Peru Hop

On the 22nd September we left Arequipa with a tourist bus company called Peru Hop. Peru Hop advertises itself as a safer alternative to public transport, whilst partnering with numerous other companies to offer accommodation, food and activities to the passengers. Their big draw is that it is supposed to be flexible – a hop on, hop off bus (hence the name) modeled after the buses found elsewhere in the world. This means you can buy the ticket and jump off at any of the stops along the journey, getting back on simply when the next service comes through.

Our first experience was not too impressive, with the bus arriving late for a hotel pickup, and then we had to walk with our bags with the guide two or three blocks to the bus. Not exactly a hotel pickup. The bus was not exactly full of people, but it was full of trash. There was rubbish everywhere, and people half asleep sprawled all over the chairs. We found some seats but they were pretty dirty, so we cleaned them as best we could and set off.

In terms of safety, the news of numerous public bus crashes in the area and the awful reputation that drivers and roads in this region have were both major contributing factors leading us to choose Peru Hop. We normally travel on public bus as it is the cheapest way to go in South America. Also, we like the freedom to be able to do what we want. So we were disappointed when the driving of the Peru Hop bus became so terrible that we heard people complaining all over the bus.

The road from Arequipa along the coast to the North was extremely winding and dangerous. Cars, lorries and buses frequently cross the median line, change lanes without warning and drive carelessly, and our driver was no exception. The real problem was that the driving made everyone feel sick as he took hairpin corners way too fast, throwing the bus around the road, causing objects to spill out of the overhead compartments onto the floor or people’s heads. Francesca had to ask the guide to get the driver to slow down, which, in fairness he did. Still, it was too late, we felt sick for the rest of the journey.

Luckily that was not too long as our next destination was Nazca. Located in the Ica region of Peru, Nazca is named after the ancient culture of people who lived there, leaving their mark in the form of an impressive series of underground irrigation tunnels which still function today, and with the famous Nazca lines. We jumped off of the bus here, and were supposed to be dropped at our hotel. Only at the last minute did our guide tell us that bus would not be doing that, but instead we would be picked up by Peru Hop’s ‘man in Nazca’, who ended up being half an hour late for which we were given no explanation or apology.

The bus left us, and the agent took us to a hotel we had to organize and pay for. At that point our opinion of Peru Hop was pretty low, and we felt like we had made a pretty big error in judgment in using them.

However, we got back on the horse that night by going to the local planetarium. Observatories are everywhere in this region, from the coastal deserts of Peru all the way down to the more impressive Atacama desert observatories we had visited. Those ones are funded by foreign investment, but the Peruvian ones do not have the same kind of perfect climate for stargazing, and so they are mostly just run by hotels as an extra attraction, with no science going on.

This was our first look at Saturn and Mars through a telescope however, and the pre-recorded talk given in the observatory itself was pretty interesting, and different to the one we had listened to in the Colca valley.

The next day we waited for the Peru Hop guy to pick us up in the morning to take us to the airport for a Nazca flight we had booked with them. However, he never turned up, instead sending some other guy to pick us up, who never apologized or explained why he was late. Further annoyed, we found that there were two options at the airport: fly over the Nazca lines only, or fly over the Nazca and Palpa lines both. Our guide had never explained any of this to us, and so we had booked only the Nazca lines with Peru Hop. To top it off, the company they had chosen (AeroNasca) were charging less than we would have to pay, despite Peru Hop misleading us about a 10% discount. Then the woman who worked there tried to bullshit us on the exchange rate. Screw this!

We left our group and went and found another company (our recommend is Aero Santos) who would take just us over the Nazca and Palpa lines using the correct exchange rate, but we had to wait a few hours. No problem. The guy who bought us never explained what was going on, or what company we were with or anything, and then when we went to organize stuff ourselves, he just left us for dead and we never saw him again. What an asshole. Peru Hop had scored zero points with us. We even went back over the printed guide they hand out to you when you first get onboard. It really does its best to persuade you that the Nazca lines are not worth doing, presumably so that no-one will hop off there, and Peru Hop won’t have to manage people who want to do that. So much for flexible. The Nazca lines are one of the most famous attractions in the world, yet the Peru Hop literature simply says the flight will make you sick, and you will see some of the shapes from the viewing platform so why bother going on the flight? Ridiculous.

I’m not sure how many people have or will have missed out on seeing the Nazca and Palpa lines because of Peru Hop, but even one is too many. We were introduced to the pilots of the company we found (you can just turn up n the airport, or maybe arrange with them over the phone), they took some pictures of us with the plane, and then it was time for wheels-up.

