Sabbatical Essay #Day 14: A Day at a Peruvian Desert
My friend Laura who is a scientist, wanted to go see some yardangs in Peruvian desert and so we planned a day for it. We hired private tour guide and a driver to take us from our hotel in Ica to this specific desert area where there were some yardangs. I’ve been googling and I cannot really find the name of this desert we were at but I remember our guide telling us it being called something like “Pacific Peruvian Tropical Desert”. It is called this (i think) because it used to be ocean there.
We had a super early morning and I was heart-warmed that our hotel cooked and set a lovely breakfast table for us next to the pool before we were to leave. (the hotel itself was in super reasonable price and breakfast was included).
“Our” desert was located somewhere between Ica and Nazca so it was a couple hour drive from our hotel to the desert. It was not a tourist destination nor a park where you park your car at a parking area and walk in or buy tickets so once we got there, we just drove into the desert and moved around.
Desert was huge, bleak, barren, and empty (obviously). We mainly went around to see small and big yardangs. There were some small ones. One was small as maybe a table and then there were huge ones where we could actually climb on and walk around on and Laura filmed the big ones with her drone which was also fun to watch.
We found fossilized shark remains and other animal bones as we went along.
There was almost no one in the desert and our guide was very anxious when we did see one other car from far away, and another car with obvious tourists. He seemed very worried about the pirates/robbers that might show up (which has happened before in this area). Thankfully we didn’t run into any of them.
Our guide and driver had brought home made sandwiches from home for our lunch with a lot of avocados in them and they were shockingly good.
BEST PERUVIAN LUNCH EVER!
After our desert adventure, we were dropped off at Ica bus station for our next bus ride to Nazca- our final destination before leaving Peru.
We had chicken dinner nearby the bus station which was pretty good. I am not sure when but I think sometime that day, we realized we didn’t have accommodation for that night (we somehow did not know this day’s hotel was forgotten because everything else was booked and planned by our travel agent Nury in Lima)
So we found a place a place on hotels.com in city of Nazca. I think it was first time I’ve ever booked a hotel for THAT DAY... and it was kind of cool .. in a nerdy way I guess.
I really wish I’d get to ride on another Peruvican bus for another adventure someday. :)
