As we couldn’t risk the altitude of Cusco for Machu Picchu, and Puno/Lake Titicaca was definitely off the cards, we decided to take a trip down the coast instead. When researching transport options Debbie came across Peru Hop – founded by an Irish guy and with the marketing strapline ‘Don’t be a typical tourist… discover the REAL Peru’ – effectively a hop-on, hop-off bus with a set route, an onboard English-speaking guide and a few ‘complimentary’ excursions en-route. Their Lima to The Canyon itinerary seemed ideal, we debated the cost relative to a normal bus but decided to go for it as there’d be no messing about with the Peruvian transport system or getting to/from bus stations in dodgy parts of town early morning or late at night, and we might get to experience things that we wouldn’t otherwise. It’s actually a brilliant concept, especially for solo travellers wanting to meet new friends, the ‘Hop Host’ on each bus communicates with their group by WhatsApp and organises communal meals and parties for those wishing to partake, and it’s very easy to book/change your bus booking on an app. Obviously we were about 40 years older than most on the party-bus, but the occasional seasoned traveller joined us on some trips to bring the average age above 20.

Paracas

We’d nipped back to Lima after the jungle to collect our luggage and we were collected from the Holiday Inn at an ungodly 0605 on a shuttle to connect with the big bus in Barranco and headed south out of the city. After an hour or so we stopped at a traditional bread oven for breakfast – basically elongated dough balls filled with ham, cheese and olives – delicious, before continuing to the Hacienda San Jose to see the underground tunnels used for smuggling slaves the 5km from the port to avoid paying Slave Tax. At one point this place had 2,000 slaves – today it is a rather nice hotel.

We arrived in Paracas early afternoon, found a laundry to drop off our dirty washing and took a tuk-tuk the short distance to our hotel. The fare was 6 Soles (about £1.20), the smallest note we had was 50 Soles (just over a tenner), the driver insisted he had no change as did the hotel. So Steve offered a deal – heads we give him the 50 Sole note, tails he walks away without a fare. The coin landed on tails and the driver was having none of it, but eventually someone in the hotel found 6 Soles and lent it to us to pay the driver. Of course he had change, he just didn’t want that 50 Sole note for some reason.

There was a fancy Marriott Luxury Collection resort in Paracas but we couldn’t justify the cost, instead opting for Atoq Paracas Reserve, a lovely little boutique place on the seafront promenade in a quiet location just out of town. Just what we needed for a couple of days of relaxation. The setting was gorgeous with views of the sands of the Paracas National Reserve across the water.

Here we learned about why the coastal area of Peru is desert – a unique combination of the cold Humboldt Current limiting the amount of moisture available to form rain clouds, atmospheric conditions and the Andes rain shadow. The result is that the Peruvian coast is one of the driest places on East, with some areas receiving just a few mm of rain per year.The National Reserve has spectacular scenery where sandy cliffs meet the sea, quad bikes and buggies are available for a fun trip on the sandy roads, and it offers bikers some spectacular terrain. Sadly we did see a couple of dead sea lions on the beach though.

The small village of Paracas is a holiday resort of sorts, with some very fancy houses near our hotel (presumably weekend homes for Lima’s wealthy), an incredible collection of inflatable waterpark structures, some nice food and spectacular sunsets. It’s not a particularly attractive place though. When collecting our laundry one evening, Steve spotted a tiny pure white bunny rabbit hopping along the road. Obviously an escaped pet but the area wasn’t one we felt confident to go knocking in doors to find its owner so he put it ‘safely’ in a bush next to the pavement. We doubt it made it to morning 🙁

The star attraction of Paracas is a trip to the Ballestas Islands – known as Peru’s Galapagos and also ‘Poor Man’s Galapagos’ – but as we’d recently visited the real thing we felt no need to bother with Peru’s version. Listening to reports from our fellow travellers, we made the right decision to simply relax instead.

Huacachina

Pronounced Wacka-cheena, and also known as Huaca-Fucking-China, a desert oasis near the city of Ica and a destination for extreme sports enthusiasts and extreme party animals. We are neither!

But we do like our wine, and the nearby Ica Valley is Peru’s wine and Pisco capital, responsible for most of the country’s output and home to South America’s oldest winery (Vina Tacoma founded in 1540). The dry, desert climate tempered by Pacific Ocean breezes and cooling winds from the Andes, creates extreme temperature shifts that yield grapes with ripe flavours and fresh acidity. “Ica” means “water below the surface” and explains how farming is possible in the desert.

