Last flight was just as uneventful as the previous ones. In less than two hours we landed to Helsinki, which now seems to look remarkably better than a month ago. No snow and almost clear sky.
Just the last 160 kilometers to home now by bus.. Arriving nicely at 02:50.
Foggy and cold Berlin. Some snack and towards Helsinki we go.
The flight was relatively easy, we happened to get one of the newer Iberia planes with onboard entertainment system and I was actually sleeping most of the time. Iberia seats are still not my favorite though..
After arriving to Madrid we checked in our luggage again for the Air Berlin flight home, and now are just waiting for departure..
In the morning we took our trip to Ballesta Islands, which are a protected area full of birds and sea lions. The speedboat ride to the islands took half an hour from Paracas, and seems like the speedboat drivers were having fun racing each other to the islands. Visiting the islands is only allowed for short time in the morning, so there are multiple tourist boats going there at the same time.
From the boat we spotted millions of seabirds, thousands of sea lions and some more rare animals like a dozen of penguins. The islands were totally covered by bird shit, which is collected every eight years for fertilization purposes, and you can imagine the smell of rotten fish..
After returning from the islands we departed towards Lima, driving again a couple of hundred kilometers through the desert. I had planned to stop at an airfield near Lima to ask the local flight school if we could fly with them, but clouds were way too low for flying, actually at the ground level, so no use..
>Both of the girls now had fever, which developed during the morning and the boat trip. Kim is now also eating the same antibiotics as me for the same reason, so seems like I wasn't the only one being affected by some bad food somewhere.
The girls wanted to visit a surf school at Lima, but obviously neither of them was in any kind of fit for surfing at the moment. So, we just visited the beach for a while and watched the huge waves and surfers. There was also a lot of paragliders in the air, which looked like great fun. Too bad we did not have time to try it now.
Lima traffic was exactly as horrible as it was earlier. Nobody seems to have either brains, eyes or manners and I'm really wondering our car is still in one piece. Actually the traffic was so totally messed up that it was just fun, over the point of being annoying or scary. Although the horn got used quite a lot..
Now we are at the airport, ready to start our long long way back home. First an Iberia longhaul flight to Madrid, then via Berlin to Helsinki with Air Berlin. It took a moment to get the check-in agent to accept our request to check the bags to only Madrid, "we need to change clothes and take shower etc during the layover". I guess she understood our real purpose to skip the second flight to Brussels and that it would be much more hassle to get the bags out of the aircraft when we don't show up for the second flight and asked her supervisor to do the bag check-in to Madrid only.
No, we did not survive until the fireworks show, everyone fell asleep. Timo was the only one to set an alarm and go out to watch the show, for his obvious professional reasons.
In the morning girls departed to their prebooked trip to the Islands to see sea lions and we boys waited for our diving gear to arrive. The dive shop was supposed to bring the gear at eight to try them on, and we were scheduled to depart to the diving beach at eleven. Well, you can guess how much scheduling works in these countries. The guys probably just had hangover, the gear never arrived and we finally departed to the beach maybe at noon.
They also had one "fat" size wetsuit, so me and Timo had to do our dives separately. The diving industry in Peru is not exactly big, they have five (5) bottle refilling compressors in the entire country. In Finland some three compressors are taken just to a weekend diving club trip..
The dive was ok, although just a shallow dive to seven meters for about an hour. For the first half an hour we had a first timer with us, so the divemaster had to spend all the time to hold his hand (or him, with two hands). After he ran out of air and we escorted him back to the beach we had pretty enjoyable dive with the divemaster, seeing crabs and small fish. I have never seen so many sea urchins in the same place by the way, and I hate them more than mosquitos. Kim managed to step on one getting spikes in his leg, but they are obviously not so poisonous here, and I also touched one briefly but it did not penetrate the strong skin on my thumb. Due to some cold stream waters in here are cold, temperature was around 15C in the bottom and got chilly pretty quickly.
