Island time

Last night I had a hard time sleeping because sirens kept going off. They sounded like air raid sirens or tornado warnings but Peru has neither. So instead of being worried I was just tired and annoyed. The electricity went out in the night so Chrish couldn't do work today. We caught an early bus to Paracas. We waited at the pier for a ferry to take us to the Ballestas islands. The path to Paracas looked like the Sahara - there was nothing but rolling dunes of multi-colored sand - red, yellow, and brown.

The water was a beautiful clear blue-green. The "ferry boat" that took us to the islands was a 25 seater speedboat. We rounded the peninsula where we could see the "candelabra" which iss an incan drawing in the side of the mountain. The drawing is several inches deep and almost 100 m tall. It looks like a cactus. Many theories exist as to why it is there - some believe it was a tribute to the san pedro cactus from which mescaline is derived - it is important in many ceremonies and is also a good source of water in the desert. Others think it is connected to the Nazca lines as it points towards them. Some even believe it is directions to an alien airport.

Once we reached the islands we circled the rocks and caves to look ast the wildlife. We saw millions of birds, quite literally, there was a line of birds flying in formation away from the island (almost as fast as the boat) as long as the eye could see in both directions. The rocks were painted white with their guano which is harvested and exported for fertilizer.

The bottoms of the rocks hold clams, mollusks, carpeted with sea urchins, sea suns, spider crabs and star fish. Penguins nested in the crevices and boobies (an endangered bird) rested on the sides. Basking on the sides of some of the protruding rocks and along the pebbly beach were herds of sea lions and seals. They sounded like screaming babies and laughing men or garbage cans getting dragged across gravel. It was an entire cacophany of sounds. We were able to go to the breeding beach to see the babies playing in the waves.

Now I am waiting for the bus to Nazca where we will see the rest of the line drawings during an overflight.

We stopped at a fishing village along the way where I ate the best sea bass ever. I held a sea urchin and looked at sea lion bones left after el nino destroyed 65% of the population many years ago when the tide changed, causing the warming of the seas which drove off many of the fish species on which the sea lions fed.