After Lima I headed south to a beach side town called Pisco. I actually stayed just outside of Pisco in an ocean front hotel in a town called San Andres. It was great to be 20 meters from the ocean and to be able to fall asleep to waves crashing.
Pisco was actually nearly destroyed last summer when it was struck by an 8.0 magnitude earthquake in August. The effects of that can still be seen. Lots of rubble piles in the streets, people living in tents, buildings missing walls and roofs. Really crazy. Even the main church on the main square was destroyed. There are lots of volunteers and international aid groups in Pisco and they are making slow but steady progress rebuilding the city. Very sobering to walk around and see how much damage is left, even after almost 6 months.
My main purpose in visiting the Pisco area was to check out the Islas Ballestas, also called the ¨Poor Man´s Galapagos.¨ Basically they are several small islands in the Pacific Ocean that has an abundance of birds, penguins and sea lions. To get to the islands you have to take about a 45 minute boat ride, and mine was full of Russian tourists who didn´t speak a word of English. Despite this, they wanted to have conversations with me, and I don´t think we ever understood what we were talking about, but it was fun nonetheless. Along the way to the islands we stopped to check out a giant geoglyph on the side of a sand dune. It is called the Candelabra Geoglyph, but nobody really knows what it is, how old it is or who made it. At 150 meters tall and 50 meters wide, it is quite the site, very cool to see.
After looking at the candelabra for a while we headed to the islands, stopping to watch some dolphins play before making it to the islands themselves. They look like giant white boulders jutting out of the ocean by about 5-30 meters, but once we got closer I realized that the rocks were actually a reddish brown, but stained white due to all the bird poop. I´ve never seen so much bird poop in my life. The guide told us that the black cormorants on the island produce the world´s best guano and that they harvest it every 10 years. Lots of birds, penguins and sea lions and lots of noise, but a very interesting sight. I wonder why all these animals chose this random group of small islands to call home?
On the boat ride back to the mainland, we got engulfed by fog and we could barely see the water in front of us. The guide and boat driver both looked concerned and were both pointing in random directions, I think trying to decide where to go. Eventually we found the mainland but were about 1 km away from the pier. Oops. Anyways, really creepy getting to the pier and slowly seeing the fishing boats appear, almost like something out of a horror movie.
More pictures from the Ballestas Islands and Pisco can be found in the Peru folder at: http://picasaweb.google.com
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