Paracas

"Birds of feather flock together."
~English proverb

Thursday, September 25th 2008

The Parker´s national reserve in Peru is also known as "Galapagos for the poor". I don´t feel poor for visiting the place- it was a great tour making me wonder how would a tour to Galapagos be. I closed the deal before I got wasted and Oded had enough sense to wake me up so I could undress and go to sleep inside the bad instead of on it and to set up the alarm clock to 5:30 since our transportation picked us up at 6:00. We rode for about an hour with another couple to the town of Paracas and than sat on the dock and drank coffee while we waited for the boat ride to the Ballestas islands. While waiting we were impressed by the sheer amount of pelicans and sea goals that flew above diving to get a fish from time to time. At about 8:30 we boarded a long speed boat with roughly 50 tourists and started to head off the bay. After 10 minutes we stopped and watched the famous three-pronged Candelabro (Candelabrum), carved into the sand with a similar technique to the Nazca Lines, although possibly of a different origin: theories range from pirates marking a treasure hiding place to soldiers fighting for Latin-American independence from Spain. The one that made most sense though is that it represent the San Pedro cactus and used for religious ceremonies - the true nature of the huge geoglyph, who made it and why will probably remain a mystery...

After taking some pictures we continued to the islands themselves. These islands are eroded by water and wind (Paracas means sand storm, Ballestas means Arc) creating surreal formations that are covered by sea birds and I mean covered! almost every horizontal piece of rock have some kind of bird sitting on it. As we got closer we got better and better view of the islands and the wildlife that inhibit it. Sea birds of all shape and size, Penguins, Sea lions and we even got a glimpse of a few dolphins who played around our boats. We sailed around the islands getting close enough to the rocks and the sea lions who sunbathed on them that we could touch them. While the sea lions seemed used to the commotion around them and even posed for some pictures, the sea birds did not pay us any attention and were more interested in flocking in huge groups or looking for fish, we did get however a very good show from 3 penguins who went for a morning swim. After about 2 hours we got back to the dock and took the taxi back to our hotel. I spent the rest of the day by the pool enjoying the hot sun after the weeks I spent in the cold mountains.