The Painted Hills of Oregon

Oregon has been pushing the "Seven Wonders Of Oregon" lately and on that list is the Painted Hills! We waited and picked a time when we'd have a full three-day weekend to go. The drive from Scappoose to Mitchell seemed to take forever! It was around six hours I think, which for me in a car is close to forever.. We arrived in the evening and drove up to the hills, we got out at the first main parking area with dozens of other people and enjoyed the view like they were. Well, some of them anyway. Have you ever noticed in a popular/beautiful place there are more people turned away from the gorgeous site waiting for their photo to be taken than people who are actually looking at it?

 
After walking on a short gravel path we took a seat and marveled at the striped hillsides in front of us. They had stripes of red and green and spotty stripes of black.

   As the sun began descending, we went into Mitchell to find a place to park, and sleep. The town is literally like two hundred yards long. It has a general store, a hot dog food truck, a restaurant, a hotel or maybe two, and a community park for RV's and tents and those of us saving money and sleeping in their car. Tyler found dinner,

and I ate some salad I had packed. We took a walk to the end of town, looped out onto the highway and walked back into town, and back to our car, all in a whole of about ten minutes. Needless to say, the main draw to the area is the hills!

  Bright and early we were up after a very cold and rough night that consisted of next to no sleep since my boyfriend coughed quite consistently through the night. The morning was warm already. Our map showed us a series of five hikes, all totaling less than three miles. I had really hoped there would be a lot more trails than that! Since we'd done the first one yesterday, we started on the lookout trail. It took us up onto a nearby ridge to offer a bird's eye view of the striped hills now below us.

 

The other hikes were short, and rather lame. They went around small hills (more like mounds) and described the process of the earth, as well as the colors of it. It was interesting to read but by early afternoon we had our picnic lunch and were ready to leave, there wasn't much else to see.

   I remembered a sign outside of Mitchell reading "Rock Museum" and I was intrigued. We followed the sign and talked to a woman who had spent her whole life looking at, examining, mining, and just plain loving rocks! She is a wonderful woman and her museum, although the building is nothing fancy, the rock collections she has are really incredible. There is even a blacklight room filled with phosphorescent rocks that glow lime green and orange in different shapes and patterns.
  If you go to Mitchell to see the hills, don't skip the rock museum! The lady is awesome and very knowledgable! But take cash, she doesn't accept cards. The museum itself is free but she has so much stuff for sale as well that you'll be eager to take something home!
   In the end, you really only need a day to see all painted hills; there aren't many but they are fantastic to see!

Ica and Paracas

Arriving in Ica we were bombarded by the heat of the sun, the busyness of the street and the loud insistent honking of the hundreds of cab drivers. We quickly found a place to stay (fan included) and signed up for a wine tour. We had about half an hour till the tour started so we hurried over to a little restaurant and ate some brunch so quickly it made our stomachs hurt.

Our first of three vineyards was by far the most impressive and also the oldest in South America. It is called Tacama. We were given a tour by which we got to see the vineyard from a clock tower that served as a nice vantage point, we saw the barrels that used to store the wine, they showed us the area they use to make pisco, we saw many old tools and instruments that were used in the process of wine making, and we got to sample about 5 different wines and piscos. We had a really lovely time here.

The next vineyard looked like a little open air restaurant. We weren't given a tour but we were given many samples which we followed with some ice cream. The samples here didn't really taste like wine, they were so sweet and a few were powerful piscos as well. For those that don't know, pisco is the signature hard liquor of Peru, it is made from special types of grapes.

Cheers!

His face after drinking pisco

Yummy ice cream!

The last stop seemed to us like a museum, there was just a large collection of old junk lying around. It was interesting to look at though. The wines here were pretty good and the way we got to try them was really cool! The man took a long bamboo pole with a hole cut into the side and stuck it into a large ceramic-like vase holding the wine, when he pulled it back out he would pour the wine into our little tasting cups. It was neat!

Smashing grapes. So many bees..

In our cab after all the tastings!

