Blissing out in Peruvian paradise

After my night out in Pisco, I immediately went to bed when I got home – and did not set any kind of alarm for the next morning. Bliss! This is my favorite part of vacation. Despite this, I still woke up at 7am (probably because I had gone to bed at like 10pm). All the better to get a jump on my workout for the day before the sun really came out!

While it was perfectly light out when I woke up, Paracas seemed to always be foggy in the morning – so much that every day I thought it was going to be cloudy and terrible, but then the sun would magically come through around noon and all the clouds would disappear, making it the perfect vacation day. The cloudy mornings were great for working out, and I considered going for a run, but the resort was probably only about a quarter mile wide, so that would be a lot of back and forth to get any kind of distance in.

At the gym, I discovered that while they didn’t have any dumbbells or free weights over 5 kilos (11 pounds, aka pretty useless for my super strong Rachel Cosgrove muscles), they did have tons of bottled water, free for the taking. Since I was trying to be careful about not drinking the tap water, and since the resort was charging ridiculous prices for bottled water (despite the fact that off-resort I could get a 3 liter bottle for the equivalent of 80 cents), this was a godsend. With the front desk at the gym being staffed 24 hours, though, this meant I had to go do at least a half-assed little workout to get free water anytime I was thirsty. Motivation!

After 45 minutes of an attempted weight lifting workout (which did not go so well due to the aforementioned lack of heavy weights), I gave up for the morning. Time to hit the pool! Armed with several magazines and a book, I alternated between the lounge chairs (for sun) and the daybeds (for shade) – wanting to get a little bit of a tan but not be too dumb about sun damage.

Around 1pm, I roused myself to go find food. Venturing back over to the little fishing town of Paracas, I chose the restaurant that was the most crowded (reasoning that if all the locals were there, it was probably a good pick) and perused the menu. It was basically all seafood, but what ecxited me the most was ceviche. Healthy and light, right? However, having heard that many of the restaurants in Paracas were known for their homemade lemonade, I checked out the beverage list and decided to get a “jarra de limonada.” Seeing that the price was only about a dollar, I figured it would be served in a quaint little Mason Jar. Um, wrong. Apparently “jarra” is Spanish for “big-ass two gallon pitcher.” Who knew? But the juice was delicious, and since the ceviche did indeed turn out to be incredibly light (though a very large portion for the $5 I spent), I finished it all. Hey, if lemonade was my big vacation splurge, I was okay with that 🙂

After lunch, I headed back to the pool to lie around and read the afternoon away, and then did some sunset yoga in the garden by the bay. By dinnertime, I still wasn’t too hungry (and also was feeling a bit lazy about the 5 minute walk back over to the village restaurant district), so I just had a protein bar and hit the hay at 9pm. I was thrilled with my day, but couldn’t help but laugh at how most women my age would be partying while on vacation, whereas I had resorted to an elderly schedule 🙂

I spent Tuesday much the same as Monday, except that my morning workout was kayaking on the bay. The kayaks had pedals in them (like a paddle boat) and my legs got a pretty intense workout in the time I was out there; not what I was expecting, but very welcome nonetheless! For lunch on Tuesday, I opted for a gorgeous cioppino – this time, with bottled water instead of the “jarra di limonada” 🙂

While my day was blissful, things started to go awry in paradise that night. Stay tuned for the dramatic conclusion to my trip and the reason I had to cancel Thanksgiving!