Monday

I got up very early to catch a ride to the bus office at 3:20 am - the bus left for Paracas at 4 am. A pretty uneventful busride for 3.5 hours but I certainly don´t recommend the food - some sort of olive sandwich. Godd thing I wasn´t counting on that food to even be there.

Lots of tourists and activity in the morning to catch the boats for Islas Ballestras. I met a mother and daughter, Karen and Kate, from Pennsylvania and we had a great time talking during the slow times. Kate will be moving to California the same week I leave for Alaska. The boat ride out to the islands went past the Candelabra, similar to the Nasca line figures. Quite impressive. This part of the coast of Peru is a continuation of the Atacama desert in Chile, where it has not rained for 100 years in some spots, although the guide said Paracas gets 2 mm of rain a year. Then 20 minutes out to the islands, where there were more birds than I have ever seen in one place. There were cormorants, penguins, a grey bird and a black bird I forget the names of, but just thousands of them, flying all around. The odor was quite intense at times as well. Not too many sea lions as they said the ocean was warmer than usual and the small fish they eat had moved. Just birds everywhere you looked. The pelicans were gone as well, probably following the fish.



Back at the boat dock there were three pelicans on the beach and you could get pretty close to them. They are very big birds. I had breakfast at a small restaurant I was told to wait at until 11 am for the trip to the Paracas reserve. Absolutely nothing growing on the reserve, plantwise, but we did see two small lizards. Dramatic cliffs and evidence of the earthquake in 2007 - the connection between Cathedral rock and the shore fell into the sea. One of the beaches was used in the last scene of the first Planet of the Apes, when Charles Heston is on a horse and finds the statue of liberty sticking out of the sand. Paracas is a quechua word meaning lots of wind, and there was a constant onshore breeze that made it a very pleasant temperature.

A long wait for the bus back to Lima - bus was scheduled to leave at 5:30 but actually left at 6:45, and back in Lima around 10:15. A long and very nice day.