We flew into Lima for our first glimpse of Peru’s Pacific coastline. Multiple shades of brown with patches of green define the landscape from the dunes to the foothills of the Andes in the distance. This was the start of our land-vacation and total change of venue for the next month.
Water for the coastal populations that we visited of Lima (10 million), Ica (~250,000) and Nazca (~25,000) comes from several major rivers that irrigate the fields and flow to the Pacific from the Andes.
What is amazing about the climate of this coast is the mix of heat and humidity on top of the fact that it rarely if ever rains. Otherwise, we wouldn’t be looking at these ancient archeological sites built from adobe many, many centuries ago, one right in downtown Lima.
We started our time in the big city with a Chifa (chinese food) lunch with our favorite travel agent Maria.
While in Lima, we took a city tour and a few museum visits for a primer of Peru’s pre-Columbian civilizations, all culminating with the Inca empire that took over the entire continental coast for about a century prior to Spanish conquest.
Traveling to Ica by bus, we stayed at a lovely hacienda that was once an old pisco wine distillery, the perfect place to ease into relaxation mode away from the main town.
The next morning we took a very fast & fun dune buggy ride over the sand dunes with a view of a natural oasis, which included some sand boarding!
Another Ica tour took us to an active pisco distillery ~ where they collect and separate the “head” from the ethanol ~ and a vineyard… fun to visit, although we were not sure what to make of straight pisco (pisco sours are tasty!) and Peruvian wine has a ways to go to match its neighbor Chile.
Next stop down the coast was Nazca. In contrast to the cities this was a quaint and walkable small town. Families were enjoying time at the park each day… or watching futball (soccer) on the appliance store's TV… or visiting the markets.
Here we discovered Pollerias with delicious roast chicken dinners with pappas fritas that we visited throughout our stay in Peru!
Nazca was the place for another amazing tour ~ flying over the Nazca lines.
These scaled-up images were dug many centuries ago by pre-Inca people to expose lighter sand under red-sand and have survived due the the unchanging climate, although we did find many locals commenting on the atypical cloud cover during our stay and worried about global warming. These structures are amazing in their imagery and longevity!
Hummingbird
Spider
Astronaut
Monkey
Hands!