Francesca had done this once before when she was in Peru years ago, but we both loved it still. The flight made us feel a little sick, but nothing like the ‘guaranteed motion sickness’ that Peru Hop were complaining about. The pilots were awesome, and worked together really well, explaining to us that we could go back for a loop around at anytime if we missed any of the shapes.

The name of the area where the lines are located is the pampas de Jumana, between the towns of Nazca and Palpa (hence the names of the lines). The site was protected by UNESCO only in 1994 and so before that, some of the lines were actually cut in half by the Pan American Highway that runs right through the middle.

Created between 400CE and 650CE, there are many theories as to why the lines were created. Some say for rituals, others as a kind of map to water. They are certainly not extra-terrestrial as idiots like Von Daniken assert, and the lines can be viewed from the surrounding hilltops, not just by aerial flight. We felt they were best viewed from the plane though, as our pilots made some pretty steep banking passes around the first of many shapes we would see – the first being called The Whale.

The lines were first seen and chronicled by the Spanish in 1553, where they were thought to be trail markers. They were not rediscovered again (in the popular imagination) until 1927, when they were spotted from the foothills around. Paul Kosok, an American, was the first person to scientifically study the lines, followed closely by Maria Reiche, a German lady who is credited for the preservation of the lines today.

The Nazca people used simple tools and techniques to create the 10cm shallow lines, simply by removing the reddish brown rocks from the surface of the Nazca desert. They staked ropes to make straight lines, and drew figures in this way, including a spider, a money, a lizard and several hummingbirds. The dry windless desert has provided an ideal environment to maintain these lines as they are.

The lines were added to over the years, with more and more geometric shapes appearing. These were found to have stone altars lied at their ends, with Nazca burials also in the area. One fear now though is that global pollution and local deforestation will lead to more flash flooding in the rainy season, which would destroy the lines altogether. This might be in dispute though, as it is flooding caused by some particularly bad El Nino weather systems that caused the society to crumble and disappear around 750CE, and seemingly the lines have survived that.

We though the Nazca lines were impressive, but after half hour, we headed over the Palpa lines, and they were awesome! What a shame to come all the way to Nazca and not see both! The Palpa lines actually predate the Nazca, supposedly by around 500 years.

After an hour of flying time, we had to land, and the crew of the Cesna were awesome. We landed and got back to Nazca in time to book some tours around the city (with Turismo Tour Peru on Boulevard Bolognesi). Now, Peru Hop advise two options to do the flight: 1) stay one night in Nazca, then take a public bus to the next destination to catch up with them, or 2) go to the next destination and take a bus BACK to Nazca for the flight, and then BACK again to the next destination. Ridiculous. Just to get out of having to pick up people from Nazca! But Peru Hop do not say this, they say it is because Nazca “is not a nice place”, and “there is not a lot else in Nazca”. That’s just nonsense.

We found several things to do in Nazca, including going to a museum, visiting the ancient aqueducts of the Nazca, and also touring the Nazca city, where you can still just find Nazca pottery lying around on the ground! Nazca itself is fine, with many people in and around the center, some good hostels and hotels, and some good food to find too, so don’t listen to Peru Hop and miss out on a fine town. I wonder what the Nazca tourist board would think of Peru Hop.

On the 24th, we headed out with our guide to the aqueducts of Cantalloc which are around 1500 years old. Only half hour outside of the city, Cantalloc is a series of underground reservoirs with connecting channels of water coming from the Nazca valley river. The reservoirs themselves are circular holes cut into the ground up to 12 meters deep, with staggered sides that allow people to walk down into them to collect water and conduct repairs. Each one is set at least five meters apart from another, and they are cleaned once a year, which is pretty much all the maintenance they need. These were pretty cool to see, and our guide pointed out several different trees along the way, including opuntia cactus that had a white mite called Cochineal that lived on it which was collected to make red dye called Carmine.

We wandered around for awhile before setting off to Cahuachi, a major Nazca ceremonial center built between 400BCE and 500CE. The site was probably inhabited by few people, and has been speculated as anything from the Nazca capital, to a distributional trading center for pottery. We did find Nazca pottery at the site ourselves, it is just lying around waiting to be picked up and catalogued. Sponylus shells were also lying around, but unfortunately no priceless gold or silver objects to steal. Whatever the place was, it has around 40 mounds in and on which have been found various adobe structures.

