Pelicans and ceviche

Sunday, August 03, 2014
Paracas, Ica, Peru
This day marks the start of the non-stop insanely crazy Peruvian adventure of the next three weeks.

After a free-ish morning where we bought some snacks at the Wong Supermarket, we took a four odd hour bus ride to the beach-front town of Paracas . It was quite an interesting ride, certainly saw some of what country-Peru looks like, though unfortunately I wasn't lucky enough to get a window seat on the bus so I saw it quite sparingly.

The Ballestas Islands are known for their abundant wildlife, so tomorrow we head out on a boat trip to see wild seals, penguins and many sea birds. 

We arrived in the late afternoon and checked in to our hotel, which was reasonably nice. It was certainly a little cold to swim in the pool, but it was nice later to chill out by the pool-side bar.

We then wandered over to the water to take some pictures of the sunset. It's a very small town, so the water was only about a street over from where our hotel is (which was pretty much at the back of the town). It's certainly nothing like Australia's beaches with our beautiful golden sand, but it was nice to be able to walk along the water. 

There was a man feeding pelicans on the beach and it was hilarious to watch them jump and wiggle for the fish . Of course, the more we watched, the more we realised just how much these poor birds are being coaxed out of their natural habitats to entertain tourists, particularly the next day when we saw him up away from the beach with a huge crowd of tourists standing around, and I felt quite terrible for indulging it. But it did make for a cute picture.

After returning to the hotel (or actually I guess it was more like a motel), I decided to chill out on the balcony for a while as a bunch of the others had some pisco sours by the pool. I guess so early into the trip I was still trying to figure out how to fit some alone time in, as it feels like you just spend so much time with other people. I was hoping to get some photos up on the blog etc, which obviously didn't happen (as it is now January!). After backing up my photos and having a rest though, I decided to meander downstairs to be social. We played a card game that seemed to be endless, and by the time that everyone else joined the group, it had to be given up . Unfortunately (as is standard with me) although I picked it up quickly, I had pretty much forgotten the name of the game and how to play it by the next day.

We then all went to a ceviche restaurant down by the water. Yep, ceviche = chopped up fish. Collette, Linda and I (the group vegetarians) weren't overly excited by it and had all of a couple of unexciting options to choose from. Harold helped us all order and then left to have dinner with his mum. Harold was actually from this area - Pisco, the larger town that Paracas is on the periphery of - and hadn't been home in a few months, so he was excited to have a chance to see his family.

Although everyone in the group was incredibly nice, I was feeling a little shy, antisocial and left out during this dinner. I was sitting opposite Conche and Susan who were speaking German. Susan was very grateful to have someone to speak German with, and Conche speaks something like six languages completely fluently. Impressive and makes me feel like a complete ignoramus.

I realised that I forgot my Epipen, which is odd because I never ever forget it. I also have never needed my Epipen, but given that this was a seafood restaurant, I wanted to take no risks. I think a couple of people may have offered to walk back to the motel with me, but I relished the opportunity to have a whole five minutes to myself! Further into the trip, I really did get used to to being social and busy at every moment of every day, but in the beginning I was having quite a bit of trouble adjusting to not having my 'recharge time'.

All in all, it was a nice night though.


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