Who has ever heard about Otuzco? You probably thought, that in the headline is written “Cuzco” or it could be a typo. But it’s not. Even people from Peru got confused and not anybody knows where or what Otuzco is. Read the story about an insiders’ recommendation and a worthy tourism destination.
After the great success of the first report about Playa El Silencio (one of the most read articles on this page), I thought, that it would be time to visit another beach.
So I chose one beach that I already knew from my first visit in Lima in 2014. I visited the beach in April and it was a very quiet beach with almost no people there. No people means no one annoys you when you are laying lazy on your chair and try to take a nap. Reality looked different in 2018, but maybe it was because it is still holiday time in Peru. And holiday means a lot of families with a lot of children. But this time it weren’t the children who tried to catch the attention. Read the second beach report about Playa La Herradura and find out, who broke the peace.
Accessibility ☀☀
All the people who don’t have own cars need to go by taxi, because there are no public transport system reaching this beach. Fortunately, taxis are not very expensive in Lima due to high competition. Thanks to Uber, Cabify and Taxibeat, this competition even raised and let prices drop more. For a 20 minute ride I paid only 10.50S/.($3.22 or 2.61€).
Good price!
Value for money ☀☀☀☀
The entrance is free, because it’s a public beach. Lending two beach chairs and an umbrella costs 15S/. ($4.60 or 3.73€), regardless for how many hours you want to have it. So that’s a quite fair price compared to other offers.
Supply system ☀☀
I felt not oversupplied, but rather undersupplied. No ice cream seller shows a lack of entrepreneurship. I do not understand why there are several vendors of towels and sunglasses, but nobody thinks about a wonderful and refreshing ice cream. If I go to the beach, I have of course my towel and my sunglasses with me and don’t need more or new ones. No need to wear a second pair of sunglasses or lay on a second towel. This situation doesn’t change, if the vendor passes twelve times my chair to control if I am still wearing sunglasses or if I am still using the same towel. I simply don’t need more of the things I already have.
Please change your business strategy and try to sell ice cream from now on.
Surface quality ☀☀
During a very hot day (That was as well burning my poor skin) the sand heated up merciless. No way to walk to the shore without burning your feet. But not only the hot sand made a walk to the water a real challenge. Nearly the half of the beach width’ was constructed of huge stones. It was more a balancing act to reach the water than a safe walk. At least the children had fun throwing stones around.
Safety ☀☀☀☀
The beach itself is not very width, maybe half a kilometer long. Because of that, there is only one little outpost of lifeguards. Surprisingly the members of this unit wore shirts and caps with “Police” on it. I’m not sure if they were real members of the police, because I’ve never seen a police representative with short pants and no shoes on.
Tranquility factor ☀☀
Compared to my first visit four years ago, I must say that it was more quiet in 2014 than now. Maybe because of the high season are now much more chairs visible at the beach. More visible chairs at high season mean also to host more guests. But it weren’t the guests who were making the noise, surprisingly it was the one who was renting out the chairs who broke peace:
I have really no idea, whom he wanted to impress or attract with these dances. For a moment I was thinking that I entered up a gay beach, but regarding all the families there that couldn’t be the case. Later on, the same half-naked dancing clown tried to attack guests from a neighbored place:
Activities ☀
Nothing to see, nothing to do at this beach. A little boring.
Level of cleanness ☀☀☀
The beach was semi-clean. Between the sand there were some bottle caps and other rest of the products what people consume. The normal suffer at a beach.
Suitable for Families with children?
Yes it is. Ignoring the inappropriate behavior of the half-naked dancing clown, also children have a good time at the beach.
Dogs allowed?
Not sure, if dogs are allowed or not, but at Playa La Herradura I didn’t see anyone with a dog, but a few stray dogs. Sad to see!
I am very curious, what I will see on my third expedition to the local beaches. The first two ones were already funny and promising.
A man pushes a shopping cart full of soaps and shampoos in front of me. People prepare fresh food on a portable oven or barbecue. A stray dog pees against a plastic bag full of garbage. Women breastfeed their little babies during a walk through the streets. Caged rabbits, ducks and guinea pigs wait for their next liberator or boiler. A promoter yells directly in my face to buy something. What was it exactly? I don’t even remember, because here are thousands of these scenes I described. Every meter of walking. Every second of spending here.
I’m in Gamarra where you can find the most vivid and exciting street market of Lima and maybe even the whole country.
I was already four years ago here and need to say, that NOTHING HAS CHANGED!
