December 13, 2013
Ica, Peru
The closest of the barking dogs has
quit for now, but in the distance the constant yapping continues.
Other sounds drift in through the window: a crying baby, childrens'
voices, music from a car stereo, traffic noise. All that belongs to
any town, and the fact that I can sit here at ten pm by the open
window (and without bugs!) makes me as happy as ducking under a
bougainvillea bush covered in purple blossoms on the way downtown
earlier today.
The fact remains, however, that this
town is extremely noisy for some reason and that it seems to have
few redeeming qualities beyond the ones I mentioned to make up for
its lack of apparent beauty. I have never seen – or rather heard –
car horns used with more insistence, nor impertinence. It seems that
they are not only a means of aiding the flow of traffic but are engaged
just because they are there. A huge fleet of taxis and tuk-tuks –
motorcycle-driven little three-wheeler taxis – fills the streets, and
horns are used, it seems, to pick up passengers, alert them that it's
time to get off, as well as announce every turning of a corner, every
close encounter with another vehicle – and there are many!
 |
| Maybe this - seen in Lima's 'Miraflores' neighbourhood later - would have helped in Ica? |
After braving this din twice today to
get downtown to do errands (partly in vain, to boot) we asked
ourselves, 'whatever made us stop here, of all places?'
Well, beyond things like these
and the amazing 'Museo Regional de
Inca' with its great collection of artifacts from the two main
pre-Inca cultures, the Nasca and the Paranaca, it was the fact that
we wanted to break up the long bus ride from Arequipa to Lima. For
some reason the travel agent was adamant that we should not sleep in
Nasca, the stop before Ica, about three hours closer to Arequipa, so
there seemed to be little choice.
Most people who stop here in Ica go to the nearby Laguna Huacachina, an oasis surrounded by huge sand dunes where sand boarding and riding dune buggies are popular activities, but we were just looking for a place to rest: the bus ride from beautiful Arequipa to Lima takes more than sixteen hours, and we felt twelve were quite enough to do in one stretch.
We had booked the two front seats on the upper level of an 'Oltursa' bus, a company mostly geared towards tourist travel. It's nice to have the extra comfort - wider seats that recline to almost horizontal position, some extra leg room - on these long trips, and these seats at the very front afford the best view possible, of course. We had been in that position before, in a much less luxurious bus going from Bogota to Quito, and at that time we realized that having the better view can also mean being more terrified at the driving style of the bus driver. We didn't expect anything like that here, however.
Most people who stop here in Ica go to the nearby Laguna Huacachina, an oasis surrounded by huge sand dunes where sand boarding and riding dune buggies are popular activities, but we were just looking for a place to rest: the bus ride from beautiful Arequipa to Lima takes more than sixteen hours, and we felt twelve were quite enough to do in one stretch.
We had booked the two front seats on the upper level of an 'Oltursa' bus, a company mostly geared towards tourist travel. It's nice to have the extra comfort - wider seats that recline to almost horizontal position, some extra leg room - on these long trips, and these seats at the very front afford the best view possible, of course. We had been in that position before, in a much less luxurious bus going from Bogota to Quito, and at that time we realized that having the better view can also mean being more terrified at the driving style of the bus driver. We didn't expect anything like that here, however.
It turned out that we were unprepared for the ride in other ways. Even though we had been in Arequipa for a few days and left it in between to visit the Colca Valley and Colca Canyon, even though we had read that people jokingly say that when the moon separated from Earth it forgot to take Arequipa, we couldn't quite imagine the landscape we would be driving through.
We left Arequipa with its shady parks and white colonial buildings, a city as cool and orderly as Ica is noisy and chaotic, early on Thursday morning. From an altitude of 2,325m we would drop to only 400m in Ica.
The road climbed and dipped through rocky terrain, bare of growth for the most part except where a trickle of water encouraged the most tenacious grasses and small plants. After a while the rocks were joined by vast areas of sand, dunes that stretched to the distant mountains to our right and down towards the Pacific ocean which we reached about two hours after we left Arequipa.
The presence of the ocean didn't mean that it got any greener, however: miles and miles of beautiful sandy beaches stretched without a single tree, dotted by little huts woven from reeds or grass from time to time, though these, too, seemed largely abandoned. People were gathering sea weed and had spread it out to dry, and sometimes we saw them load it onto a truck. Here and there a fleet of fishing boats - sometimes quite large vessels - were moored in a bay. Still, for our eyes the landscape seemed desolate for the most part.
This changed dramatically when a river tried to make its way toward the ocean from the Andes. Suddenly a valley was lush and green, crops like corn, rice, melons, pumpkins and even cotton grew in abundance, olive and citrus trees softened the harshness of the surrounding steep hills. Here, little towns flourished and people carried on as in so many other little towns.
Soon, however, there was again only rock and the paranaca wind whipping across the high planes, rippling and sculpting the sand into dunes, a thin haze slightly veiling the road ahead, made up not of moisture but of sand.
It was a magnificent landscape we traveled through, a landscape hard to reconcile with the Peru we had seen already, the deep blue sky as relentless as the surface it spanned. The average rainfall here is 25 mm - one inch spread out over the whole year.
The sun was setting already when once again agricultural activity became apparent, the valley widening, trees, even large trees, appearing along the road side: we had reached the Ica region, Peru's only wine growing area, home to Pisco, the town famous for the grape brandy with the same name. By the time we arrived at the bus terminal in Ica it was completely dark.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
It is Saturday morning now, and we'll be on our way to Lima later today, a little more than four hours from here by bus. Soon it will be time to return to winter - hard to believe at the moment!
We left Arequipa with its shady parks and white colonial buildings, a city as cool and orderly as Ica is noisy and chaotic, early on Thursday morning. From an altitude of 2,325m we would drop to only 400m in Ica.
The presence of the ocean didn't mean that it got any greener, however: miles and miles of beautiful sandy beaches stretched without a single tree, dotted by little huts woven from reeds or grass from time to time, though these, too, seemed largely abandoned. People were gathering sea weed and had spread it out to dry, and sometimes we saw them load it onto a truck. Here and there a fleet of fishing boats - sometimes quite large vessels - were moored in a bay. Still, for our eyes the landscape seemed desolate for the most part.
This changed dramatically when a river tried to make its way toward the ocean from the Andes. Suddenly a valley was lush and green, crops like corn, rice, melons, pumpkins and even cotton grew in abundance, olive and citrus trees softened the harshness of the surrounding steep hills. Here, little towns flourished and people carried on as in so many other little towns.
 |
| Dunes with retaining walls |
Soon, however, there was again only rock and the paranaca wind whipping across the high planes, rippling and sculpting the sand into dunes, a thin haze slightly veiling the road ahead, made up not of moisture but of sand.
It was a magnificent landscape we traveled through, a landscape hard to reconcile with the Peru we had seen already, the deep blue sky as relentless as the surface it spanned. The average rainfall here is 25 mm - one inch spread out over the whole year.
The sun was setting already when once again agricultural activity became apparent, the valley widening, trees, even large trees, appearing along the road side: we had reached the Ica region, Peru's only wine growing area, home to Pisco, the town famous for the grape brandy with the same name. By the time we arrived at the bus terminal in Ica it was completely dark.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
It is Saturday morning now, and we'll be on our way to Lima later today, a little more than four hours from here by bus. Soon it will be time to return to winter - hard to believe at the moment!
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