Thursday 2nd August: Arrival in Lima Peru.

Arrived late in the day to Lima and took an airport bus to the hotel to meet up with Anna and the family. They were exhausted after 22 hours travelling and arriving to find that they didn´t have any bags and that the accommodation they had booked online couldn´t be entered from the ground. I was also pretty tired so I had a quick pizza dinner and then it was time to head to bed ready to get out of Lima the following day for the coast


Friday 3rd -Saturday 4th August: Paracas (Ballesta Islands)

After finally finding a bus company in Lima to take us on the 4 hour bus trip to Pisco, we arrived late in the day just in time for dinner and in time organise a boat trip out to the Ballesta Islands for the following day. I tried my first Pisco Sours and was pretty surprised to find that they were pretty tasty even though they contained rum! The next day we headed out on our very touristy boat trip. Our first stop was around to where we could see the strange hill art called the Candelabra. It´s believed it was created thousands of years ago as a sign for the gods or to warn sailors against hitting the mainland. On a fine day it can be seen 26 miles out to sea which is pretty impressive!  Some people think that it it’s a Trident, not a candelabra which makes more sense to me! Next, we headed directly to the Ballesta Islands which was a very bumpy trip! I think our boat captain enjoyed rocking us around a bit on the rough waves but it was a little tough on the back! After about 30minutes of craziness we arrived at the Ballesta Islands and could immediately smell the main reason why they are so important to Peru – bird poop (guana) which is harvested on the islands where thousands and thousands of birds come to roost. We also saw penguins and sea lions relaxing on the islands safe from the choppy sea below. It was a beautiful place even though it was pretty smelly!