It was day 3 of my Peruvian adventures, and so far I had a taste of cosmopolitan Lima, relaxed at the beautiful Refuge de Santiago, and re-energized on the rapids of the Canete River. I was now entering Paracas, a small, ocean-side town famous for its wildlife. I was visiting to take a tour of both the Ballestas Islands and the Paracas National Reserve, a desert peninsula protected for its fragile desert ecosystem. Pisco is the gateway town for Paracas that had once lured tourists with its colonial architecture. Unfortunately, the town has yet to recover from an 8.0 earthquake in 2007 that destroyed its architecture, and left 500 dead and many more homeless. Therefore, I leap frogged past Pisco and stayed in Paracas instead.
The heart of Paracas consists of a single main road, which parallels a beach-front road two blocks away. After about four blocks, on either road, you find yourself in the sparsely populated outskirts, so if you blink, you could miss it completely. Within this small downtown, it seems Paracas is scrambling to fill the void for tourism in the region. In the town center almost every other building was new, being built, or under renovation.
Unfortunately, it didn’t seem like the tourism demand was keeping up with supply, because at every meal I ate, the restaurants would only have one or two other tables with other patrons. The ocean-side road was lined with restaurants and the hostesses tried to lour in customers from the empty pedestrian street. A German couple I met noted the same thing as we shared the only occupied table in a street-side café enjoying some afternoon sun.
When the bill came, we noted another trend in Peru: no one has change. Similar to the lost-sock vortex in laundry machines across the globe, there appears to be cash register anomaly that swallows Peruvian coins and small bills. Even in businesses where providing change is a requirement of the trade, they didn’t have change. Since my new German friends didn’t have exact change to pay their bill, and evidently the entire restaurant staff couldn’t come up with change, the staff simply had to knock a few sol off the bill. I noted that this must be why Peruvians are so fond of Obama -- they must have took his promise of ‘Change’ literally.
While I was in Paracas, I also experienced my worst tour experience ever. I had arranged the tour before leaving Lima. My main concern was that tours would be overbooked before I arrived and I didn’t have time to stay longer at any of my stops. However, the company recommended by my hotel was overpriced and under organized. I was supposed to meet my tour operator at his office, but he never arrived. Fortunately, my hostel owner knew the tourist routine and escorted me to the docks just in time to catch the boat for first part of the tour.
The tour of Ballestas Islands was highly recommended and well worth it. The islands are referred to as a ‘poor man’s Galapagos,’ although a more fitting name would be a bird man’s Galapagos. The islands are home to thousands of birds of many species that use the islands as a safe haven, since there are no predators, and fly to the main land or out to sea to feed. With thousands of years of life on the desert islands, and little rain, this meant a whole lotta droppings piling up. In places the droppings were up to 50 meters deep and guano mining became a major industry in the 1800’s.
As you can imagine, our tour guides discussion of the mining industry led to some colorful comments like, ‘And you thought you had a shitty job.’ ‘These miners were really in deep shit.’ ‘White gold, shit that is.’ (A play on the Beverly Hillbillies: ‘black gold, oil that is.’) However, the comparison to gold is slightly accurate since the Spanish even fought the ‘Guano Wars’ in 1865-66 over the mining rights on some of the islands, and Guano was the number one export from Peru in the 1800’s. Seriously, you can’t make this shit up.
Our guide for the boat tour did his best with English, but often left us scratching our heads. A few times, I flipped open my ‘Lonely Planet’ (Lonely Planet, I expect a product placement check!) to answer questions from the crowd or fill in the blanks for myself. After touring the islands for the morning and watching the daily migration to shore, we headed back to the mainland ourselves. I was kind of surprised the tour was over, since I my Lima hotel had said it was a day tour and included a chance to go swimming. However my tour company rep was nowhere to be found, so I returned to my hostel and changed out of my swimsuit.
A few minutes after I changed clothes, my tour rep came to my hostel and said I needed to come with him to catch a bus for the afternoon portion of the tour. I grabbed my camera and followed him out. We went back down to the beach-side road, and he told me to wait while he rounded up the rest of the guests. He came back a few minutes later with some additional passengers and then led us all around the block as he talked frantically on his cell phone. We followed him around for a while. He had us wait in the town plaza a while. Eventually two vans arrived, but instead of starting the tour, we took another detour for gas first.
After all the delays and organizational missteps, we were finally off on our tour of the Paracas National Reserve. Except for a few additional glitches: First, like most tours in Peru, admission fees to the park were not included. Second, no one had change when we tried to pay, so they had us pay on the way out. And third, our English-speaking guide only spoke Spanish. Luckily another group had a bilingual so we tagged along with them.
The first few stops went smoothly, but just before we stopped for lunch, we reached our swimming stop. Unfortunately, none of us had our swim gear at this point. After the botched swim stop, we proceeded to lunch. As we traveled to a small hamlet of restaurants set in a small fishing cove, our guide recommended the last restaurant and said they gave the tour free Pisco Sours. We took his advice and sat down in the restaurant, only to watch him switch from guide to waiter. Apparently this was his family’s way of drumming up business for their restaurant and bringing in extra cash… have Ricco get a job as a tour guide and then bring the tourist directly to the restaurant. The food was alright, we never got our Pisco Sours and, shocker, they didn’t have correct change.
On the return to town, our guide attempted to break the land speed record in our beat-up van. I had heard that Flamingoes winter in the Reserve, so as we flew down the dirt road, I asked if we could stop and to his credit, he did. However, he stopped on the opposite side of the bay from where the Flamingoes and lookout point were located, and proceeded to explain that they spend summers here not winters… so either the guidebooks were wrong on both accounts, or he simply didn’t want to take the time to stop at the right location.
