Islas Ballestas, Paracas, Peru

Today’s tour started bright and early at 7 am. We were picked up from the hotel by Janet and Carlos, our trusted guide and driver, and headed to the coast. We then jumped on a speedboat for a ride into the Pacific, for a bird watching tour. With a couple dozen other tourists, we enjoyed a fast ride to the famous Candelabra, which is an enormous candelabra permanently etched onto the side of a dune, that can only be seen from the water. No one is sure how this massive picture (similar idea to the Nasca Lines) came to be, but it is a spectacular sight, with many creation theories, which our guide colourfully described; perhaps it predates the Incas, or was a sign of a cult in the Spanish times, or an arrow pointing to the Nasca Lines so that Aliens could navigate their crafts to the lines (we liked this one)! Next, we saw a few birds gathering around the rocks at the base of the dunes, and thinking this would be similar to the rest of our bird watching boat tour, we all took lots of photos. However, we soon caught a glimpse of the famous Ballestas islands and realized we were heading to a bird watching paradise. These islands are often describe as Peru's poor“man”'s Galapagos, because of it's bird and sea lion colonies, but we was not prepared for the magnificent amount of animals that we saw. It was spectacular. There were literally millions of seabirds; flying, nesting, diving, and talking to each other. There were Boobies, three types of Cormorants, Inca Turns, Penguins, Pelicans, and Vultures, to name a few of the larger ones. And, there were sea lions, hundreds, maybe even thousands, from little babies to huge males over 15 years old. The islands themselves were also amazing and covered in guano, in some places 10 metres deep. Guano is the droppings of these large seabirds, which is mined here for fertilizers and at one time was Peru's main export. The Islands have eroded into amazing formations, with many arches and caves, which formed an incredible playground for the birds and the sea lions, particularly the pups, who were having such a good time playing with each other in the water, while the adults talked and sunbathed on the rocks. After a couple hours of touring and almost avoiding being guanoed (dad got hit), we headed back to the mainland.

It was a spectacular tour, which ended with a short stroll and a meal in the town of Paracas. Paracas is one of the towns in the Province of Ica that was affected by the earthquake in August 2007. Damage from the quake was still very visible, although the town is rebuilding and encouraging tourism once again.

We were back at our Ica hotel by 2:00, and quickly put on our suits for a swim. The rest of our day followed a similar, relaxing and enjoyable routine to yesterday. Life is good in this sunny town.