Once you arrived at the market, it’s really difficult to keep the focus. Everyone and everything tries to catch your attention. People are everywhere. Odd scents, sounds, lights and music are accompanying your path through the streets as well. Where to start? Where to go? Which building to enter?
We all know the so called impulse buyers. People who do not have a clear idea, what they want to buy but have sufficient financial resources and enough curiosity to browse through the shops/markets and want to discover something they like to acquire. Women with their genetic shopping addiction are more likely to be impulse buyers, but also men can be affected from it. Another ‘problem’ is to go shopping without having eaten sufficiently before. Your stress level is higher and you are more likely to have a higher bill at the end of the day. To not make the same mistake during my afternoon in Gamarra and being prepared, I started the day with a little lunch and was thinking what exactly I actually want to buy today. To be prepared, I ordered at a food truck Cevicaucha (Ceviche + Caucha) and beer. From there I spectated my surrounding and tried to get used to it .
You can buy almost everything here. Prices are low and both supply and demand seem to be infinite on the streets of this colorful and noisy district of Lima. Who is the buyer here? And who is the seller? It’s so difficult to find it out in this anthill of people where no one seems to have a clear and certain direction. Everyone crosses each others path. Absolute chaos and mayhem, but somehow the madness still seems to be organized a bit.
Another man tries to sell umbrellas on this hot day to be protected from the merciless sun. Good idea! Whitey didn’t put any sun blocker on his neck and arms and is threatened by sunshine during 35 degrees at 1pm. But I would probably never use this umbrella again in Lima. So I didn’t buy it. Higher temperatures on the other hand let also raise the stink level of the garbage. And people throw away a lot of garbage on the streets.
But some things are really funny and oddly satisfying to see. Such as hanging trousers on a line in 10m height. Or a man that prepares the next window mannequin to sell it.
Or that the people didn’t care about that because they got accustomed to the situation and didn’t take deeper notice.
Unfortunately not all products are original quality. Some are pretty obvious fakes:
At the other side of the train station, the food and livestock market begins. That’s a different story than the part where you can buy all sorts of textiles. Here the markets are sheltered to not harm the products. Food markets usually attend to offer the customer bulk ware. That means to buy sealed products in high quantities. But what I saw in Gamarra, surprised me completely. I saw completely raw bundles of products, that looked like fresh from the factory itself. Difficult to estimate, how many kilogram are inside of one unit. But the following three pictures should be enough to understand the proportions:
Peruvians are not the tallest people of the world, but if the selling units have double the height of a regular person, you probably understand how strange it was to see. And I should tell, that there are no fork lifts or pallet transporters driving around. All of these things are carried and transported manually with a sack truck.
Some products need to be imported, because they are not domestic. It looks like they arrived with a cargo ship at a harbor and are immediately transported to the markets of Gamarra without changing the original packaging. Well, from the harbor to the market of course with a truck, but from the market to the selling section with a sack truck.
I arrived with an empty sports bag to be able to carry all the products I bought and left with a full sports bag. But what was more worth, the acquired products or the experience I made during this afternoon at the crazy market?
Harmony. Zen. Balance. Peace. Don’t we all strive for that? There is one single place in the world, where you can have guaranteed equilibration. To go there, you need to visit Quito in Ecuador, the highest capital of the world. If you don’t have an own car, it’s a real odyssey to arrive their with public transport. I needed three different busses and two hours to get to the middle of the world.
Quito itself is in between the Andean mountains and therefor stretched horizontally. Approximately 22 kilometers away from the city center is the equator situated. The urban area is due to the narrow valley not wider than two to three kilometers and extends longitudinally in north-south direction more than 30 kilometers out. So actually the middle of the world is not in Quito itself, but close to it
Before the trip I heard several people speaking about the middle of the world. It’s one of the most visited tourism destinations of Ecuador. People told me about the real and the fake middle of the world and recommended to me to visit ‘Museo Intiñan’ instead of the renown monument itself. So after two hours of an exhausting bus ride I walked a bit to access the museum. Finally I can tell, that it was really worth it to travel that much.
How are museums usually from the eyes of a visitor? You have to be silent when you walk around, are not allowed to touch anything and pay quite some money to be allowed to enter. But this museum is something special, it’s comparably keen and there are several interactive things to do for a visitor, that it doesn’t get boring there. You will have a very motivated tour guide that explains even the most complicated physics of the odd features of Ecuador in an easy manner so that a fool like me will understand it as well. And yes, you can even learn something for real to be able to brag with your knowledge to others. For instance that your weight in Ecuador is one kg less than in other countries of the world:
“In Ecuador your weight is less than in your country of origin, because it is the most width part of the earth and we are far away from the centre/core of the earth. Therefore the gravity strength is less.”