After the dive we returned to the city and went out to check out Pisco airport, in hopes of finding a local aeroclub or flight school to borrow an aircraft tomorrow. Did not find much anything though. Pisco was destroyed by an earthquake a couple of years ago, and the airport was still being rebuilt. There was an airport with a lot of small aircraft halfway to Lima though, so I think we will try there tomorrow.
Now just chilling down in another hostel in Paracas, having a few drinks and excellent street hamburgers earlier. It is our last night in here, after all. Tomorrow morning we boys will go to see the sea lions too and then we start driving towards Lima, hopefully finding an aircraft to borrow or a surf school on the way. This coast is the best place in the world for surfing.
Arriving Lima we still hadn't decided where to go from there or should we stay in Lima. None of the people we had been talked to liked Lima, so we had pretty much formed an opinion that we will pass Lima and continue south to the coast. 15 minutes of googling at the airport, and we decided that our destination would be Paracas 250km south of Lima.
Getting a rental car took once again a bit of effort, but finally worked out. Just the usual story.. I had reserved a car from National, without noticing that they had no office at the airport but a shuttle bus and their guy would be waiting at the arrivals hall with a sign. Well, I guess he was, but in the international terminal and not domestic. And their phone number in the reservation didn't naturally work. From Budget desk agent we got twice the price they show on internet, did a booking via internet for that cheaper price, returned to Budget desk and got our Kia Rio.. which obviously is shit to drive, suspension is totally dead. :p
Travel guides recommend to only rent a car in Lima for the ones experienced in driving in extremely challenging environment. Of course we did have to try that, and in a while I started to understand why. The local drivers are just pure idiots.. Nobody and I mean literally nobody obeys any rules, half of the people drive twice slower than the limit and the other half (mostly the typical assholes in every country, bus drivers and taxis) like headless monkeys. Been losing my nerves the entire day and soon making a big center finger sign to show out of the window.
Lima didn't show very positive face when driving through it, it's just an ugly big city. It is also extremely polluted, there is more gray smog in the air than in Mexico City and other very polluted cities. Timo described that he has only seen that bad smog in China, even buildings a couple of hundred of meters away started to blur in the smog. And the air smells. 50 kilometers away from Lima the air started to be clear sea air again.
We arrived to Paracas a couple of hours later, settled in a hostel and booked a diving trip for tomorrow. There seems to be a lot of small aircraft in the area, so I also emailed a couple of companies asking the possibility to rent their aircraft for a small sightseeing flight with their pilots, and also a paragliding company to try how it feels like. Let's see what kind of answers I get. The city is a beautiful small fishing village, having a lot of tourism due to the nearby animal rich islands. Today there is the last day of the carnival, so there is going to be fireworks later in the night. Wonder if we are staying awake until that..
Arrived to Lima on an early morning Peruvian flight. This time I got a bit more lucky with the cockpit visit, even though Peruvian law forbids extra people in cockpit during the flight. So, before departure I just had a short chat with the nice old pilots about the special procedures of Cusco airport. Cusco is very high and surrounded by mountains, so the departure is done by flying a special route along a valley.
It is lovely to have oxygen in the air again after the week up in the mountains, and air seems to be much more humid and warmer here too. I'm feeling fine today, the IV antibiotics affected quickly and no more fever. It is time to look for accommodation, I guess we will take a car and drive somewhere south of Lima to the coast.
Seems like some kind of Inca curse has been casted on me. Maybe it was me and Timo joking about peeing at the Inca necropolis or taking a photograph of wrong witch.. For three days we have been trying to get to the Inca ruins nearby, first the agricultural strike and their roadblocks ruined our plans for two days and now our third attempt did not go so well either.
We were supposed to depart at five in the morning, drive to check out Ollantayntambo and Pisac ruins and Lares natural hot springs, me driving the car. I had been freezing all the night, but imagined it was just the coldness our room as everybody else was complaining the same. At three in the morning I woke up feeling bad and measured to have 38.2C of fever. At five the fever was at 39C, and it was totally clear I was not going to drive anywhere but go to doctor as soon as possible. I had been suffering some stomach problems since Bolivia, and they had gotten worse in the last two days.
