More of the rest

Trujillo was perfect to rest and talk a lot with my family. I hadn´t spent a lot of time on my travels back to this city before. Two weeks of vacation sometimes is not enough when you are some thousands miles away. The other city I always wanted to visit was Chincha. This small town south of Lima is mainly known because the biggest population of black peruvians live here. This time I went with my brother and two friends from high school. We went on one of my friend's car so we had a lot more flexibility to go to different places quickly, besides it was just a weekend we were using since my friends had to work monday so it worked perfectly. Asking a lady in Chincha for the parties that the locals give she stated that it is only during carnival when one can hear and attend the parties with the music of this region. Peruvian music with african roots, instruments like cajon, guitarra, quijada that the artists use to create a sort of 'tap' dancing. And literally I think I counted about four black peruvians on the street. Oh well, next time I go straigh to the neighborhood of Barranco in Lima and dance until dawn with this music that has a lot of energy and make you sweat like you were in an aerobic class: Festejo.
We also went to a ranch that used to belong to a family that grew cotton, Hacienda San Jose. It is surprising how this ranches had even a chapel so the workers didn't have to go to the closest town to mass. The priest would come to the ranch and celebrate mass there. I saw the same sructure in the Colpas in Cajamarca. These farms date about the 1,600's I believe.
We visited the pre-Inca ruins of Centinela, at the arrival of the Spaniards they turned it into a kind of fortress since it is about 4 km of the ocean and its high construction allows you to have a good sight of incoming ships. We also went to visit Melchorita, a woman who according to the locals made miracles and she is on the 'waiting' list to be canonized. It is incredible the amount of followers she has. Walking around the isles of this house I felt heavy air, people totally convinced that if they pray hard enough she can give them the wish they want. From what I saw, they were parents with kids and old people accompanied by their sons or daughters. I just assumed they were ill and the wishes were merely for their healthy being.
After eating 'manchapecho' a sort of noodles with red sauce and pork we headed to Pisco. (If I translate spanish manchapecho to english it would be 'staining to the chest'...because the sauce can do that to your shirt...).
Pisco is a small town, where The Pisco, a tequila type of drink with 44% grade of alcohol made of grapes is produced, and where we were to spend the night before going to Paracas next day. We drank at the main square the bottle of wine we bought on the road so we felt like we were on a place where we could enjoy freely and hang with the locals and watch some kids going to their parties. Until the police came and quicked us and the rest of the 'free spirit' drinkers out of the plaza. Nothing major, they just told us. "Please don't drink here, it is prohibited to drink on the main square you know".
So we went to a club and drank and danced until 4 am.
Paracas was our final stop so we payed with the rest of the tourists for a ride to the islands where the Humboldt Penguin (the Peruvian penguin) lives. This is an amazing island where the guano http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guano of these birds is extracted to fertilize lands. Our trip to these islands was not to know more about the business of guano in Peru but to watch the many animals like sea lions, penguins, pelicans and seagulls that habitate on these not cold areas of the world.