Peru Pt. 2 - Huacachina & Nazca

My first bus ride of the trip was from Lima to Nazca. I’m not one for buses, but as far as they go, this one was pretty tame. The touring buses in South America are vastly different from those in the United States. For starters, they’re almost all double deckers. The top floor is much like a standard Greyhound bus, but the bottom floor has seats that are about the size of a first class airplane seat and recline to 160 degrees. You also get meals, but they’re on par with, if not worse than, airline food.

We sat up front and got a birds eye view of how the bus interacts with traffic. Drivers in Lima, and most of Peru, are batshit crazy. There are almost no rules to the road. When you come to an intersection, you don’t stop. You honk to let cross traffic know you’re coming. There are also no lanes, so streets get crammed with four or five cars wide. It’s bizarrely third world in a country that has many first world amenities.

Except for the toilets. Like many countries in South America, the plumbing is old and weak. Therefore, when you wipe your ass, you don’t flush it down the toilet…you throw it in the garbage.

Right. Anyways.

We arrived in Huacachina in the evening. There isn’t a whole lot to do in this little community, so we went to bed. The next day was pretty much more of the same. Andrew and I hung at the pool for much of the day. There’s really only one reason you come to Huacachina. Sandboarding.

Around 430pm, as the sun is on its way down to the horizon, all the tourists hop into a dune buggy and go roaring up into the dunes.  If you’ve never been, it’s an absolute must. It’s highly exhilarating. You go up, down and practically sideways, to the point that you think you’re gonna go tumbling over. They take you up to a series of progressively larger dunes, so you can board down. It had been a good nine years since I’d gotten on a snowboard, and let’s just say it’s not like riding a bicycle.

The first dune I fell on my ass a good ten times. The second dune I made sure I got down the entire dune in one try, so I went face first. And the final dune I made another attempt at descending legitimately. Well, I did a little better than the first time, but I still ass-planted a few times. None of it mattered. I was having a lot of fun.

I had already booked an early morning bus ride to Nazca the next day, so I was off to bed early. However, around 4am, a series of pops went off. I tried to put it behind me and go back to sleep, however after another five or ten minutes had passed, another few pops could be heard. Again I was up and again I tried to put it behind me. A few minutes later a man was in the courtyard clapping his hands. This time, both Andrew and I were up. Something was definitely amiss.

Andrew asked “did you hear the gunshots?”

“Yeah,” I replied.

More clapping could be heard in the courtyard. Finally someone walked out of one of the bungalows.

“You speak Spanish?” the clapping man said.

And then it went silent. I lied back down; eyes wide open, waiting for some sort of resolution. But there was nothing. A good ten minutes passed with nary a peep from the outside world. My eyes closed and the next thing I remember was sunlight peeking through the window. I guess I’ll never know what went on that night.

My bus the next morning was on time. However it arrived 45 minutes later than scheduled. Figures.

I high tailed it to the airport, where the man from the touring company was awaiting me.

“Matthew Porter?” he said as I stepped out of the cab.

Fifteen minutes later I was climbing into the back of one of those rinky dink six seater prop planes. And when I say six seater, I mean only six. Any more and that plane wasn’t taking off.

The actual Nazca lines were pretty cool. Hundreds of years ago, or so they think, the Nazca tribes put these figures into the earth where they would cultivate. No one really knows how or why they’re there. Regardless, it’s pretty impressive to see these shapes from up in the sky.

But, let’s face it, the best part is going up in the sky in a tiny little tin can. We would get near one figure then bank hard to the right around it, then bank hard left so the people on the other side of the plane could see it. Occasionally we’d hit a little turbulence and drop a few feet. It was a pretty wild ride.

The rest of my day was filled with a whole lot of nothing. Nazca is a very small town with little else to do than see the lines. So I sat down in the town square and wrote. At one point, I was approached by a young local girl. She spoke very little English, but persistently tried to communicate with me. After about twenty minutes, I finally realized she was studying English at a local university and wanted some help. So for the next hour or two we communicated by pantomiming, writing in her notebook, and using her English handouts. We covered tenses, sentence construction, and pronunciation. For someone who speaks English fluently, it’s not exactly easy to teach someone who speaks a different language. English has very few rules that can’t be broken. Hell, I don’t even understand how it works. I more or less know what I’m doing because I’ve been using it my entire life.