The hotel owner had some relations to a local hospital Clinica Peruana Suiza, so he called them and their doctor came with an ambulance to pick me up. I spent the day in the hospital getting IV antibiotics and liquid for dehydration, the diagnose being bacterial infection of unknown origin and altitude sickness. Now in the afternoon the fever is gone and I was discharged from the hospital back to our hotel with a week-long prescription of antibiotics.
Thanks to the clinic for excellent service. The doctors seemed to be professional and attending and spoke English just fine. With the nurses I had some funny communication attempts as they only spoke Spanish, but they were also nice and we managed to understand each other with my few words of Spanish and their same in English. Hospital food in here is not much better than in Finland, though.. :)
While I was laying at the hospital the others went to ask the car rental company if anyone could drive the car, and after getting permission for Timo to drive picked up the car and visited some Inca sites. Around midday they also came to visit me again in the hospital. :)
Today it was raining in the morning, and the strike was supposed to hit also Cusco so we didn't bother doing much anything during the morning. Around midday me and Iryna departed the hostel, walked to the city and spent a couple of hours there shopping, eating and so on. There was a lot of police officers around the main square watching a small riot.
In the evening we picked up my new sunglasses and our car for tomorrow, this time a Toyota Fortuner, a decent big 4x4 car. Not bad either, although I would have loved to have the Hilux with mud tires back again. Tomorrow it will be an early departure to the Inca sites.
I bought alpaca socks for myself, as it was totally freezing in our room last night. In the morning everyone was shivering and trying to crawl under blankets, without much help. It's like 0-5C in here at night time, and as the houses don't have heating or much insulation it gets pretty chilly..
By the way, here is some traditional Peruvian dancing from last night: http://youtu.be/20_A8Q2hPJs
Damn. Our finally decided plans were pretty nicely shattered in the morning. The agricultural people are on strike, and they are blocking all the roads out of the city. Even taxis and buses are not going outside the city because the people are obviously throwing vehicles with vegetables and even rocks. The strike is expected to end after tomorrow, but today and tomorrow we would be stuck in the city. So, no Inca sites. I'm so happy we decided not to go for Machu Picchu, as we would now be stuck outside Cusco in tourist trap Aguas Calientes or even on the road. Being stuck in beautiful Cusco is much better option.
As going out of the city was not an option we just spent the day around the city then and had to rework our plans. The 22 hour bus trip to Lima was abandoned and flights on Peruvian Airlines booked for Saturday morning, which will allow us to spend entire Friday visiting the Inca sites after the strike ends. We returned the car, but will get the same car back on Thursday evening for Friday excursions, ready to depart at five in the morning. Returning the car was already a bit sad, I think I know what I will start looking for my next car back in Finland.. I also found a small dirt road that goes really close to Machu Picchu and the hot springs at Santa Teresa. That will be the destination.
The day was spent visiting the museums and shopping. Contemporary art museum, Chocolate museum, Regional History museum, San Pedro market.. And in the evening theater for some Peruvian folk dances.
I have been missing sunglasses all the trip, and as we now had time we visited some opticians in the city. We found a shop who promised to make me prescription sunglasses for tomorrow and their spanish-speaking doctor checked my eyes. The values had changed a bit from what was measured from my current glasses, and as my lens coating was in really bad shape I let them change the lenses of my glasses too.
The lens coating was already a bit damaged by washing in too hot water or just wearing when we left for the trip, and the sun heat in here finished it to really foggy. I would have anyway had to buy new ones in Finland in near future. Not bad to do it here, the new lenses were made in the shop and changed in an hour, and the price was like 35€ for "best quality" anti-reflection polycarbonate lenses. Now I just need to get used to these, but already starting to be ok. :)
So, we have been extending our stay in the hostel day by day, now going to stay four nights in total in this place. This is a small hostel with three rooms, an American really helpful owner and extremely cheap prices, just a couple of dollars per person per night. We now abandoned our private rooms just to make it easier for the owner, and are all sharing the five-bed room which was originally my and Iryna's private one. Timo is snoring like hell, just like usually.. And I'm considering of sticking my extremely smelly socks (have to wash my fivefingers tomorrow somehow) in his mouth..
