Coast and Desert Solo

Lima for one night at the coast before the desert drive south. The Miraflores cliff walk at dusk, the Pacific below the city, an early dinner and sleep. The Pan-American Highway south to Paracas is four hours of coastal desert: the land stripped of everything except sand and the line where it meets the sea. The drive is part of the journey.

The Ballestas Islands are reached by private speedboat: thirty minutes across the Paracas Bay, then into the rocky arches where sea lions have colonised every ledge and Humboldt penguins stand in lines on the guano rocks. The private boat moves closer than the shared tour allows. The afternoon: the Paracas Reserve, the red ochre cliffs, the silence of the coastal desert.

The Paracas Reserve is not commonly known outside Peru but it is one of the country's most extraordinary landscapes: red-tinged desert cliffs dropping directly into the Pacific, the Andes visible over the ocean on a clear day. A private vehicle and guide for the full reserve circuit — the flamingo lagoon, the Cathedral rock formation, the desert that has no rain.

The drive from Paracas to Ica passes through the desert towards the vine-planted valleys that produce Peru's national spirit. A private bodega visit in the afternoon — not the commercial route but the small family operation where the pisco still distils in copper alembics and the vintage is discussed by the person who made it. The tasting does not require commentary.

Huacachina is a lagoon in a natural depression surrounded by dunes that rise fifty metres on all sides. The morning is for sandboarding — the solo traveller with a board and a dune with no group below waiting for the next run. The afternoon: the lagoon from a dune top at golden hour, the palms around the water, the desert light that makes every surface glow.

The Nazca Lines are only legible from the air. The private light aircraft carries two passengers maximum — effectively a solo flight. The spider, the monkey, the condor, the hummingbird appear below as the plane banks over the pampa. The geoglyphs are made by removing the dark surface gravel to reveal the lighter earth beneath. No one knows with certainty why they were made.

The drive back to Lima on the Pan-American Highway is four hours of coastal desert in the opposite direction — the same landscape, the same light, but the traveller who returns has the spider and the condor and the pink dolphins as private knowledge. Lima receives at sea level. The journey ends facing the same Pacific it began beside. The coast holds what was seen.