Great for everyone who wants to boost his/her diet plans! Apart from that there were several other interesting things to see:
One of the most interesting moments was to see the equator itself. The feeling of being at the middle of the world is also psychologic a good one and gives a boost of motivation and confidence. The psychologic advantages are carried on physical disadvantages. If you are exactly on the equator line you will not be able to shift from one foot to another with closed eyes because your sense of balance is interfered because of the missing attractive force of the poles. Another malus is that you can’t resist if someone pushes you away from your stand. You simply can’t stand still because of the missing attractive force and will be slightly pushed away. But for taking a rest at the middle of the world it’s quite suitable.
Another highlight was for me to balance an egg on the head of a nail – Nowhere else in the world is something like that possible. It took me several attempts and a lot of patience to accomplish that mission. And everyone who knows me good will confirm, that patience is not my specialty event.
But after ten minutes and with the power of the Ecuadorian football jersey it finally worked out for me:
Have you ever thought, that even a water current is dependable of the attractive force of the poles? Check out the following three videos and you know what I mean:
So depending on where exactly you are in the world, the water flows down either clockwise, vertically plummeting or counter-clockwise. How shocking is that? And I always thought, that the Simpsons episode with Barts phone call prank with an Australian boy was just shenanigans. But lesson learned!
What you can see on my finger tip is the fake middle of the world. The monument itself was built from the Ecuadorian government, when they found out, that the museum was attracting many tourists and visitors. Their first idea was: “We want to profit from that as well”. And so they declared the term ‘middle of the world’ as a public possession and built their own attraction 200 meters away. Apart from that, they forbid the museum to have this term as well in their name. The museum changed therefor its name to ‘Museo Intiñan’ and every visitor needs to pay 5 Dollar to access the monument. And the monument is not even on the latitude zero.
My advice: Don’t miss the museum ‘Museo Intiñan’ (Inti = Sun. ñan = path). You can still go after that to the monument and if you have five dollar spare you should invest them. But the museum itself should be of your major interest and attention.
The only valuable information regarding “Playa El Silencio” I found at tripadvisor.com. Here most information are in Spanish language. Although it is semi-interesting, to read the experiences from several people, there is only a total star rating from 1 – 5 available. Categories like the above mentioned hard factors (accessibility, value for money, security) are not visible on first glance. They might be written in the contribution of the users from tripadvisor.com, but all in all it is a high effort to collect all valuable information together. squeezing out an orange for a glass of juice can be more easy. I didn’t find amongst all the opinions of the user not a detailed report.
A panorama picture of Playa El Silencio taken from the entrance
So I thought to write about the beach and check the quality, at tripadvisor.com the beach received a four star rating. But how should I know, if the beach is suitable for families with small children? Are dogs allowed at the beach? How expensive is it to access the beach. Read now the first beach report about “Playa El Silencio”.
Accessibility ☀☀☀
It’s not difficult to access the beach, but you have to take quite some time in consideration, regardless if you drive with an own car or use the public transport. Both the traffic in Lima is everywhere awful, in my case I was heading from the centre to the south on a Friday noon and that was quite exhausting. It seemed like the half of Lima wanted to take the highway to go for a long weekend outside of the town. I took a bus from “Mall del Sur” to the closest station of the beach.
That took maybe 30 – 40 minutes and cost 3.00S/. ($0.93 or 0.75€). Arriving at the middle of the highway you have now the option to take a taxi or go by feet the rest of the distance. I chose to go the rest of the distance.
Bullshit! It took half an hour maximum. How does Google calculate the walking distance? With old people on crutches?
For me it was kind of funny to see billboard of Uber. I can’t remember, that I have seen any advertisement of Uber before in my life.
Anyway, unfortunately I underestimated the force of the sun on 11:30am and walked these 30 minutes without putting sunscreen earlier. Quite naive, so I got burned a little bit, but didn’t feel it, when I arrived. But when I arrived, I put on sunblock as I should. Lesson learned!
All in all, it took 70 – 80 minutes until I arrived. And I think, that this is quite a lot but still bearable for a Friday traffic chaos in Lima.
