After 12 days on the road, pedal push power had taken us over 400km from Lima to Paracas National Park, the 2nd driest place on earth. The distance travelled and situations encountered so far in no way prepared me for the ferocious wind, extremely challenging desert terrain and unwelcome night-time visitors that awaited us.
The weather conditions on our first day in the park were amiable. The terrain, however, was not. Uncomfortably uneven, stony, bumpy roads and a nauseatingly steep hill led us to the cliffs atop La Mina Beach. The stunning panoramic views made the arduous cycling on/pushing of Pamela worthwhile. There we met a fellow traveller, a man of no fixed abode who had been camping in the park for quite some time. He was a chatty man who assured us that it was a safe camping spot. His only warning was about 'las ratas' who had made a sizeable hole in his tent! He advised us to place our food in the nearby container used by local fishermen to store their catch. We took his advice about 'the rats' somewhat lightly. Rats? In this desert terrain? 'Piff!', we thought. Not possible. Surely our amigo was mistaken. Thinking that we, the foreigners, knew better, we concluded that it HAD to be some other animal native to the park. This animal had most probably taken advantage of one of the campers absences to invade his tent and attack his food supply.
That night, the sky in Paracas was truly spectacular and for the first time in my life I saw Our Galaxy, The Milky Way, a truly incredible sight to behold (the sun sets between 17:00 and 18:00 in Peru. Thereafter, darkness approaches quite rapidly). This is my only fond memory of the night.
Before even entering our tent for some much needed sleep, the nights antics began with the lights of an approaching car. As the terrain sloped downwards to the rocky cliff top on which we had set up camp, we had a good vantage point. In daylight we would have been sitting ducks. In the pitch black of night, however, we were invisible to the lights of the approaching car which parked on the sandy surface a comfortable distance away. Always vigilant when it comes to late-night visitors, the trusty binoculars came out. Frank took the lead. I have, so far, not been the best of allies in these type situations. In the dark of night, my senses are heightened (good) and my imagination goes into overdrive (not good). When Frank noted that a group of guys had gotten out of the car and that they appeared to be doing something with ropes, my heart beat quickened. I somehow plucked up the courage to look through the binoculars myself. I like to 'appear' cool, calm and collected. The images were not very clear. I almost completely lost the plot (internally of course) when I thought I saw one of the guys put a balaclava on!
The band of boys eventually dispersed. One group descended to the beach to the left of us, the driver stayed in the car and a lone ranger went in the direction of the cliffs to the right of us. Frank completely took charge of the situation and set off, under cover of darkness, to investigate what these guys were up to. I stayed in the tent, to hold the fort of course. Someone, ahem, had to. During that time I had one of the entrances to the tent zipped down just enough so that I could peep out and keep watch. At this point I was a nervous wreck. Not ony was Frank gone and I was on my own but we were, in my mind, surrounded by masked men with bad intentions. When Frank returned, it was good news. Our visitors appeared to be on the hunt not for us but for something in the cliffs - animals perhaps, we concluded. I was somewhat relieved. It wasn't, though, until we saw the group return to the car and the lights fade in the distance that I began to relax. A sensation that was short-lived.
To the tent, our sleeping bags and the land of dreams I went. Though not for long. I was soon woken by Frank saying, 'Laura! Do you hear that?'. The beating of my heart picked up speed. No I had not heard anything. Was it an approaching car? Had our masked friends returned? To Franks animal-trained ears, it was the sound of a rat - a high-pitched squeaking noise. Oh how pompous of us to have dismissed the advice previously given! Brave Frank got out of the tent and sure enough a rat had jumped up onto the chair on which we had placed our food bags. (I should mention at this point that while cooking our dinner a few hours previously, our garbage bag grew legs. Frank, on rescuing our trash, saw some animal scurrying off to the cliff edge. Hence the chair to protect our bags from the clutches of any animals.) Frank shooed the black beast away with a stick we had collected on our travels to protect ourselves from the many a ferocious dog we encounter on a daily basis. Now we had to contend with rats. I went back to sleep but only for a spell.
'Laura!' Footsteps and cars I hear all too well (I even imagine I hear them!) but I am apparently deaf to the sound of gnawing rats. This time, there was more than one rat and they had not only punctured a hole in one of our plastic water bottles but they had also made a sizeable hole in one of Frank's cycling bags, his rackpack (now appropriately christened 'the ratpack') - a bag which is, apparently, extremely durable! A word of warning to travellers to La Mina beach - there are rats (a fact that was not mentioned in the guidebooks or by any guarda parka we encountered that day) and they are athletic creatures with superanimal abilities to gnaw their way through the toughest of materials. With our food and water supplies threatened, Frank decided that we had to take action. Thankfully someone was thinking straight that night! And so, with our tails between our legs, we carried our bags to the storage container.
Back in the tent, I was, again, fast asleep when Frank woke me for the third time. With the water and food gone, the rats had decided that their next victims would be us! Frank had felt the tent vibrate (I hadn't). Shining the torch on one of the bottom corners of the tent, he showed me the small holes made by the predators. Frank had had enough! I don't think I had fully grasped the gravity of the situation. I would have been quite happy to go back to sleep! Frank, however, having been sleep deprived by these malicious creatures, was on a roll - this time, they had crossed the line. Mi casa no es tu casa! I slowly began to realise that the rats were actually trying to get into the tent and began to question what their next move would be once that objective had been obtained! It was past midnight and there we were, two exhausted cycling tourers trying to conceive a plan of action. We debated packing up everything and cycling to god knows where in the pitch black in this land of roaming rodents and balaclava-clad men. Not really an option. We finally decided to leave our supplies in the storage container, pack up the rest of our things and push our bikes to higher ground. And so, after all the packing and unpacking, we finally were able to catch a few zzz's before the rising sun woke us for another challenging day in the land of sand ...