En route to Huacachina we stopped for lunch and wine/Pisco tasting at Cultur Pisco – this was not a luxury experience, we drank from plastic shot glasses while being encouraged to recite traditional toasts in Spanish. One example translated to ‘Mother Mary, she who had a child without sin, please let me sin without having a child‘ – classy! The wines were far too sweet, the Pisco-based version of Baileys and made with condensed milk was sickly, and the neat Pisco was firewater (its nearest cousin is Grappa). But we did enjoy a ready mixed, semi-prepared, Maracuya (passionfruit) Sour so bought a bottle.

Arriving into Huacachina was spectacular, with enormous dunes surrounding the small oasis. It’s a tiny place with one road and a path circling a small lake, and home to hostels, eateries, a couple of hotels, hundreds of ATVs/buggies and more ski/board hire outlets than Courcheval (that may be a slight exaggeration).

We’d opted for Hotel Sonoma, newly opened and by far the poshest place in town, but still less than £90/night for the best room grade. We’d not expected much but this place was brilliant, with a fabulous pool area in the shadow of towering (almost vertical) dunes, a stylish restaurant/bar, some great outdoor seating areas with fire pits, music playing, and large guest rooms. The rooms were rather barren and functional though, quite at odds with the style and opulance of the rest of the hotel.

Most Peru Hop guests stay for just one night, doing a dune buggy and sand boarding excursion on arrival day and leaving the following afternoon. We decided to stay 2 nights as we weren’t in a rush, and the hotel was a perfect place to relax and watch the mad young things climb up the dunes with their skis/boards. Debbie had intended to join a buggy tour but decided it all sounded a bit too much like hard work, so we drank cocktails instead. But she did want to see sunset and that meant climbing the dune behind our hotel. Steve asked her to take photos – there was no way he’d manage that climb with his dodgy lungs. Debbie almost didn’t manage it either – bloody hard work but well worth it…

The extreme sport and party reputation of Huacachina was well deserved – the gradients that folk were skiing/boarding down were ridiculous, the dune buggy drivers were nutters, and the karaoke was still going strong at 4am when Debbie got up to go to the loo! It’s certainly adrenaline central – great fun for the kiddies but we enjoyed it too, just in a very different way.

Nazca

Home of the mysterious Nazca Lines, enormous geoglyphs etched into the desert of southern Peru between 200BC and 600AD. No-one really nows their purpose but theories include religious or ceremonial sites, astronomic alignments, processional pathways and routes connected with water and fertility rituals. The lines are so large that many designs are best appreciated from the air, but Peru Hop buses do stop at a tower which enables viewing of 3 impressive figures without needing to take a flight or stay overnight, and so most folk stay on the bus and continue to the next stop. We wanted to take a flight so opted to spend 24 hours in Nazca.

Most guide books dismiss Nazca as a rubbish place to stay so our expectations were low – and we were pleasantly surprised. Our hotel DM Nazca had recently been refurbished, in fact we think we were the first people to stay in our room, and had a spectacular swimming pool. Perfect for a lazy afternoon in the sun after our morning flight and while waiting for the bus to depart at 18.00. Nazca itself was better than expected too – a bustling desert town with plenty of shops, restaurants and places to drink our favourite Pisco Sours.

We booked the flight through Peru Hop as they had done safety/risk assessments and had a preferred airline, and the price was good at $85 each. But we were both over the weight limit so should each have had to purchase an extra seat. Debbie managed to negotiate – we weren’t that much over the limit, and certainly weren’t the equivalent of 2 small people each, so how about we just pay for one extra seat between us? Agreed. The diet starts as soon as we get home though! Morning flights are recommended as winds tend to pick up during the day, so we booked the earliest slot and took a Kwell as suggested for inevitable motion sickness. And we hung around in the airport terminal for ages waiting for our departure slot with Aeronasca, paid our departure and airport taxes, and eventually were called to gate and security scanners – just like a real airport. Us two fatties and 3 skinny bods to balance the weight distribution were led across the tarmac to our tiny prop plane and we were positioned directly behind the pilots. Steve had decided to film the whole thing on his GoPro so had it attached to his head and looked like a real tit! The 30 minute flight took us over some spectacular scenery before banking over a series of amazing shapes, allowing both sides of the plane to get a good view. The light wasn’t ideal for the photos & videos, it’s probably better in the afternoon, but the sights were incredible. The Kwells did their job, but from the smell we suspect that one of our flight companions didn’t fare as well as us 🙁

Arequipa

A 12 hour overnight journey took us 350 miles from Nazca down the coast to Arequipa, Peru’s 2nd city but with only 1/10th the population of Lima, The bus was bloody uncomfortable as the slippery seats didn’t recline that far, and it was a good job it was dark so we couldn’t see that much of the steep drop offs at the side of the mountain and cliff-top coastal roads that had no barriers. Debbie had a bit of sleep early in the journey but was awake for most of the night, but from the noise coming from Steve (he can’t use his CPAP machine without power) it was clear that he was sleeping soundly. We’d booked a hotel room in Arequipa for that night to enable us to get straight into our room on arrival at 05.30 – a bit extravagant but worth every Peruvian Sole.

