Boobies

Monday was spent at what's reffered to as a mini-galapagos island. The real name is Ballestas Island just off the coast from Pisco in Peru and has absolutely loads of marine wildlife.

You can see someone else's pics at Go2Peru to give you an idea of what it was like.

We went out there on a big speedboat and then toured around the coast (you don't get out of the boat) looking at sealions on the beach and watched them curiously bobbing up from the water to take a look at us. Thousands of birds. Some of the cliffs were black with them. Inca Terns, Cormorants, Pelicans and of course lots of Peruvian Boobies.

All those birds add up to quite a bit of guano and so in some places in was very smelly. However, even with all those birds flapping about, there was no guano dropping on us. Unlike in Pisco where the main square has trees bursting with birds and one of them got me on the way to a restaurant. Argh.

We also spent some time at the Paracas National Park and saw plenty of pelicans and even a flamingo or two (there are thousands of them when the time is right).

One of the consequences of going by speedboat to the island is that you can't wear a hat, unless you want to lose it. Zooming along with the wind rushing past, we didn't feel the sun. So both of us have red faces today. Not badly burnt, just looks like were blushing non-stop.

If all goes well, we should be off to Lima in an hour or two. Not sure what we'll be doing there as all the guide books say it's not that great but it serves as a good introduction to Peru. But we're on our way out. Just Lima and then we're off back to Bp.

Updated with photos (29-Nov-2005) - Click for pics

A boat is taken over by cormorants.



A huge image scraped into the hillside.



Seals or are they sea lions?



The hills are black with birds.



Loads of them.



"The Cathedral"