Value for money ☀☀☀
Good and low are the costs for the public transport to access the beach. The entrance is free, because it’s a public beach. All the rest is far off consideration and quite exclusive. Lending two beach chairs and an umbrella cost 30S/. ($9.30 or 7.50€), regardless for how many hours you want to have it. Avarice is a vice, but in my perception, this is quite a lot to not lay in the bear sand and get a stiff bag. To avoid these vexations, I had to bite the bullet. At least the usage of the sanitation facilities of one of the restaurants was included. Everything else to buy and consume was quite expensive in my opinion.
Supply system ☀☀☀☀
Wow, although it’s a public beach, there was no lack of everything. The beach is definitely well equipped with restaurants and beach vendors. It was actually a little bit annoying to enter the beach and get directly molested from five different people who want to bring you inside of one of the restaurants or sell you the beach chairs. Only on bazars in Arabistan it might be more annoying and a pain in the arse than at this beach.
At the beach itself I felt very oversupplied of all the beach vendors. You can’t sit quietly for 30 seconds in your chair, because then the next expert wants to impose you his products.
I was quite surprised, that irrespectively of the ratio of 1:3 (one tourist and three vendors) their business was still successful. No cannibalization, even if you could ice cream every minute of the same company. Even if you would erase the half of these nuisances, it would have been still enough to make every guest at the beach happy.
Not sure, if selling books is a good idea at the beach…At least this beach vendor doesn’t need a gym membership, if he is carrying these heavy books in his hands all day long.
Surface quality ☀☀☀☀☀
Wonderful gritty sand with just a few shells or stones. Not too hot, not too cold.
Safety ☀☀☀☀
There might have been sufficient lifesavers and other security guys walking around. At least I didn’t feel insecure of any threats like thefts. But the only thing that made me wonder was the yellow flag, although there were some crazy intense waves. Some people, especially young fellas, had their little problems to swim and get back to the shore.
Tranquility factor ☀☀
The beach is called “El Silencio”, but the last thing you can expert there is silence. You can’t take a nap, if all 30 seconds someone yells at you to buy a cold beer. The good level of (over)suppliance gets down the tranquility of the beach. I simply can’t eat an ice cream and drink a beer every minute. That’s not possible, even if I wanted to or had enough money for it.. At least there wasn’t any loud music to hear from the restaurants or other tourists.
Activities ☀
Maybe the only thing, that was really missing. There weren’t any extrinsic activities possible at the beach. Nobody wanted to teach me how to surf or hire out a jet ski. Neither were there any beach volleyball pitches or other activities possible. I wasn’t bored because of that, but expected at least something when going to a beach.
Level of cleanness ☀☀☀☀☀
Wonderful! In combination with the fine sand, there wasn’t anything to complain here. No glass, plastic or other garbage to evade to walk on. The beach was very clean and even every beach vendor picked up the garbage from the tourists along their walking paths. Were they obliged from someone to do that or proceeded with it on own motivation? No matter, but at least the beach was nice and clean.
Suitable for Families with children?
Yes it is. Maybe a bit boring, but definitely suitable for families with children. Parents might be not able to take a nap because of missing activities for the children, but that’s the price you have to pay when going to the beach. But keep always an eye on your youngsters when you let them inside of the water. Remember the crazy waves when showing only the yellow flag?
First I was laughing and wondering about someone who tries to sell a swimming pool at the beach. But offering it to a family for little children is a good idea.
Dogs allowed?
I don’t remember that I saw any signage regarding a ban of dogs. Neither did I see a dog. I think, that’s a ‘Yes’. Well, actually a ‘No’ then. I suppose, that dogs aren’t allowed.
Well, I can just recommend to go and make a visit at Playa El Silencio!
Quito! Capital of Ecuador! And at the same time the highest capital in the world! But how can that be with ‘only’ 2,850 m in altitude? I was very shocked, when I read this a few months ago, because I was always on the assumption, that Bolivia has the highest capital in the world. Then I was happy because my assumption was semi-correct: La Paz is on 3,640 m of altitude. Then I was shocked again because La Paz is the seat of the Bolivian government, but it’s not the official capital of Bolivia. Sucre is the constitutional capital of Bolivia and retains judicial power. And with only 2,810 m in altitude, it’s not the highest capital of the world. And Quito is very proud of 40 m more, because size matters!
Quito is as well the capital of the world, which is located closest to the equator. Apart from that, Quito has several wonderful nicknames:
– Luz de América (Light of America)
– Carita de Dios (God’s Face)
– Ciudad de los Cielos (City of the heavens)
