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Pisco, Peru
13° 41' S 76° 13' W
Aug 18, 2004 00:30
Distance 205km

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Other entries in Pisco

To Pisco and Co (17 & 18 August 2004)

Text written in: English

The bus left on time, almost, so I was almost happy. The fact that there were 20 French people on an organised tour in my bus did not make me happy. In Chincha one of the French tourists had her bag stolen which she had put in the overhead compartment. Travel rule number one is that you never put stuff there unless you want to risk that it gets stolen. So it happened. Of course the nitwits insisted on a police report right here in Chincha so they held up the bus for two hours (only). My mood was below freezing and my hate for French people in general was above boiling. Could they not wait until Pisco? Of course the French had not learned their lesson and still left the rest of the stuff up there, causing me to hope that it would happen again by the next stop.

Pisco was a nice little town with a small but attractive and clean Plaza de Armas. Being a tourist trap town I was pulled in five different ways before my feet had reached the ground and before I had picked up my luggage. As usual I said absolutely nothing to the touts who were trying to sell me a tour or hotel so they get commision. They absolutely hate it when you say absolutely nothing, but what else can I say? Saying NO thank you does not help with these vampires so why bother? If they do not have the decency to let me leave my bus first and pick up my luggage then I do not have the decency to be polite. Easy!

I walked past five hotels who shouted at me that they had great rooms and entered the first one that was not attacking tourists on the street. Hostal El Eden was very nice and clean and for a good price. It had constantly hot water the second I opened the taps and it almost made me decide that I would stay forever. A simple dinner in a non touristic place saved me 75% of the price compared to the tourist restaurants and it tasted great.

I had cancelled my plan to do a wildlife tour to the Ballestas Islands because the climate was still bad. The coastal fog woul make it miserable and I did not want to get up at 6:00 AM. All tours leave at 7:00 AM for some stupid reason. I just took a combi to Paracas from where the boats leave and had a lunch at one of the restaurants along the ocean. There were some pelicans and other birds around and by the time I had finished lunch around 14:00 the sky even became sunny and party blue for a few minuts. The whole coast smelled like rotten fish also partly because of the fish factories along the road that connects the small dusty village of Paracas with Pisco.

There appeared to be no transport to the Peninsula and chartering a taxi for one was too expensive, so I decided to return to Pisco and try to find a bus to Nazca. I went to the Ormeño terminal where I had arrived and they had a Royal Class to Nazca, three hours for 45 soles. Nuts to charge such a price and it was even more nuts that it took the employee at the ticket office 40 minutes to get an answer from the office in Lima to confirm whether they had seats available. Only after they had confirmed the seat availability I heard the price.

I decided to find another bus but there were no other companies with buses from Pisco to Nazca. There was a comany with buses to Ica every 30 minutes and I decided to take that one at 16:00. Ica is an hour towards Nazca and I was hoping there would be more buses in Ica for Nazca.

The trip was the same boring and polluted desert it had been since Ecuador and I really could not understand why people said Peru was so beautiful. Apart from the stretch around Huaraz this country has been the biggest dump ever. In Ica the usual touts attacked me trying to sell me tours hostels and other shit I did not wanted and as usual I ignored them. On the way out of the bus I was sandwiched in the aisle of the bus by two obscure guys. The one in front of me was clearly trying to stop me so that the other behind me could pick my pockets. It was so obvious that I decided to push the guy in front of me so hard that he almost fell out of the bus, making room for me to step forward and get the guys´ hands out of my empty pockets (of course) at the same time.