Day 68 & 69: Nazca and Huacachina with PeruHop
After visiting Pisac we headed back to Cusco, packed up our stuff and waited for the Peru Hop to pick us up. Ange found it online while we were researching for our trip, and it seemed interesting so we decided to try it out. Peru Hop is a fairly new company (started on Nov 2013) that is a hop on hop off bus transport system. They do routes from Cusco to Lima, and also Lima to Cusco. We were short on time so we just took the shortest Cusco to Lima route possible (which is a minimum of 3 days, 2 nights).
We spent the first day (more of night) on the bus, from Cusco to Nazca. (At around 5:30am we actually stopped in Arequipa where a few people hopped off. We were glad we weren't on that route because we were told that the temperature was below freezing!). The second day was mostly spent on the bus as well, going from Arequipa to Nazca.
After some Googling, I learned that Huacachina is a village located in the Ica province, and is built around a natural lake in the desert. It actually looks like this; super cool!
We spent the morning chilling around in our hostel.
There are different kinds of pisco depending on the grapes used, and we even had a free tasting. The wines were yummy, but the pure pisco was really strong!
The dunes were huge! We went on the buggy first and took some wild rides around the dunes.
Time to try sand boarding.
It was a crazy fun afternoon! After, we headed back to our hostel, had some dinner, got our stuff, and then took the bus back to Lima. It was another 5 hours or so. We arrived in Lima after midnight, but the bus dropped us off right at our hostel.
We had a really good trip with Peru Hop (I was also happy that for once I didn't have to plan anything. Haha. Just went with the group). We met some really fun people and did some cool activities. Since it's fairly new they could still do with some improvements, but it's a really great concept with a lot of potential.
We spent the first day (more of night) on the bus, from Cusco to Nazca. (At around 5:30am we actually stopped in Arequipa where a few people hopped off. We were glad we weren't on that route because we were told that the temperature was below freezing!). The second day was mostly spent on the bus as well, going from Arequipa to Nazca.
At around maybe 4pm, we finally arrived in Nazca to see the lines and geoglyphs. The lines and geoglyphs range from simple lines to drawings of animals and other figures. The designs are believed to have had either religious or astronomical functions.
The viewing tower below. You obviously can't see everything, but we were able to see some lines which were pretty cool. (To see everything you need to take a plane ride.)
After Nazca, we continued on, and arrived in Huacahina at night. Since we arrived at night, we couldn't really see what Huacachina was like. So the next morning when we went out for breakfast, we saw this (below) and were so surprised by the huge sand dunes everywhere.
We spent the morning chilling around in our hostel.
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| Ange at the pool in our hostel |
After lunch we went to Bodega El Catador, a distillery, and learned how they make pisco, the grape brandy of Peru.
There are different kinds of pisco depending on the grapes used, and we even had a free tasting. The wines were yummy, but the pure pisco was really strong!
Huacachina is popular for dune buggying and sand boarding, and after the tour of the distillery, that's what we did. It was so. much. fun!
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| The dune buggy |
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| With Melodie, another traveler on the Peru Hop |
The dunes were huge! We went on the buggy first and took some wild rides around the dunes.
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| This one's a fake pose, but I did make it down standing! |
It was a crazy fun afternoon! After, we headed back to our hostel, had some dinner, got our stuff, and then took the bus back to Lima. It was another 5 hours or so. We arrived in Lima after midnight, but the bus dropped us off right at our hostel.
We had a really good trip with Peru Hop (I was also happy that for once I didn't have to plan anything. Haha. Just went with the group). We met some really fun people and did some cool activities. Since it's fairly new they could still do with some improvements, but it's a really great concept with a lot of potential.
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