Pisco Day 2

On Thursday we were up early to make our tour to the Islas Ballestas. It was a hurry up and wait kind of morning: meet the tour at 7:00, but the bus didn’t leave until 7:25, get to the port in Paracas and wait our turn to go to the dock, wait on the dock, then finally board our boat. We were in a high speed, tourist motorboat that we were told did 25 to 30 knots.

Our first stop was to view the Candelabra; a cactus-like pattern in the sand on a shore dune, facing the ocean. They don’t know who actually made it, or when it was made (somewhere between 300 and 800 years ago), but it was purposefully done as the pattern is 2m deep into the sand. And just the way the wind blows sand over the top of the dune, it doesn’t get filled in, so hadn’t been maintained or had anything done to it.

 

After seeing a couple seals poke their heads out along the way, we finally made it out to Islas Ballestas, about 15km off shore. It is one of the stops on the migration corridor from the Canadian Arctic to Patagonia on the southern tip of South America, but not being during the migration season, there is about 50,000 birds calling the islands home.

Of that, the main component of birds is the Guanay Cormorant, followed by Peruvian Boobies, Inka Terns, Peruvian Pelicans, and 400 Humboldt Penguins.

This was the first time any of us had seen penguins in the wild before. There were also many seals out on the rocks, including a couple yearlings.

Peruvians use the islands to “mine” (if you can call it mining when you use a shovel and bucket) bird guano to use as fertilizer. They even have made rock walls on the island to trap more of it so it doesn’t end up in the ocean. It is mined every 7 years, and usually by that point the guano is over half a metre deep. Thankfully they mined it last year. It was a little hard to fathom what 50,000 birds looks like until you saw the warm part of the rock on the island.

Yes, that dark patch is all birds.

After spending just over half an hour boating around the islands we got back up to full speed and headed back to the dock, seeing some seals along the way. Just outside of the harbour, we slowed to a crawl, and then realized it was because the captain had seen dolphins.

There were three or four bottlenose dolphins that were swimming in and around the tourist boats, but it was real challenging to time where they’d be to get a picture. After we were off the boat and back to Pisco, we checked out of the hostel, but were able to leave our bags there. We went to a little local restaurant off the main square and had a very good lunch of soup and chicken and some obscure barley drink for S/ 8 each (about $3 with tip). Then killed some time in the hostel’s courtyard before making our way back to the highway to grab our bus to Lima. Busses come every 15 minutes so we were told to not get tickets and just get on the next bus that showed up. It worked, but was a milk-run that stopped in every town along the way, so our expected 3 hour trip took 4:45, not leaving us all that much time before our flight.

We made it into Lima and it turned into a bit of a comedy as we all scrounged our soles together to try to get taxis from the bus station to the airport. We finally made it, but had to use a combination of US dollars and soles. Once we made it to the airport, we noticed our departing flight wasn’t on the board, and when we checked in we were informed that the inbound flight was delayed, thus our flight would be delayed 2 hours. Because of this we would miss our connection in Houston, so got rebooked on a flight from Houston to Denver then to Calgary as opposed to directly from Houston to home. It was a really slow process of leaving and we ended up being 2.5 hours late, but we were finally heading home.

We left Lima at just after 2am and arrived in Houston about 8:00. We got our way through customs, and got luggage, through security, and by the end of it we were the last 5 to board the flight to Denver, with Nathan and Tyson running down the concourse to make it. Once we made it to Denver, we had another delay. The flight to Calgary was 20 minutes late, then pushed to 40, then pushed to just under an hour. At least it gave us time for a nice lunch, and to remember some of the niceties of home (understanding your waitress, people having change for purchases, etc.). The last leg of our flights was uneventful aside from United leaving Nathan’s bag in Denver (they delivered it to him later that night at home). It was a long way to get home (over 25 hours from Pisco), but we made it and it concluded a great trip with great friends.