The Katari Hotel was perfectly situated on Arequipa’s main square (Plaza de Armas) and Debbie chose it for the most spectacular view from the rooftop restaurant/bar. She managed to wake up in time to get breakfast before it finished at 10am and confirmed that indeed the vista was amazing – across the galleried square to the cathedral, with the snowcapped Misti, Chachani and Picchu Picchu volcanos as a backdrop. Just beautiful.

We needed to take it slowly in Arequipa as it’s at 2,500m altitude. We’d been that high at Valle de Cocora in Colombia and Quito Airport but only a brief periods, so it was uncertain how Steve’s lungs would cope at that altitude for a 3 day stay. Our escape plan was to get a flight out if he struggled too much. He was definitely feeling it, not helped by a lingering cough/cold, so we just had a little wander around the immediate vicinity, marvelling at how beautiful the city was with most buildings constructed from sillar, a white rock formed from ash and pyroclastic material ejected from the nearby volcanoes – relatively soft when quarried, making it easy to carve, but hardens when exposed to air. Because so many buildings are constructed from sillar, Arequipa is known as La Ciudad Blanca (The White City) and the white facades are particularly striking in the morning and late afternoon sunlight.

The following day we visited the tourist highlight of Monasterio de Santa Catalina, one of the most remarkable colonial religious sites in South America, founded in 1579 and with streets, plazas, courtyards, cloisters, living quarters, a cemetery, cathedral and chapels within its walls – a city within a city that is still home to a small number of Dominican nuns. A beautiful and amazing place.

Religion is a really big thing in Arequipa, with spectacular churches on almost every corner. We nearly didn’t make it into the Cathedral, one of Peru’s most impressive, as Debbie was wearing knee length shorts. So, much to the disgust of the very officious security doorman, she moved them down slightly on her hips (90s hip-hop style!) so that her knees were covered, and he had to let her in. The rules didn’t say that you couldn’t show the top of your knickers! The cathedral was indeed impressive – built from pillar volcanic stone, a magnificent facade, twin towers, 70 Corinthian columns, a marble high altar, one of the largest pipe organs in South America and lots of precious art, gold and silver treasures. A very obvious display of the wealth of the Holy Roman Catholic Church!

Food is as big a deal here as in Lima, and arguably far more accessible. We ate Peruvian-Thai fusion at Tao, a stylish restaurant with a courtyard; sizzling alpaca (and beef, lamb, chicken) steaks cooked on volcanic stones at Zig Zag, where bibs were provided to save our clothes; and at Peruvian Cooking Experience we had great fun making our own Causa and Lomo Saltado while wearing silly hats! At the bustling San Camilo Market we saw an abundance of beautiful fresh produce, including a ridiculous number of potato varieties (the Peruvians are obsessed with spuds and eat them at every meal).

There was good shopping in Arequipa too (it really is a fabulous city!). Baby alpaca knitwear is a speciality but Debbie resisted the ‘Royal’ quality poncho at £2,500, opting instead for one that was 30% off in one of the other posh shops. Steve decided he wouldn’t wear a poncho back in the UK but borrowed one from our hotel bar for evening drinks. We didn’t purchase the local tuna brand ‘Fanny’ though!

Onwards towards Chile

Our easy Peru Hop bus didn’t go to our next destination – Tacna, the Peruvian town closest to the land border with Chile – so we had to get intrepid and get a ‘real’ bus. To be sure to getting there in time to guarantee an open border we needed to catch the 05.30 bus, and our ticket confirmation said that we had to check in 1 hour before departure, so a very early alarm and 04.00 taxi to the bus station it was then. On arrival, the kiosk of our bus company wasn’t open so we watched the overnight arrivals come in – lots of folk from Puno high in the Andes, dressed in traditional clothing and wrapped in blankets, and huge quantities of onions were being offloaded onto trollies. Once we finally made contact with our bus company and were told to go to Puerto Uno, we were sent back as we didn’t have a boarding card. It turned out that we needed to purchase an embarkation pass, basically a fee to use the bus station, and costing just 20p. That done, we were allowed to board our comfy double decker vehicle, in the posher ‘sleeper’ seats, for the 7 hour journey to Tacna and then hopefully find our way across into Chile….