Quick facts: Capital of Paracas District; GPS: -13.83522, -76.25047; GMT-5; Altitude: 18′
Paracas – From here on out in Peru I’ll be using Peru Hop with one exception. From Lima the bus will take us all to Paracas south of Lima. Since they are located in Miraflores and most tourists probably stay close by they’ll usually come and pick you up at your hotel. The little shuttle bus was there to pick a few of us up at 06:30. It was only a few blocks away and there we boarded a pretty big tour bus. It was quite larger than I thought it would be. All the pictures I saw were small to medium sized buses and I figured that’s what it would be like. Peru Hop is moving up in the world.
Once everyone was on board we headed out. It was nice to see the coast line in the day light as I had mostly only seen it at sunset or when it was pitch black. We traveled down the highway for a couple hours and then they stopped for us to get out and stretch and get some breakfast. I tried all three they had to offer which were: chicharrones, egg and cheese, and avocado sandwiches. They were all pretty good but I think the best would’ve been all three together in one.
From there we got back on the road for probably 2.5 hours or so before making the first actual touristy stop at Tambo Colorado. We toured around this site for about an hour and learned some history of how the people lived and what this place was used for. It’s old and wasn’t preserved very well until recently so there isn’t much to see now but I’m sure it was wonderful back then.
Back on the bus we were only an hour or so away from Paracas and it went quickly. When we arrived I opted to skip lunch with the group and take a tour of the national park near by since I would not get a chance to do it tomorrow as normally scheduled.
This was a pretty cool tour. It was two hours long and only made 3 stops at certain places in order to see the cliffs, the ocean, and the peninsula. The park itself is mostly made up of a sandy desert and looks a lot like what I expect Mars looks like. Some day maybe I’ll be able to add another category, Mars, similar to the Earth one I have on here 🙂 Out in the water at one of the stops we saw some dolphins swimming around, that was pretty cool. I didn’t expect to see them so close to shore. There were also several species of birds, the biggest being some turkey vultures.
Once the tour was over it took maybe 15 minutes to get back to Paracas since it’s really close. I grabbed my bag from the storage room and went and checked into the hotel, Hospedaje Racs. Paracas is a really small town and you can walk it end to end in 10 minutes or less.
The rest of the evening was pretty laid back since there is so little to do. I watched the sunset on the beach and then waited around for the group from Peru Hop to meet for Dinner. I had hoped to go to a more traditional place for dinner but we wound up at a pizza place. It was about what you’d expect for pizza in a tiny town in Peru. We did get a free drink out of it for being with Peru Hop though so I guess that was nice. After dinner some of our group went to another hotel/bar and had some drinks. Most of this party left fairly quick since they were getting up sort of early for a tour. I went back to my room and hit the rack just a bit after midnight.