Beach Series: Chilca

Chilca is a couple of hours away from Lima in the bus/combi express but if you end up finding a car, it is a smooth, comfortable 45 minute drive on the Pan American highway.   I will say that it is by far one of THE favorite places that I visited in Peru.  This tiny coastal town doesn't seem like it has much to do in this Mad Max desert of a beach line but it is damn interesting, and life changing if you are with the right folks or/and right frame of mind.  Why is it so special to me?

1.  A childhood beloved destination of my homie, Precolumbian

2.  Famous for OVNI sightings aka UFOs for all you believers and non-believers

3.  It offers the cheapest spa treatments in the world.  In Chilca, there are these lagoons that are famosas for their healing powers--like for serious healing powers.  Are you suffering from athritis?  Is your face still not out of the puberty stage of acne?  Do you want to increase your fertility?  Well, these lagoons are supposed to be the place to work that extraterrestrial magic on earthling problems.  Don't be deterred by the sulfuric smell or the nickelodeon radioactive green of the water.  Once you dip yourself inside and cover yourself with the rich, volcanic like mud, and let it completely dry until your skin feels like it will crack--nothing can feel more amazing than those moments...at least for me. 

4.  Delicious food.  You are right next to the sea so you can't miss fresh seafood.

P.S. I will say that despite the mud turning me the same blackface color as everybody else, I was still the center of attention especially at the gemelas lagoon--the smallest of the lagoons.  But, yeah, the sun, the mud, my friends, and the e.t. magic kept me chill, like my man above.

Beach Series: La Punta

I feel pretty disjointed like this picture Chuya took of me at La Punta--this pretty amazing rock beach in Callao (talking about Lima, Peru, folks). I wanted to take a rock bath since most people would pay money for hot rocks to be lain across their body like this.  It was my first time going to a crowded beach in South America.  All of the times I had gone to the beach was during the middle of the week, pretty early in the day and way out of town  or at the edge of town but this was my day to be totally exposed in ways that I find generally uncomfortable--16 year old mothershiester would never have gone to the beach in a bikini or a even a swimsuit of any kind. I'm pretty aware of the shape and size of my body most of the time.  But I am a lot less nervous about my curves than when I was a teen... at the same time it is different to be so naked around people who think your skin color is so strange, which means your body is so strange, exotic...something to stare at, something to point out.  I don't think I could've gone there with one or 2 people but it was a small gaggle of us so I felt less anxiety. I even went into the water--which is a whole another story of childhood anxiety nightmares.

Sickness or Pleasure...one in the same in my travel games

Im not blaming this plate of cebiche that I ate at the beach a month ago for my current failed digestive track but I will say that this plate of deliciousness is on the list of possible culprits.

Will this stop me from eating a plate of cebiche at the same spot tomorrow? Probably not.  I pray that it is not a disaster but alas I can only blame my lack of impulse control.