June 24: Islas Ballestas and Huacachina

After a rather disappointing day in the Paracas National Reserve, I got up early and hopped on a boat to the Islas Ballestes, famous for sea lions, penguins, and lots and lots of poop.

A huge population of gulls produces vast amounts of (rather strong smelling) guano. Workers harvest the fermenting bird poo every five to seven years and by that time, the guano can be several feet deep. Yum. I unfortunately got terribly seasick on the ride. The seas were a little rough and once at the islands, you're not allowed off the boat so as not to disturb the rather profitable guano production going on. I didn't actually feed the fish over the side of the boat, but it was touch and go for a while there. On a happy note, we did see Humboldt penguins (aw, they're so cute!) try to waddle down the side of a rock, with their useless little arms flapping about.
We also saw cormorants
and sea lions
and more gulls than you can possibly imagine.
This part of Paracas was worth it, minus the revolting stomach churning (but that's just me). Dolphins came to play with the boat on the way back in to town, and on the way out the boat passes by a geoglyph called The Candelabra that looks like either a cactus or Neptune's trident. After the boat tour, Carlos ferried me the two miles to the Pan American Highway for the ungodly price of S/20 ($6, also counts as Rip Off #3) and put me on a S/8 ($2.50) Soyuz bus to Ica, two hours to the south.

Huacachina is a desert oasis about fifteen minutes from the larger town of Ica. A tourist mecca, the town consists of a rather murky lake and towering surrounding sand dunes. Really, it's completely surrounded. Once you drive over the first dune, the world looks like the Sahara - immense piles of warm sand as far as the eye can see.
The place is so picture perfect, it's featured on the back of the 50 sole bill. Best of all, you get to go sandboarding here! My few feeble attempts at snowboarding have resulted in intense pain, so I chose not to strap my feet to the rudimentary pieces of laminated plywood that pass for sandboards. But sandsledding on your stomach down the dunes is every bit as fun!
The dune buggy drivers are maniacs. The dune buggies themselves should give you a clue about the blatant lack of disregard for tush comfort - they're basically nothing but roll bars with a motor and nine seats. And riding them is like riding a rocket. Our driver would go flying over the huge hills, Dukes Of Hazzard style, catching air and landing like a ton of bricks on the downhill side. It was AWESOME. And because I went on the 4pm trip out to the dunes, I caught the most beautiful desert sunset before we made our way back to town.
I stayed at Casa de la Rocha in Huacachina, which was perfect. They serve up a great breakfast and their cat had given birth to the cutest, shyest kittens in the world. And they kept parrots in the backyard. Which had a bar. And a pool.
I could have stayed here for a week, but Nazca and Arequipa were waiting down the Pan America. I did meet a half-Peruvian, half-German tour guide at dinner who gave me some good advice about where to go in Arequipa. He has to do the Gringo Trail for bus loads of Germans five or six times a year and he said that by far his favorite stop is the one in Huacachina. I don't blame him.