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Published: February 16th 2010
As we arrived here, we didn't really know what to expect. All we knew was that they have a lot of nature here, and the place looked a bit ropey as the bus pulled up. That soon changed though, as we got to our hostel near a little town centre and 20 yards from a long sandy beach! We arrived to a long list of the excursions available, including trips to the nearby peninsula, visit to a peguin colony of 1.2 million penguins!! (gutted we didn't have time to do it), and swimming with sea lions amongst other things.
We booked up a trip to the peninsula, where we saw a colony of sea lions, some penguins, and some elephant seals too. Also saw a wild fox, a few alpachos and even an armadillo, which loved the limelight. Bit of an attention seeker really. Great day out (very hot and sandy), but was pretty odd seeing penguins on a desert coast. Apparently if you come in April you can see the killer whales beaching themselves to get seals. And if you come May-Dec you can see loads of whales. Damn.
We booked up the snorkelling with sea lions for
the next day, which was a bit of a bank breaker, and off we headed. It was amazing. We went out in a speedboat to the bottom of some cliffs where loads of noisy sea lions were lounging about, and jumped in the water. We were pretty well kitted out so the cold didn't really affect us. They are like big underwater dogs, and bump into you, bite you a bit, and blow bubbles in your face. We were in there about 45 minutes, and it's something we'll never forget. After that I was glad we didn't see those bastard killer whales eating our new mates.
Great place all in all, and we met a good bunch in the hostel here and had a good laugh. Could have stayed longer but we had a plane to catch off down south to see glaciers.
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mum
non-member comment
How brave is that!
What an amazing experience! I can't imagine dad getting in that water - even with his paddling plimmies on. You've made him even more nervous about the internal flights in Peru now. There's something wrong about seeing penguins on the beach. David Attenborough eat your heart out! mum and dad xx