8th-9th October: Paracas

We were greeted at Paracas by a handful of unconvincing touts.  We'd already booked a hostel online, so we fought them off and extracted grudging directions to Backpackers' House (not to be confused with House of Backpackers next door).  Paracas is a small town, just one main road plus a beachfront, so it wasn't much of a trek.  There we found our extremely friendly host, Alberto, who showed us to our basic but clean room (the only downside being wafer-thin walls, as we would discover when trying to go to sleep early).

We had just enough time to drop off our bags before joining an 11am tour to the Paracas peninsula.  This natural reserve, just south of town, encompasses vast dunes of sand rolling down to the very edge of the cliffs.  Geography alert: the frigid Humboldt current means the water is too cold for rain-bearing clouds to rise up from the sea, hence the strip of desert between the Pacific and the Andes along Peru and northern Chile.

Our first stop was at the monument to General San Martin, who first landed at Paracas in 1820 with the forces that would liberate Peru from Spanish control.  From there we had a great view over the town, bay, and peninsula of Paracas.  Our guide told us the apocryphal explanation for Peru's red and white flag: that its design by San Martin was inspired by the colour of the flamingoes he found here when he landed.  The birds themselves had fled to warmer climes by the time we arrived in October; no great loss, since we'd had our fill of flamengoes in the Uyuni salt flats.

View of Paracas from the monument to San Martin

We then drove for five minutes to the edge of the reserve, where we stopped at a small but well-presented museum.  The most interesting part of the exhibition was a wall of short videos on some of the park's marine life.

From there the bus continued further south to the windswept lookout from which one can see the rock formation called the "Cathedral".  The middle section of the formation collapsed during the 2007 earthquake that also, rather more importantly, destroyed a large part of Pisco, the largest town nearby.  Among the buildings demolished was the real Cathedral, which collapsed on those celebrating mass at the time.  The town is still far from recovery.

The Cathedral before the earthquake

The Cathedral today

After another brief stop to take in the view over Yumanque beach (and, for me in my shorts and sandals, to brave the bitingly cold wind), the bus took us further into the peninsula.  We had lunch at a small fishing village called Lagunillas, where we tried for the first time the Peruvian speciality of ceviche.  This dish of very lightly cured fish was followed by deliciously fresh grilled fish.  After lunch we hopped on the bus for the short journey back to Paracas.

Pelicans looking for fish at Lagunillas harbour

More pelicans

In the afternoon we investigated a small museum a couple of doors down from our hostel.  It consisted of only two small rooms, but had a well-chosen selection of ceramics, textiles, and deformed skulls from each of the main cultures that had occupied the region in the two millenia before the Spanish arrived.  It's a private museum opened recently by a local expert, Juan Navarro Hierro, and has already had to survive one break-in.  It's not mentioned in the guidebook, but should be.  The visit was greatly enlivened by explanations from a Canadian archaeologist who had been working down in Peru for the last five years.  Together with the more traditional explanations, he told us about his hypothesis that some of the stonework attributed to the Incas is so incredibly sophisticated (cut with greater precision than a laser could manage) that it must have been the work of some lost culture.

After a walk along the beach and a close encounter with some friendly pelicans frolicking by the shore at dusk, we stopped for a Pisco sour on a terracing overlooking the ocean.  We concluded the day with dinner at a small hut just off the beach, where the fish was again wonderfully fresh.

Pelicans on Paracas beach

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We woke early for our boat tour to las Islas Ballestas, which was the reason for stopping off at Paracas on the way to Lima.  Since we'd decided to leave the Galapagos for another time, this was to be our taste of Pacific Ocean wildlife (the islands are also known, rather unflatteringly, as the poor man's Galapagos).

We arrived at the small harbour and joined lines of tourists to climb into speed boats with 30 souls on board.  Thankfully we were among the first to set off, so the water wasn't too crowded, and we were usually moving onto the next part by the time the hordes arrived.

On the way to las Islas, we paused to admire the Candelabra/Cactus (looks much more like a cactus to me), which is thought to have been created by the Paracas culture more than 1500 years ago and has survived in the compacted sand due to the lack of rain.

The three small Ballestas islands, around 30 minutes from shore, are occupied by vast swathes of cormorants, dozens of sea lions sprawled lazily in the morning sun, and a smattering of much more reclusive Humboldt penguins.  Atop the islands we could see the guano harvest, an exercise conducted every seven years to collect (pitchfork by pitchfork) the enormous amounts of guano (known to most as bird poo), which is a very valuable fertilizer shipped all over the world.  Astonishingly, in the early part of the 20th century guano accounted for almost 90% of the value of Peru's exports (or even its GDP, it wasn't clear).  The country was then plunged into an economic crisis when it emerged that they were shipping the stuff out faster than the birds could poo, and eventually their reserves were depleted.  This very smelly resource is now, thankfully, managed rather more sensibly.

Arriving at las Islas

Cormorants and pelicans

Humboldt penguins

Sunbathing sea lions

The guano harvest

After around 45 minutes of cruising among the wildlife, and with our cameras full, it was time to head back to shore.  We arrived back at around 10.15, just in time to catch the bus on to Lima.