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Published: August 18th 2011
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MIni-Nazca line
we passed this on the way to the islands, quite cool eh As Eoghan, Heather, Rachael, Fiona and I were leaving Ica all bound for Lima we decided to all make a stop for Paracas national Park & Ballestas Islands, in Pisco. It was sorta on the way.
We left Huachina pretty early, like 6.30 am with all our stuff, which was pretty difficult for me and Eoghan as our hostel appeared to turn into a rave on a friday night until about 3am.
We were going there with the promise of penguins and sea lions so we were all piled on a boat when we got there with enthusiasm. We were also with an Irish lad Darren, who stayed at our hostel in Hucachina. We were on the boat for a while and seen some sea lions on the way out. The islands themselves aren't anything special but the sheer amount of birds was amazing.
Apparently every 8 years they hire people to come to the island, clean off the bird shit and sell it as fertilizer. I would not fancy that job myself. And our guide on the boat kept calling the bird shit fertilizer (it had a clear smell) but we all know he meant the bird poo!!
We seen
some penguins but they were clearly not the dominant species! I guess the sea lions stole the show, we got quite close to them.
We did actually get off the boat at any stage but with the amount of bird poop, that was probably for the best. If anyone goes to visit them I would recommend a hat.
When we got off the boat we had half an hour until we had to go onto our National Park tour. We thought we had time for a sandwich but we nearly missed the bus for it! We had to walk right through our bus with our sandwiches and some chips past everyone to the back seat. And you would think, half an hour for a ham and cheese sandwich, must be some sandwich? You would be wrong. It was just a slice of ham between 2 bits of bread. Anyway, we got some dirty looks getting on that bus.
The national park information centre was actually pretty interesting, I could have spent longer there. Especially as there were some flamingos at the end. But we had a bus tour around the park. apparently the fault line means all the land
in peru use to be underwater and is constantly getting pushed up from the fault line. Pretty interesting. And the Humboldt current that runs means there is a real variety of sea life at the Peruvian coast.
We stopped at some cool cliffs that we destroyed in the earthquake (i think that was in 2007). From there we could see some dolphins in the water!
We also stopped at the red sand beach, really quick stop just for photos. And we had lunch, again after our sandwiches! We decided to share some plates of Ceviche, the famous dish of raw fish and lemon. It was actually really nice! Tentacles and all!
From what we could tell all the interesting animals were in the water, no need for all the land to be reserved too!!!
Anyway, after all that, we had to get to Lima. We got a taxi to the Panamerican highway (we have become experts in cramming all 5 of us into a taxi, only one person seems to be a bit injured at the end of it) and tried to flag down a bus to Lima but they seemed to full and wouldn’t stop.
Then a taxi man
who was stopped at the petrol station next to us offered to take all 5 of us to Lima for 100 soles, which is only like a pound more each than we would have paid on the bus. He seemed ok and he had a nice big taxi so we all got that to Lima. He was such a legend, he had seen the beatles in the Cavern in Liverpool when he was in the UK, bit of claim to fame there! And when we got to Lima he found us a taxi to take us to the bus station.
That taxi man was also crazy and turned to us when we all got in “Do you like Aerosmith?” and then proceeded to blast Aerosmith songs while driving like a maniac across town (although everyone drives crazy here).
We got to the Movil bus company, and we were all able to get a bus. Me and Eoghan headed for the seaside town of Trujillo as we made our way north. The girls were off to the mountains to Huraz i think. And then we got on the best bus ever, so comfortable and we got chicken nugget sandwiches and
cake and a blanket and pillow for sleeping!
So we were making our way to the beach for some sun, surf and sand!
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