After staring at the empty stretch of desert plain and shimmering bay in the distance, and listening to our guide explain all of this in Spanish for five minutes, we loaded back up and returned to town to conclude the worst tour I’ve ever had. What was the company you ask? That would be Pisco Travel, located in Paracas, I highly recommend you look for other options and bring plenty of small bills.
The heart of Paracas consists of a single main road, which parallels a beach-front road two blocks away. After about four blocks, on either road, you find yourself in the sparsely populated outskirts, so if you blink, you could miss it completely. Within this small downtown, it seems Paracas is scrambling to fill the void for tourism in the region. In the town center almost every other building was new, being built, or under renovation.
Unfortunately, it didn’t seem like the tourism demand was keeping up with supply, because at every meal I ate, the restaurants would only have one or two other tables with other patrons. The ocean-side road was lined with restaurants and the hostesses tried to lour in customers from the empty pedestrian street. A German couple I met noted the same thing as we shared the only occupied table in a street-side café enjoying some afternoon sun.
When the bill came, we noted another trend in Peru: no one has change. Similar to the lost-sock vortex in laundry machines across the globe, there appears to be cash register anomaly that swallows Peruvian coins and small bills. Even in businesses where providing change is a requirement of the trade, they didn’t have change. Since my new German friends didn’t have exact change to pay their bill, and evidently the entire restaurant staff couldn’t come up with change, the staff simply had to knock a few sol off the bill. I noted that this must be why Peruvians are so fond of Obama -- they must have took his promise of ‘Change’ literally.
While I was in Paracas, I also experienced my worst tour experience ever. I had arranged the tour before leaving Lima. My main concern was that tours would be overbooked before I arrived and I didn’t have time to stay longer at any of my stops. However, the company recommended by my hotel was overpriced and under organized. I was supposed to meet my tour operator at his office, but he never arrived. Fortunately, my hostel owner knew the tourist routine and escorted me to the docks just in time to catch the boat for first part of the tour.
The tour of Ballestas Islands was highly recommended and well worth it. The islands are referred to as a ‘poor man’s Galapagos,’ although a more fitting name would be a bird man’s Galapagos. The islands are home to thousands of birds of many species that use the islands as a safe haven, since there are no predators, and fly to the main land or out to sea to feed. With thousands of years of life on the desert islands, and little rain, this meant a whole lotta droppings piling up. In places the droppings were up to 50 meters deep and guano mining became a major industry in the 1800’s.
As you can imagine, our tour guides discussion of the mining industry led to some colorful comments like, ‘And you thought you had a shitty job.’ ‘These miners were really in deep shit.’ ‘White gold, shit that is.’ (A play on the Beverly Hillbillies: ‘black gold, oil that is.’) However, the comparison to gold is slightly accurate since the Spanish even fought the ‘Guano Wars’ in 1865-66 over the mining rights on some of the islands, and Guano was the number one export from Peru in the 1800’s. Seriously, you can’t make this shit up.
Our guide for the boat tour did his best with English, but often left us scratching our heads. A few times, I flipped open my ‘Lonely Planet’ (Lonely Planet, I expect a product placement check!) to answer questions from the crowd or fill in the blanks for myself. After touring the islands for the morning and watching the daily migration to shore, we headed back to the mainland ourselves. I was kind of surprised the tour was over, since I my Lima hotel had said it was a day tour and included a chance to go swimming. However my tour company rep was nowhere to be found, so I returned to my hostel and changed out of my swimsuit.
A few minutes after I changed clothes, my tour rep came to my hostel and said I needed to come with him to catch a bus for the afternoon portion of the tour. I grabbed my camera and followed him out. We went back down to the beach-side road, and he told me to wait while he rounded up the rest of the guests. He came back a few minutes later with some additional passengers and then led us all around the block as he talked frantically on his cell phone. We followed him around for a while. He had us wait in the town plaza a while. Eventually two vans arrived, but instead of starting the tour, we took another detour for gas first.
After all the delays and organizational missteps, we were finally off on our tour of the Paracas National Reserve. Except for a few additional glitches: First, like most tours in Peru, admission fees to the park were not included. Second, no one had change when we tried to pay, so they had us pay on the way out. And third, our English-speaking guide only spoke Spanish. Luckily another group had a bilingual so we tagged along with them.
The first few stops went smoothly, but just before we stopped for lunch, we reached our swimming stop. Unfortunately, none of us had our swim gear at this point. After the botched swim stop, we proceeded to lunch. As we traveled to a small hamlet of restaurants set in a small fishing cove, our guide recommended the last restaurant and said they gave the tour free Pisco Sours. We took his advice and sat down in the restaurant, only to watch him switch from guide to waiter. Apparently this was his family’s way of drumming up business for their restaurant and bringing in extra cash… have Ricco get a job as a tour guide and then bring the tourist directly to the restaurant. The food was alright, we never got our Pisco Sours and, shocker, they didn’t have correct change.
On the return to town, our guide attempted to break the land speed record in our beat-up van. I had heard that Flamingoes winter in the Reserve, so as we flew down the dirt road, I asked if we could stop and to his credit, he did. However, he stopped on the opposite side of the bay from where the Flamingoes and lookout point were located, and proceeded to explain that they spend summers here not winters… so either the guidebooks were wrong on both accounts, or he simply didn’t want to take the time to stop at the right location.
After staring at the empty stretch of desert plain and shimmering bay in the distance, and listening to our guide explain all of this in Spanish for five minutes, we loaded back up and returned to town to conclude the worst tour I’ve ever had. What was the company you ask? That would be Pisco Travel, located in Paracas, I highly recommend you look for other options and bring plenty of small bills.
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