Root Canals, Sandboarding and Aliens - Central Peru

We always knew Peru was going to be a hectic part of our holiday but Jas and I were not quite prepared for how much stuff there is to do down here, nor the hit to our budget (we have pretty much given up on it while in Peru).

First part of the story was not great but an experience all the same. I needed to make an emergency visit to the dentist to get a root canal for a nerve infection that probably developed in response to being up in altitude. As soon as we hit Lima we camped outside the Australian Embassy for a while until it opened to get a recommendation on an english speaking dentist. My primary concern was finding a decent english speaking dentist in a developing country. The dentist recommended was excellent and had even practiced in Australia and the USA.

Apparently the root canal was a quite difficult one, since it was on a wisdom tooth and the roots were quite curved. But the doc did an excellent job while Jas cowered in the waiting room able to hear everything (there was only a curtain between the chair and the waiting room).

Moving right along. Lima is also a pretty cool city to explore. Especially around Miraflores, it is a very upmarket city. Even had the best coffee since Melbourne.

One interesting place we found was ‘Cat Park’ also known as ‘Parque Kennedy’ which is known for having more than 100 stray cats. Nobody is really sure how it started but the cats do get regularly fed so they stay. This is no Japanese ‘Cat Cafe’, these cats are pretty feral and not exactly friendly. Very strange park.

Other than that, Lima was just a pretty cool city to explore. Every afternoon the paragliders flew up and down the coast line.

One curious place in Lima was the San Francisco Ossuary - a very nice monastery with very eerie catacombs containing the bones of more than 70,000 people. As the anthropologists researched these graves they arranged the bones by type as a way of counting the number of people buried here. No pictures allowed inside, but here is one from outside.

Next up was just random exploring through the old centre. Police checkpoints were up through out since the president was in and there have been a lot of protests leading up to next year’s elections. We have seen protests every single day we have been in Peru.

Moving on from Lima, we had a particularly large day where we took the 3am bus out to the Ballestas Islands or as it is known the ‘poor mans Galapagos’ where we saw the ‘candelabra’,  many birds, seals and sealife. We even saw a whale - we knew seeing a whale was a big deal when the guide and boat captain stopped to try get a picture. Nobody did though.

Next up on the same day, we boarded a different bus and made our way to the Huacachina oasis. Super cool place where we hit the sand dunes on buggies and boards. The oasis itself was really chill and whilst I wanted nothing more than a nice cold beer to wrap the day up - I was still on the antibiotics.

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After a good night’s rest we continued right on to the Nazca Lines. Something I have always wanted to see since I was a kid. These lines are seriously impressive and it amazes me that the Nazca people drew these shapes into the desert without ever seeing the whole. The animals and “the astronaut” were quite cool, but I was more impressed with the endless dead straight lines criss-crossing for kilometers.