Welcome to Peru – culture shock and the first seelions

Peru – I can’t believe how much we’ve seen. We have been here since 16th of April, and were travelling at the speed of light. We almost had no time to relax. Now we are taking it a little slower and have time to show you what we’ve experienced so far.

Culture shock south america

In Mexico it has already started, but in Peru it expanded – the culture shock. Well maybe culture shock is a little too much, it are more cultural curiosities.

What I personally cannot get used to, is in each bathroom, there is a trash been right next to the toilet, where used toilet paper is supposed to be thrown in. I found out that in some countries in Europe it is the same, doesn’t make it less weird and a little gross though.

Plastic usage is unbelievable here. Pretty much everything is packed in plastic, multiple times. Yesterday we got ourselves a pizza, para llevar (to go). There was also a drink included, of course also to go… 😀

Also the package sizes are partially intriguing. We wanted to buy some eggs for breakfast. This was the smallest package:

We are talking about almost 1kg of eggs. In case you want to know what the price means, it is in Soles. You can say that this is about 4 times of the price in Euro’s. Therefore this “pack” of eggs has cost us about 1,50 Euro’s.

Paracas – Sealions, penguins, and unlimited birds

From Mexico we have flown to Lima, where we haven’t done that much. Checked in, went grocery shopping and then we went to bed (after a nice frozen Pizza, which we had to make in the microwave because we didn’t check if we had an oven in the Hostel).

On the next day we went to the bus station by taxi. Never before have we experienced driving like this. Nobody cares about traffic regulations, who honks first has the right of way. During the 30 minute drive, our taxi almost had 5 accidents, even with one of the countless Tuk-Tuks

And the permanent honking. Unbelievable.

From there we had a very comfy bus ride with a bus from Peru bus to Paracas.

In Paracas there are two main tours, which we booked for only 7 Euros both in our Hostel (Hospedaje Mary). So the next day we were picked up by our guide for the first tour to…

Islas Ballestas

The Islas Ballestas were really well worth seeing. On the boat tour you could see the Candelabro de Paracas, the chandelier from Paracas. Nobody knows how it got there. Theories start from Maya’s up to pirates or even aliens.

The we got to the stone formations and little islands, were there were sealions and penguins. That was pretty cool.

Especially the masses of birds were unbelievable, as you can see in this video.

I have to admit, seeing so many birds makes you scared of having multiple white blotches on you, but we were spared 🙂

National park Paracas

After the nice boat tour we went to the national park. It was unfortunately not as good as the boat tour. First you could see flamingoes, so far away that the little pink dots were not really a highlight.

Then we drove to the desert and the red beach. The desert was nice, but not as light as you usually expect. But don’t worry, a really cool desert will follow in the next post.

It was really interesting that everywhere you scratch the surface you found salt.

The we went to the red beach. The pictures we saw before had nothing to do with reality, but it was pretty anyhow. 🙂

Expectation:

Reality:

All in all you can say, the Islas Ballestas are worth seeing, the national park is okay, if you have spare time.

In Paracas city

Paracas itself wasn’t so touristic. It is a small fishing village and feels more like Peru than the tourist hot spots.

Really awesome was also the Hostel Kokopelli. It was expensive to live there, but you could use the bar and restaurant even when you didn’t live there. Also the soccer table, ping pong and billiard were free. So it’s cool for a visit, nice atmosphere and many young people.

Okay, so that’s it from Peru for now, more to come shortly 🙂

Adios Amigos y Amigas!