Paracas

A quick trip to a beachside town, Paracas,  before heading to Lima, our final stop. Paracas is known as the ‘poor man’s Galapagos’ which is what enticed us to the area.  Our love and appreciation for nature has definitely grown during our trip, and we couldn’t miss an opportunity to see the local sea life. We did succumb to a tourist boat to reach the ‘Islas de la Ballestas’ as we had mo choice but to take a tour with this one, so off we went with the American OAPS to observe the humboldt penguin, sea lions, chilean flamingo, inca turns, Peruvian pelicans, black skimmer, red-legged cormorants, blue footed boobies ☺️. And what a damn fine trip it was, which I think the OAPs filmed the entire trip, poor grandchildren 🤣. The nature spotting was fantastic and definitely worth the trip but sadly, after the mass mortality of many birds and sea lions back in 2023 due to bird-flu, the reserve was much depleted. 

We then visited the Paracas nature reserve, an enormous lunar-landscape where the Atacama desert meets the Pacific coast. This was another truly impressive landscape in Peru that we were proudly driven around on a tour bus to various spectacular viewing spots in the desert. We also managed a quick visit to a white-sandy beach for all of 5 minutes before being called back to the bus 😂. We did manage to persuade the tour driver to do a detour on the way back so we could spot some Chilean flamingoes ‘doing their-thing’ by the water which was immense, with the bright colours of these flamingoes  inspiring the Peruvian flag 🇵🇪.