesy of Peru Hop, we had a 3 day trip that took to Paracas, Huacachina and then off to Nasca for a flight over the ancient drawings in the desert, it also included various cultural experiences along the way, so it seemed idea.
I mention PeruHop here, because if we had known about them then we would have followed a different itinerary. Basically, they run a scheduled bus service around the main cities and attractions in Peru, linked with their own hotels and you can chop and change your plans online. Our daughter used them this year and found them great, but we took a difficult path.
Regular readers will know that I don’t have much luck with the weather. Lima gets about 1 cm of rain a year and when we were picked up at 6am for the trip, the bus had the windscreen wipers on, I truly am a rain bringer!
After battling through the traffic, we headed out of town, it wasn’t long before poverty of the country became evident as we headed south. The buildings were at best ramshackle and stretched out along the highway until we were out into dry arid desert plains that run alongside the Pan American Highway running south.
The landscape confirmed what I was expecting, miles and miles of nothing, other than hills on one side, a plain out to the sea on the other side and remote clusters of destitute communities.
Dancing Horses of Peru
The highlight of the first day was to be the Dancing Horses of Peru at one of the stops, We were all grateful to get off the bus for the show which seemed to happen at their equivalent of a motorway service station. After a cup of coffee, we headed for the arena to see the silky skills of the rider and the agility of the horses.
Out came the horse and rider, they both bowed to the audience, then the horse ran around in circle a couple of times, the rider waved his hat, it then turned around an ran off. That was the famous Dancing Horses of Peru, and I have to admit it was a tad underwhelming, maybe the running around in circles horses would be a better description.
Guinea Pig Tombola
On to the next event, the Guinea Pig Tombola. To us Guinea Pigs are cuddly, things we keep as pets, whereas in Peru they have a status marginally above a chicken as they are part of their diet.
The tombola was basically a ring, with a dozen gates in the walls. The game involved the guinea pig being put in a box, around a couple of times, then it was released from the box with the intention being that it would escape the ring through a random gate. I suspect gambling was involved in this in the real world with wagers being places on the gate, So a bit more like roulette than tombola.
So, the game began and the guinea pig duly escaped through a gate, it was rounded up, put back in the box and released again. To our surprise it looked around and headed directly for the same gate. Bearing in mind guinea pigs are regarded as food, this little fella had worked out how to survive, because he/she had worked out that if it went through that gate it didn’t get eaten, or it had noticed that its mates had gone out the other gates and were never seen again, whatever the reason, we were impressed by the guinea pigs cunning and were all willing to bet on the next roll of the guinea pig but we were ushered back on the bus.
More hours driving through thewasteland until we turned off down a small road heading towards the sea . After a lot of bumping around, we came across Paracas, which was quite a surprise.
Introducing Pisco Sours
Paracas was paradise in the middle of nowhere. Apparently, it was once a fishing port but had managed to find a way of surviving by running boat trips out to some remote islands it had cleverly called Little Galapagos. This set our imaginations flying and we were looking forward to the boat ride the next morning to sea weird and wonderful creatures.
However, our cultural events for the day were not over. We checked into our hotel (Wooksie insisted on the 3* not the hostel) and headed off to learn how to make Pisco Sours, the famous Peruvian cocktail that got it’s name from the big town up the coast, obviously Pisco.
The demonstration was very good, mixing a variety of ingredients including egg whites, and pisco, which is basically a form of tequila. To be fair we hadn’t paid too much attention on the detailed finer points of the recipe, and I had certainly focused on quantity rather than quality, unfortunately the kindly locals left us to amuse ourselves with the ingredients.
Obviously, this had consequences, mostly on our vision and ability to walk straight, so we set up shop in one of their little waterfront bars, sobered up by drinking beer and having a chilled late afternoon in the sun.
Meet John from Raynes Park
The next passenger onto to the coach in Lima was a rather irritating Brit called John. Seat was wrong, he didn’t have this or didn’t know about that,and generally was a General Moan a Lot. So we decided to give him a wide berth, and chatted to other people instead.
We made it back to the hotel, showered and headed out looking for food and settled on a little BBQ fish place that looked idea and ordered our food. We then settled down reflecting on our day when we were interrupted by an English voice engaging us in conversation, disappointingly it was John.
He was keen to us that the restaurant owners were lovely and kind people. Earlier that afternoon he had stopped in for a snack and been attacked by the pet dog, which was quite a terrifying beast that was sitting in the corner of the restaurant staring at us. If ever there was a need to be tested for tetanus or even rabies, that dog was it.
Having had his hand savaged the owners had helpfully bandaged him up and gave him a meal half price. We then realised that John was one of those Brits that wanders the world, doesn’t like foreigners, survives situations despite their own incompetence, and this wasn’t the end of John in our world, he kept reappearing.
So, we retired back to our hotel as soon as we could offload John, looked out of our bedroom window over the Pacific in the distance, but also over a group of youngsters in the square outside. We The discovered that Peru also had chavs and ill behaved teenagers, and they spent most of the night outside our hotel racing their mopeds and tusk tuks with the exhaust pipes drilled.
Eventually jet lag and exhaustion took over and we got in a couple of hours kip before waking at 5am for our next cultural experience, the early morning trip to Little Galapagos.
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