Chincha, Peru
Wednesday, March 16, 2016
We had been told via email to be outside waiting for the bus at 6:00am or better still get there 5 minutes early, for our pick-up.
We were there - the bus was not!
6:15 - no bus
6:30 - no bus
So we asked the doorman at the hotel nearby, if he had seen the bus. Nope!
6:45 - no bus and we now asked the nice man on the desk in the hotel to ring them for us and make sure we hadn't been forgotten. No we are on our way they said.
Big Red Bus of Adventure
7:00 and hooray - the bus arrives at last. The door opened and out popped Pete from Peterborough whom we had met in the office. He was very surprised we had rung as he said our pick up was at 7:00.
Grrr!!!
We showed him our email and he was so apologetic. To be honest we were just glad it showed up at all but we wished we had had that extra hour in bed.
We also hoped this was not the way of things to come.
First stop was at the highest point of Lima so we could admire the spectacular views over the city. Except it was covered in fog!
A few minutes to appreciate the fog then we were off again, the cloud just lifting enough to get a glimpse of the city below. Lovely.
Lima through the haze
Then we dropped Pete from Peterborough off and we were on our way. We drove on about 2 hours south of Lima, passed where Bryan had gone swimming with Barbara. Here the scenery was all desert on the left with a sprinkling of small mountains and the dramatic sea on the right. It was beautiful - pretty much the same as it had been all the way from the Ecuador border though really!
First stop was a stop you wouldn't normally get on a regular bus service at a town called Chincha. We were heading for Hacienda San José. Very famous in Peru and an absolutely beautiful old house. With a terribly dark history.
The house was one of 5 in the area that collaborated during slave times, to smuggle slaves in from the ocean via 35 km of underground tunnels.
Slaves were legal back then so why the need to smuggle them in you may ask? Well to avoid paying tax on them of course!
Isn't all smuggling about avoiding taxes?
exit the tunnel
We got the chance to go into the tunnels and were told by our travelling buddy and Peru-Hop guide - Maurice, a bit of the history, shown the punishment chambers and told the horrendous stories about how and why they were punished. Shocking.
Then it was Hop back on the bus and to today's destination - Paracas. More of the same scenery but still beautiful.
The idea of Peru-Hop is that you don't have to get off the bus if you don't want to. A bit like a city hop-on-hop-off tour bus, this is the same but it's city to city.
However it seems as if everyone on our bus today was stopping at Paracas. The bus was continuing without us though, with everyone hopping back on from yesterday's stopover.
Maurice got off with us and helped everyone find their hotel or hostel.
We had booked one of the hotels recommended by Peru-Hop and were very pleased to see that we got a pool for our money. The discounts we got by saying we were with Peru-Hop meant that for our usual £10 - £15 a night, this time we got a pool. Wow - Bryan was straight in it!
Seems like we are going to enjoy Paracas!
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