Back in town we walked to the museum and it turned out to be pretty interesting, mostly because of the many well-preserved corpses. They were fascinating to gaze upon with their clothes still partially intact, many of them had their hair all done up too. One information plaque said they used cactus spikes to seal their lips and we could see that in a face or two. The Inca's also believed in stretching and elongating their skulls as babies and we saw many oblong skulls as well.

After the museum and walking back into town, we found a little market stall to eat at and then we stopped by a casino on our way back to the hotel. There are many casinos in Ica and I'd never been to one before. We used a whole $4 in our gambling expedition and I didn't really think that the machines were very fun, I found it quite boring, and I did really bad! Tyler was able to win part of our money back by the end, not that we played with much :p

Tyler got sick during the night :( but felt much better in the morning!

We got breakfast and a bus to Paracas. We loved this Cruz Del Sur bus! It was so comfy and the individual TV screens are really nice :) but we were only on the bus for a little over an hour. After finding a place to sleep we set out in search for ATV's. Finally we found one that would take us and we booked for 3 hours. The quads were tiny, 150's. The guide took us first to the gas station where my quad stopped working completely so he called someone to bring me a new I mean different quad. We entered the National Reserve and the scenery was beautiful but the sand dunes called to us and we had to stay on the road. Sometimes the road was dirt, but we couldn't act anywhere near like we do at home. So we followed very slowly behind our guide and stopped at certain beaches and different viewpoints, as well as a museum. It was fun, but a little too mellow for our taste.

No more forgetting our sunscreen!

"The red beach" hence the dark red sand

Tucking in my shirt for added warmth

What a fantastic colored helmet

Dinner for Tyler was a bunch of fried things from the sea and I even liked some of it! I had a silly avocado that they put tomato and lettuce in with a ton of dressing. Not impressed but Tyler's plate helped to fill me.

There was to be a concert that night so we waited by the stage listening to one guy sing and sing, we thought he was a pre-performance so we went for a walk down along the beach and a dock, and when we came back he was still singing and continued to do so. After a few more songs we said forget it and went back to our room. I think he was the main performance! He wasn't bad, we'd just heard him for long enough. Tonight I got really really sick. Just what I always wanted..

Tyler ate so much "dulce" or sweet popcorn!

We took the next day easy, I felt awful so I laid in bed and watched tv and ate the popsicles that Tyler supplied me with. Later when I felt a bit better we went for a walk because Tyler had talked to a scuba dive shop and really wanted to dive in the morning before we left for Lima. The shop was closed so we got some food along the water, we shared a noodle plate. When I say shared I mean Tyler= 80% and Ashley=20%. My stomach was just not ready for much yet. We rested again for awhile, then went to the bus station to buy our tickets for the next day, then I rested again. Tyler went and booked the scuba dive for 8am. Around 9pm we got some pizza and garlic bread that we brought back to the room. I ate a little but threw up my days worth in the middle of the night.

I was feeling better when I woke up so we went scuba diving together. It sucked. The equipment they put on me was way too big so my tank kept hitting me in the back when I was underwater, the weights around my waist bruised my hip and the whole thing was just too large for my body. Underwater the visibility was near 0. I held Tyler's hand nearly the whole time and that is what kept me calm and feeling safe while trying to swim through oblivion. I saw a few fish at first and after that I primarily saw murky water and when I could see a little I saw hundreds of purple sea urchins. I was trying to control my air on my own so I'd get it where I needed it to be so I could swim near the bottom and our guide would let the air out from my shoulder so I'd sink. Right into the sea urchins. This happened continuously. Eventually I got two sea urchin barbs in my shin and I said forget it, I am done with this dive. It really was a waste of money, we didn't see anything. Tyler still enjoyed it though which makes me glad that he got to do it!

He's just so freakin cute!

Not friendly sea urchins

Murky water!

Back in town we showered quick, grabbed some food and practically ran to the bus station because we were cutting it close on time. The bus was 30 minutes late. Go figure.