Hungry To Wander: #30 Weekend trips to the beach with new friends and exciting new travel plans

Staying in Lima for one month was something that I hadn't initially planned upon. However the longer I stayed, the more friends that I made and the more of a routine I got into it quickly became quite hard to think about leaving. However now I am actually on a time scale which I had not been on before, now halfway through my 12 month trip I thought about whether I wanted to discover other parts of the world. Initially I thought about staying in Latin America for the whole twelve months (money permitting of course) however after talking to people along the way I heard that even though the countries in South South America (Chile, Argentina and Brazil) are exquisite they are the more expensive countries of the continent. Now after travelling for six months I feel more confident in discovering more countries further afield. Sri Lanka was a country in particular that appealed to me and people had nothing but positive things to say about South East Asia....it got me thinking and I started browsing blogs, instagram posts and flights. What further influenced my decision was meeting Amy, an Australian girl that I met in Ecuador and travelled with her and other friends for three weeks (not long in the real world but in the travelling world it is a long time especially considering that we spent Christmas and new year together). We joked in Ecuador that we would fly to the Philippines for Amy's 30th, as with most drunken conversations I didn't think this idea would transpire. However I had the delight of Amy coming to Lima for two days which ended in her staying nearly two weeks until she flew out to New Zealand. During this time we decided to take some advice from Nike and 'just do it' so to speak. So I booked flights.....to the PHILIPPINES from Lima with a four day Stop off in San Francisco on the way and will meet Amy in the Philippines on the 5th April. I will have to come back to visit Chile, Argentina and Brazil another time! Now I will have five months to discover South East Asia, Nepal,and Sri Lanka (again money permitting)!

After spending three weeks in Lima city, I decided to make the most of new friends I had made and managed to get the manager Sergio in the hostel to give me the weekend off working in the hostel to head out of the city and to the beach! I made a great friend called Melissa whilst working in Dragonfly. She is from Lima originally but has worked as a tour guide in the past and the minute I met her we got on like a house on fire. She invited amy and I to come to Paracas with her for a weekend. A beach town about four hours south of Lima. It had actually been on my list of places I had wanted to visit but I just hadn't made it yet. It is best known for the national park and the ballestas islands. Day trips are popular where you can see blue footed boobies (a type of bird I had already been lucky to see in Ecuador) and sea lions. We however were more drawn in to the thought of some sun, sea, swimming pools and happy hours. I also invited Leonardo a friend who I met working on the Superlearner project. Leonardo is a musician and from Lima and he does some music workshops with the kids on the project. I was also shocked to learn he had never been to Paracas so we recruited him to come too.

After having a pretty heavy night on Friday and ending up in a pirate themed club in Barranco in Lima after working in the hostel, we dragged ourselves out of bed to get the bus to Paracas. Amy, Melissa, me and my friend Leonardo decided to ditch the overpriced tourist coaches to Paracas and take a much cheaper public coach from a highway in Lima (much easier to navigate when you have two Spanish speaking locals with you). We paid half the price of $6 for the four hour bus journey to a nearby town of pisco and grabbed a collectivo taxi from there. By the time we arrived that afternoon we were feeling slightly more refreshed having all slept the majority of the way on the bus. I was thinking we were very lucky to have had the pleasure of the journey taking us down the very straight pan American highway! We arrived at Kokopelli hostel in Paracas, which we were told was fully booked that night as is the case for most weekends being the main (party) hostel in the town (luckily we had bikes) and after a slight mess up with our booking we got it all sorted.The pool looked glorious and there was a big bar area out the back with hammocks, bar games, pool, table tennis and an entrance onto the beach.

Kokopelli swimming pool

We immediately went for a long overdue feed and indulged in ceviche (sure what better than raw fish to ease a hangover) and more fish and rice for a main. By the time we got back from our food, Amy, Leo and I walked out to the beach at the back of kokopelli to watch the sunset! Very romantic for the three of us.

That night we ended up drinking lots of rum (smuggled into the hostel) ssshhhhhh, played cards and giant Jenga. The night ended in some salsa dancing and me bailing out at the pretty embarrassing time of 12.30 for bed, the pirate night really got to me! In the morning we took advantage of the inviting pool and the blistering sun shine. Melissa, Leo and I went kayaking in the sea getting bashed by the waves from the jet skis and gawking at Pelicans. Apart from eating, playing frisbee in the pool and reading our books we didn't do much else and it was lovely. Unfortunately Melissa left Sunday evening as she is a real adult and had to work on Monday. Leo, Amy and I however stayed another night. We walked along the promenade in Paracas that evening. We detoured through a five star resort and were blown away at how beautiful (and expensive looking) it was. We must have looked very out of place with our kokopelli wrist bands on. We continued along the promenade gazing into the back of all mansions backing onto the sea and of course we stopped to see the sunset on the way back to Kokopellie. We spent the night playing pool and more giant Jenga with Scott and Kelly, an Australians brother and sister we had met at the hostel. The next day we navigated our way back to Lima and Dragonfly just in time for me to work at 6pm on the bar.