Today I took a two hour (and $3 US) trip to the nearest beach. It is called Colan (with an accent on the a but I don't know how to make that happen here). It is just north of the city of Paita. This is the second beach I've been to in Peru, and the second ghost town. Apparently Peruvians do not like beaches during their winter. I maybe saw 10 people the entire time I was in Colan and that includes the cab driver and the waiter at the restaurant where I ate lunch. The restaurant was part of a beautiful resort that I found about a 20 minute walk from where the cab dropped me off. There were palm trees, a view of the ocean, and they served cold beer. I can't really think of anything else I want out of life. I sat for a couple of hours and watched the ocean and thought very profound thoughts - none of which I can remember now. On the walk back to the taxi I saw hundreds of small red crabs scurrying along the beach. They would scurry along until I got pretty close then they would freeze at the entrance to holes in the sand. If I took one more step towards them they would completely disappear. Colan is also famous for being the site of the first Spanish church in South America. If you showed me a line up of churches and asked me which one was the first in Spanish Church in SA I would guess this one. It looks old and like they hadn't quite decided on their style yet. The dessert also ran up to the beach here but it was much more striking than south of Lima. There it was a dusty desolate dessert, here large plateaus of colored rock gave way to the ocean. As I was leaving the sun finally came out, given the choice though I'd take a cloudy Colan over a sunny San Bartolo.
2 comments:
palm trees, the ocean and cold beer...sounds a little like heaven on earth.
Dude I don't know. That pier in LA with all our suitcases overlooking the beach when we all had to take massive dumps, and then mother nature massively dumped on us....now that was a nice beach!
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