Page 56 - Bulletin, Vol.83 No.3, December 2024_version 11-12-2024

Day 2

At 9 a.m., in spite of difficulties, we collect our bikes from Cesar, our guide and bike hire
company renter. They are 150cc Hero bikes and they definitely wouldn't have passed
technical control tests in France ! We take off two hours late. Peru is home to 34 million
inhabitants, a third of which, for economic reasons, have sought refuge in this tentacular
city which is Lima. We head south, housing is diverse, with no building standards. The
traffic is heavy. We drive along the Pacific coast. The landscape is a desert, with huge
sand dunes along the road. Schoolchildren in uniform wait and sometimes cross the
road, which is in fact a motorway. Two women pray in front of a miniature house,
decorated with flowers, on the central reservation of the motorway. At the toll,
employees show us the lane for motorbikes - and it's free ! Cesar rides slowly and often
on the hard shoulder, which is all the more problematic since we pass a three-wheeler
that is also driving on it, but in the opposite direction. After a 250 kilometres drive we
arrive at the hotel in Paracas, having suffered a few scares caused by impatient drivers
- our limited speed having something to do with it.

Day 3

In the morning, we greet the Pacific Ocean with a short boat cruise. The nature reserve
is home to sea lions, penguins and other birds. Guano, a natural wealth, covers the
rocks with its white mantle.

We see a 170 metres long geoglyph, in the shape of a candlestick, carved into the
hillside.

We set off again towards Ica going through the Lachay national reserve, a desert area,
we see a bit of the Pacific, a fishing harbour, where we take a dip in the sea. We then

54 AAFI-AFICS BULLETIN, Vol. 83 No. 3, 2024-12

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