The Beach at Mejia

Arequipa is only 90km from the ocean (although due to the state of Peruvian roads, that 90km takes about 2.5 hours to navigate), so we decided to head down to the beach for a day or two.  Our plan (although the 'p' word implies a whole lot more planning and forethought than we gave to it) was to take a collectivo down to the beach town Mollendo, investigate hotels when we get there, possibly stay overnight (depending on hotel prices and availability), and hopefully get back to Arequipa some time.

Considering how loose the plan was, I think we did OK.

When heading down to the bus terminal, the Uber driver suggested that we take a car instead of a bus, as the car only needs to find 7 people before it goes, while the bus needs to find 15.  When we got there, the car was ready to leave and there was no bus to be found, so we just took the car.

The landscape between Arequipa and Mollendo is some of the most desolate desert I have ever seen.  Most of it has no plants whatsoever - not even grasses or cacti. The rocks are all reddish, but interestingly the sand is white.  This is how I envision Mars' landscapes to look like (minus the blue sky, of course).

The desert between Arequipa and Mollendo.  It may not be obvious to our fellow Canadians, but the white stuff is sand, not snow.

Two and a half hours later we got to Mollendo.  A taxi driver met us, and suggested that we head to Mejia, an even smaller town about 15 minutes down the road, as the beaches there are a bit calmer, and the price of hotels a bit less.

The taxi driver shows us a hotel and drops us off at the beach.  We take a look around, and then walk back to the hotel to check in, change, and drop off all the junk that we brought.

This part of the expedition was a huge exercise in trust for our family. We have heard a lot of horror stories about getting into shifty taxis, and adding a new town to the equation was a bit difficult, but we did it anyway. When we arrived to the hotel, there was no answer, but a guy riding a bike near by said the owner just worked down the street, and she would be there in around an hour,. We walked around town, found some food, and then met the mysterious hotel owner on our way back. Once we knew we had a place to stay, we were a lot more calm, and able to enjoy the days ahead.

The hotel is just a couple hundred meters from the beach, so we quickly changed and walked back.

View from the hotel window

Mejia (not to be confused with Maija)

Monica modeling her new bathing suit

The kids in the process of getting sand everywhere

Blinding whiteness

There are all sorts of critters on the beach.  The most common seem to be ghost crabs (which have small holes in the sand where they hide at the sight of any movement) and sand crabs (which hang out in the section of the beach where the waves are always flowing (Wikipedia tells me this is called the "swash zone") and where they can quickly burrow into the sand).  We also saw pelicans and a bunch of other birds which I didn't recognize.

We stayed at the beach from about 12:30 until sunset at 6:00ish.  I was definitely missing my 'real' camera today... there is so much you just can't get with a wide angle lens.  Still there were some cool shots during Golden Hour.

Monica, Maija, and Terran playing in the surf at sunset

The completely cliché but so much fun sunburst shot

Terran wandering the beach

Another cliché shot, which of course I had to do

That evening we had dinner at the one restaurant which was not yet closed.  (Prior to this, when asking a local at the beach if there were many restaurants in town, they responded "Sure, there are tons - at least two or three!)  This place was out of the food we wanted, unfortunately, so we had a stewed chicken (Monica and Terran) and Fish Chicharron (Maija and I).

Unfortunately, the hotel (and the entire town, for that matter) is right by the main road, and there was some traffic going throughout the night.  The curtains were also very light, and so everyone was up early.

We went back to the beach after a hearty breakfast of canned milk and peaches (don't ask).  At this hour there was nobody else present, and so we got to see a lot more ghost crabs crawling all over the beach.  Not sure if it was just an illusion, but the waves seemed even larger the second day.  It's hard to say exactly what the size of the waves are, but I estimated the breakers (about 100m out to sea) to be close to 3 meters (9 or 10 feet) in height.  We did see a couple of surfers the first day, and the waves towered over them.

We stayed at the beach until around noon, at which time we took a bus to Mollendo, grabbed a lunch of ceviche, got in a collectivo van bound for Arequipa, and eventually got back to our place.  Despite applying tons of sunscreen, we all have at least a bit of a burn (even Monica, who has always sworn that brown skinned people don't burn).

All in all, it was a great post-Christmas expedition.