Pisco & Nazca

 Yesterday we travelled to Pisco, and went to the Ballestas Islands in the Paracas National Park. Here there are a penguins and seals, as well as a “candelabra” carved into the side of a hill. I’m gonna be honest, the candelabra and nazca lines are in my opinion overrated. Even if we accept at face value they were created 500BCE, it’s clear they’ve been added to and damaged along the way. If you find yourself in this region of Peru, pay the 7sol to go to the viewing platform and save yourself the $130 flight.

The trip commences

 And now I’m on the road for the first of 28 days of an intrepid tour. 

Yesterday I had time to go shopping and found a beautiful outdoor mall on the top of a cliff looking out over the Pacific. 

Next up: 3 countries, 1 day

Tomorrow we cross the border from Honduras back to Guatemala for a short while, and then into El Salvador.

We’re not particularly excited for the border crossing into Guatemala as it’s the same one we went through a couple of days ago and it took a long time. 

It’s an absolutely delightful and thrilling 7 hours on the road tomorrow, where we end up in Suchitoto El Salvador.  The apparently as a reward for surviving the trip we get to make our own dinner — a cooking lesson in making Pupusa. 

Footnote: I booked the Intrepid 30 day Ultimate Peru, Argentina, Brazil trip today (special ends tomorrow), going from Lima to Lake Titicaca to Machu Picchu to Amazon Jungle, then fly to Buenos Aires, then fly to Rio de Janeiro. More on that trip later.

I had this concoction tonight, it was like a Bloody Mary, but with beer instead of vodka. Surprisingly nice.

On the road to Copan, Honduras

 8 hours on the road in a bus. At least we will have rest stops on the way.

In case you think “oh you’re smart, you’re at the back and can stretch out — well, you’re kinda right, but I am sharing the back…

Tag zwei

Location: Erlagen, Germany

Temperature: 7°C

Bus Driver: Searching for hidden seats

Slept well at the hostel last night, i owe that entirely to earplugs - the bar next door was still going strong when I woke at 7. Would have been fun to join them, but I needed to sleep, and have proved the reason nicely, I'm rested and was up and about at 7:30. The length of time taken from then to actually getting downstairs was taken up with trying to pack without waking my roommates who were still zonked out at 0830. 

Eventually I made my way to the Frankfurt station where I discovered Germany is big. I'm on a 6hr bus trip to Munich - 20€ vs 120€ for a 4hr train. I decided to go by bus, figuring the 2hrs isn't worth 100€. I asked the woman assisting me if the view would be worth taking the bus, I was able to convince her she should say "Yes" :-D. In retrospect I may have been overly hopeful view wise. Nothing wrong with it, but visions of castles and spectacular rivers haven't been realised.

I met Line (pronounced Lee-na (sort of, it's hard to explain)), she's German. Line has been extremely kind enough to help me find the bus (indeed she's on it too), and then translate the various announcements. We both had a laugh at Google Translates attempt to translate the announcements from the driver. Apparently "the outbound is the rear". Which was googles disturbing translation of what Line tells me was "the toilet is in the back of the bus" ........

Regrettable Line can't join me in my exploring of the Munich Xmas markets, but I'm sure I'll meet more people there who will help. The Germans appear to be helpful people.

Oh, Line spent 6 months working in NZ awhile back and told me of her first few places assisting on farms.... NZ, we really need to work on first impressions Line describes NZ as "Friendly but a little bit weird". I like the description, but I from the stories she told me, I think she was being very kind with only saying "a little bit" - lets just say riding horses through living rooms is always more than a little weird.

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