We’ve been in Lima for over 3 months now, but our car was only just delivered in two weeks ago. Before now, we’ve been getting around by embassy provided shuttle (Laura to work), Uber (Laura to work), private driver (Laura to work), bike (Phil to work) or, predominantly, on foot. Jumping in an Uber with both girls, their car seats, and our inevitable amount of get-out-the-door stuff had never been easy and, as such, we really haven’t gone far as a family. Now that we have our car we’re eager to stretch our legs when given the opportunity. Laura took the combination of Juneteenth holiday and Father’s Day to organize a quick diving trip to Pucusana, a nearby joint commercial-and-tourist town. She rented a great two-story AirBnb apartment in a private community there overlooking the harbor, where we could watch the fishing boats pull in and out throughout the day. Sonja had a blast trying to get wave-backs from the passing tour boats while we ate our meals out on the balcony, and Inka really enjoyed playing in the sand at the calm beach in the community. That area had a small breakwater and faced away from the ocean so the waves were really calm, and there was plenty of bird life to monitor (Inka Terns!) and we even saw a small sea lion swimming near us.
We were fortunate to be joined by Sonja and Inka’s nanny, Sofía, for the trip so they could hang out while we went diving. As we drove into Pucusana it was interesting to hear of Sofía’s last time visiting Pucusana over a decade ago, how it differs in the summer (we were there in the middle of winter), and her recollection of how things have changed for the small town.
On Saturday morning, Laura and I walked across the beach and through the small town to the dive shop where we met up with her coworker friend, Andrew, who was going to join us for the day. Andrew had been diving in Pucusana once before and came down just for the day since it’s only an hour drive from Lima; we were thankful to have someone with some experience to pick the dive shop and give us the confidence to go based on his review. The shop took us out on a hard bottom boat from the dock with 6 other divers, and we motored through the harbor before rounding the island and heading south to the dive site (-12.4898153104776, -76.7991556130385). Leaving from the dock was pretty different and easy compared to all our beach-launch adventures in Southern Africa (Tofo, Thonga, Cape Town), and it was fun navigating through all the small moored fishing ships adorned with Peruvian Pelicans.
Unfortunately we don’t have many photos from the boat and diving itself. Photography is always a challenge while diving because we’re so preoccupied remembering how to dive and managing our seasickness that we don’t organize photos. Besides, the boating environment is not conducive to electronics and general spare things. We’re very appreciative that Andrew had his gopro setup and took a few snaps of us and underwater as well. The water visibility was decent, there were some nice kelp forests, assortment of smaller fish and eels, and Laura and I both really enjoyed just being out on the boat and getting into the water a bit. We did two dives with a small surface interval in between; Andrew, Laura and I stuck together with our dive master, and two other similar sized groups went out of the same boat. The real highlight for me was seeing a penguin swimming around in the water from the boat! While we had often seen penguins on and around the beaches in South Africa, I had never seen one swimming in the open water like that before!
Overall, the trip was a really nice getaway that overdelivered for the amount of time that we actually had there, and we’d recommend it to others in Lima!
Photos