Two such mounds have been restored, but progress is slow as local government have told archaeologists that they need to pay to dig there and it is expensive to do so (1500 euros per month). There was no-one and no equipment there when we visited, and the site is often recovered between digs (as per Peruvian law), to prevent weather damage or grave robbers, called huaqueros, from looting everything.

After a nice morning with our guide, he dropped us back in town at the Antonini Museum where they hold many of the artifacts found at Cahuachi. Much of the pottery was intact, unlike the fragments we had found, but we could recognize the color and style even from fragments. They had necklaces made from the spondylus shells we had found, as well as more grisly items, such as decapitated heads, which was a common war trophy across the region for millennia.

Some of the ceramic pieces were pretty special, too, including what is thought to be a killer whale, which was my favorite. This museum is built right next to one of the Nazca aqueduct channels, but I could not find out why it was called Antonini.

We headed back to our hostel and grabbed our bags which were in storage, and then had to jump into a taxi to go and meet the Peru Hop bus again. So much for a hotel pick up again!

We did not wait long when the guide showed up and told us the bus was a few blocks away from our meeting point. Why can’t these people organize anything?

That afternoon, we headed out of Nazca, stopping briefly at the viewing platform that Maria Reiche helped build to protect the lines. Closer to the ground than the plane, we could see how shallow the lines were, and how they were sadly criss-crossed by multiple vehicle tracks. With the road right beside the lines I guess people went over them to look at them or just as shortcuts. Thankfully those activities are now prohibited, although the lines are still not fenced off or anything, so it must be hard to police.

The mirador, or viewpoint, was a bit rickety and old, so they only let a few people up at a time. From the viewpoint we could see some of the shapes we had flown over a little better, such as the one called The Hands. It is sad that Peru Hop recommends to its young passengers to only have that one experience of Nazca though.

After sunset, we continued on North with the bus to our next destination, a little village called Huacachina. The road was pretty straight and so I’m not sure if it was the road or the new driver, but the journey was a lot better than Arequipa to Nazca. Huacachina was basically a desert oasis village only three or so hours from Nazca, but it actually serves as a holiday resort for families from nearby Ica, a city after which the region is named. On weekends kids from Ica along with backpackers who enjoy the sand dunes around the village use the place as their own personal party space. We were a bit concerned that Peru Hop had chosen a party hotel to house their passengers in, and our fears were realized when the room we were given was right next to the bar area. The guys who run Casa de Arena seemed like unfriendly mobsters, and probably were, but at about 10pm the music seemed to go off, and we managed to get some sleep (it was not the weekend, although Peru Hop do stop there on weekends).

From this moment on, our whole Peru Hop experience changed, and for the better. We had bought the all inclusive pass which meant we had the Huacachina hotel and activities included. That meant being able to take photos of the many different birds around the natural oasis in the middle of the village, including egrets, herons, cormorants and ducks, before we were whisked away in the Peru Hop bus to a local Pisco brewery.

El Catador (literally, ‘the taster’) brewery was established in 1856 and now served as a tourist attraction on the ruta del Pisco. We were given an English speaking guide who took us around the brewery and gave us an insight into how it was run, and how they turned grapes into the famous Peruvian spirit. We saw a huge wooden grape press made from the Huarango tree, commonly called the Algorrobo Blanco or American Carob. It is speculated that it was these trees that the Nazca culture deforested en masse which led to flooding and erosion which subsequently ended the Nazca culture itself.

We were told to remember all of the details as there would subsequently be a test, so I remembered that the large ceramic pots used to store alcoholic drinks were first called piscos, because in the local language piscos means birds, whose bodies the pots look like. This is the origin of the name of the drink Pisco.

Once the grape was crushed, and the skins and everything removed, the pulp would stored for many months until it all fermented. Different grapes produced different types of Pisco, and at the end of the tour, we had a tasting test, with most of the drinks tasting disgusting. The quality of Pisco was clearly not the same as we had had in Chile, or even the commercial quality we had tried in Cusco at our cooking course, but to make up for it, at question time, I got my hand up first and answered the question and won us a small bottle of pisco wine. That also turned out to be gross, but what the hell.

That afternoon, and it was time for some sand dune stuff, so we were picked up from the hotel in dune buggies and taken out to the desert. Sand dunes tower over the village of Huacachina, and our driver was a nut who drove us over the sand like a thrill seeker with a death wish. It was fun times, and when we got to the top of a particularly high dune, we were all given sand boards to wax and then fly down the sand on.

