Paracas-Ballestas Islands-Lima

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Well, my brain seems not to be working this trip, but more on that later...

After I logged off last night, I went for a walk on the beach with some of the other ladies on the tour. Watched the sunset behind the cliffs of the bay and watched the hotel men take a couple of sailboats out of the water. Dinner was a buffet for the appetizers and dessert, but we had to pick our entree. Well, it was a little difficult because the menu was in Spanish. But Mauricio translated and I had a yummy chicken breast over risotto in a peppery sauce (photos to follow). After dinner, I went back out to the beach to do some stargazing, but I can't remember my Southern Stars and it was actually too light to see anything.

Up at 6 this moring to leave at 7:30 for the cruise to the Ballestas Islands. When we got off the bus at the pier, I realized that I didn't have my wool jacket... and in the boat, I realized I left my camera on the bus.... Well, a few people promised that they will send me pictures of the Islands, so that's okay. And Mauricio had the Globus people check with the hotel in Paracas, and my jacket is there. The good news is that they can send it back to the hotel in Lima, but the bad news is that it won't be here before we leave tomorrow, so I won't have it while I'm in Machu Pichu or Lake Titicaca. Well, I have a couple of light long sleeved sweaters, so I'll carry them with me.

But, now on to the fun stuff. The "cruise" out to the Ballestas Islands was in a 36 seat motor launch. You ride about 10 minutes and then you can see this figure in the cliffs that they call "the candelabra." Some people think that it looks like a cactus, while others think that it looks like an alien waving to the other aliens waiting to land on the Nazca lines. After another 20 minutes of boating, you get to the Ballestas Islands. Ballesta means crossbow, and supposedly people thought that the Islands looked like crossbows due to the archways that the Pacific Ocean has carved in them. The islands are the peaks of undersea mountains, so they are really rocky. Gazillions of birds live on them and every few years, people go out and harvest the bird guano (look it up) for fertilizer. We saw red footed boobies, Inca terns, cormarants and pelicans. In addition, we saw Humboldt penguins and sea lions. I´m sorry that I didn´t have my camera, but I think Jen got good pictures and she said she would e-mail them to me. My worry is that now I'm going to have to wait for them before doing my photobook. We cruised around the islands for about an hour, and then went back to Paracas to meet the bus.

About an hour and 1/2 into the ride back to Lima we stopped in the Cañete Valley for lunch at a restaurant called El Polito. Peruvians are fond of Chinese food and I had fried rice with chicken. It was spiced a bit differently than the standard US version, but it was good. And I had a frozen lemonade that was incredibly yummy.

After lunch we got back on the bus for the ride back to Lima, getting back to our hotel around 3:30. I'm one floor above where I was last time, in the same room number. I took a walk down to the ocean side of town to the shopping mall at Larcomar. It's really odd, you can't see it as you walk towards it, because it's actually built into the cliff. Great views of Lima Bay. Stopped off at the grocery store for some food for dinner tonight (yogurt, sweet roll and juice, plus my chips from the other night), and now I'm off to eat.

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[Haviva Horvitz]

Did you know . . .
Guano manure is an effective fertilizer and gunpowder ingredient due to its high levels of phosphorus and nitrogen and also its lack of odor. I guessed the first part of this from the context, but I had no idea that it was an ingredient in gunpowder too. (By the way, Eliezer knew this one -- at least about the poo.)