Paracas and Pisco

Pulling off the panamerican highway we headed into Pisco. This is a pretty grungy town and after asking several people it turns out the best Pisco is had in Ica. We did however book our boat trip to Islas Ballestas. These islands are billed as the poor mans Galapagos and, being poor, and therefore not having gone to the Galapagos, we were excited about them. We then continued through town, past the fish meal factories and arrived at Paracas National park. Somehow we were on the wrong road and a bit of fast and exciting driving across the sand got us to the right one. This made Kim smile. We paid our 10 soles and headed towards the Atenas campsite. More driving on the sand – go Tortuga go! - and we found about 30 others camped here as well. This would be the first we see of actual campers in Latin America. The were all Peruvian sail boarders enjoying the fast wind. A very wonderful sunset and sleep ensued.

Waking up at 5am proved difficult. At quarter to six I happened to open my eyes and see the tranquil alarm clock that Kim had turned off 45 minutes ago. A fast race to get ready to make the 7am departure of the bus got us coffee’d and out of camp in 15 minutes. As we got onto the road and up to about 50mph we were alerted that we had been remiss in properly latching the roof as it popped up with quite a sound – much like a sail filling. This is something that we had both pontificated about, what if… well, it was quite dull really, we stopped (spilling coffee) and depopped the top, again, and hurried on.

Now this is Latin America, so the 7am bus didn’t actually get to the travel agency until 7:45. Then we waited for another hour at the dock for the boat. This was a bit of a zoo as many tourists lined up willy nilly for their boat. A quick boat ride got us to the Candelabra, a weird sand thing reminiscent of the Nazca lines. Then we headed towards the main course – las Islas.

These Islands were white in the distance and I reckoned it was all the bird poop. There was actually a war – The Guano War- fought over these islands. Before petrochemicals the guano was used as fertilizer and quite valuable. As we got closer the number of birds was astounding. I didn’t see any blue footed boobies – I’d been excited about seeing boobies all week – but there were countless other varieties.

Then we came around to a cay that was making a very unusual sound. The sea was quite big and obscured our view until we got closer. Hundreds and hundreds of sea lions! Here is a video:

The were all around us, frolicking in the waves, lounging on the rocks, and making weird sea lion sounds. This was fabo! We watched them for a while and then pressed on looking for the very shy Humbolt Penguins. Just before we were to head back we spotted two funny looking birds. Penguins! They posed for a few pictures and then wobbled down into the ocean. This made our day. Penguins. Sea Lions. I was still distraught about the boobies so Kim showed me hers.