We got the hang of it pretty quickly, and it was fun to see Francesca flying down the sand and enjoying herself. I did try to go down standing up, rather than lying down, but I’ve never been surfing or snowboarding, so had no idea what to do, and fell off. Still, it was a fun experience in the desert with some beautiful scenery, and the oasis even features on the back of the 50 soles note. Since then I found out that the surrounding hotels have all lowered the oasis water table, and so water now has to be artificially pumped in to maintain it.

That evening we set off again to another part of Peru, further North towards our ultimate destination of Lima. Our next stop though was Paracas. Just as Nazca was named for an ancient culture of that region, Paracas is named for the culture found in that valley. We were still in the desert region along the Peruvian coast, and we were given some fairly decent hotels to stay in. The one we were in did nothing to endear itself to us when they tried charging us for various things which should have been free, however, but overall, the experience was good, even though Peru Hop take its passengers to expensive restaurants which backpackers would normally avoid, because the guides get free meals there.

The next morning was an early start, and as we were ditched by our guide, we had to figure out where our group was, and catch them up at the dock. The plan for the day was to head out to an island in the Pacific called Isla Ballestas which is actually a group of islands which hold many species of birds and mammals.

The trip over was extremely cold and took about an hour, but it was worth it, as when we got there, we saw thousands of cormorants, boobies, tendrils and turns. We also saw a group of Humboldt penguins, and lots of different and surly sea lions. A red faced or red legged cormorant was a good spot, and nearer the coast itself were hundreds of pelicans that look like pterodactyls when they fly. The islands are used to collect guano commercially, and they look spectacular, with all manner of marine line covering every unexpected place, including spider crabs clinging tightly to wet rocks.

On the way back we stopped at what is called the Candelabra of the Andes, which is a huge 177 meters by 54 meters geoglyph, carved into the side of a slope between 45cm and 60 cm deep. Personally it looks more like a cactus to me, which makes sense as they grow all around the region and have hallucinogenic and therefore probably religious significance. Some people argue that the figure represents a god’s trident, but I’m not convinced. Pottery in the area dates it back to the Paracas culture themselves, around 200BCE, but it is not sure if they did the carving or not.

After a few hours round trip, we got back to the hotel and gathered up our stuff for the bus. Next stop was into the Paracas National Reserve where we would visit some coastal viewpoints. Some people get lucky here and see dolphins, but we saw lots of pelicans and rocks from the Eocene, and that was about it. That bay was called Pisco Bay because of the number of birds there, and it was also the landing area in 1820 of Jose de San Martin who came to procure Peru’s independence from Spain and succeeded in 1821.

A museum was a welcome diversion from the cold winds coming in from the Pacific, and we actually learned a lot from it. The coast of Peru used to be a tropical jungle, as evidence by fossils of ferns and trees found along it. Remains of huge penguins, and birds with a wingspan of 6 meters have also been unearthed here. Now, the Humboldt current brings all manner of species to these waters, as the cold waters of the South meet the warm waters of the North. The sea otter is a particularly clever mammal that uses stone tools to open crustaceans for food. Not just apes use tools then!

Our last trip of the day was to an old colonial plantation house. Hacienda San Jose de Chincha was a slave cotton plantation that is now owned by the hotel chain Casa Andina. Extensive restoration work after the 2007 earthquake was required, and that is when they found the tunnels under the house which were used to hide and smuggle slaves to avoid paying taxes on them. We explored the catacombs and found bones and bats down there. The tunnels were pretty extensive and a little claustrophobic if you are into that sort of thing, but we found it pretty interesting and the Peru Hop guide did a pretty good job of giving a tour, culminating in locking us inside one of the punishment cells.

From the hacienda it was back on the bus and onwards to Lima. The difference between the first half of our Peru Hop trip and then since leaving the party hotel in Huacachina was day and night. We would only recommend Peru Hop to people who stop in Nazca and are really only in Peru with no time at all, otherwise I would definitely recommend organizing all the above activities yourself.

We even sent an email to Peru Hop with our concerns and got a pretty defensive email from its ex-accountant owner. Peru Hop should exclude the hop on, hop off aspect of its tours as they don’t manage the so-called flexibility very well, and just be a tourist bus with stops. The extra bells and whistles they add are not really useful, such as the Inti card they give you with a catalog of useless discounts that backpackers would simply never use. They should then add some extra time for the important activities in Nazca, train the drivers how to drive the Arequipa to Nazca leg, and keep the damn place tidy. Then that would make for a service they could actually be proud of.