The “Festival” was on again last night. Not as loud as the night before, but I woke up @ 3am and heard the music still going on.

Today is the day we take the boat to the “Poor Man’s
Galápagos”, Ballestas Islands. We looked into going to the
Galápagos Islands. It was going, to cost us about $5,000 CAD
for 4 days. We opted not to do that. This cost us 35 Soles
for the boat and 18 Soles for a 2 day National Reserve permit.
That comes to just over $20 CAD. It is not as large as the
Galápagos, but we feel it will be a better bang for our poor
puny Canadian Dollar.
Alfredo picks us up at our hotel the Bamboo Lodge to escort us
over to the dock where we purchase our extra pass for the
National Reserve for Ballestas Islands. The people line up and
get loaded into boats that carry between 30 and 47 passengers.
Open topped large speed boat style boats.

 

We’re off, we pass this old abandoned boat that seems to serve as a perch for many many birds.

 

 

We are now headed to the other side of Paracas Peninsula. It
is there that “The Candelabra” is. This sits on the side of the hill. It is mysterious prehistoric geoglyph.

 

 

“The purpose and meaning of the Candelabra remain unknown.  There has been much speculation as to the reason it may have  been constructed. Was it a godly symbol, a gigantic seismograph, or simply a navigational tool for sailors?”

I think it was for navigation as Paracas is hidden by the
desert peninsula and this symbol will let seafarers know the
way to the port. Just my 25 Cents 🙂

 

Perhaps the bigger mystery is where is the guy that rode the motorcycle??

 

 

From there we head out to the Ballestas Islands, this will take
about 25 minutes.  As we near the islands sea lions are spotted jumping along in the ocean near our boat.
We near the islands cliffs. Looking up we are reminded of the old western movies where the bad guys are all lining the cliffs ready for battle.

 

 

Stu catches these birds having an intimate chat.

 

 

 

A young sea lion basking in the sun on the rocks. We’re not sure how he got up so high.

 

The Pelican section of the islands.

 

 

 

Stu captured this huge bull sea lion in perfect “ROAR”.

 

 

In this shot the big black area on the top is actually a large group of black birds called the guanay guano bird. The millions of birds on the island drop so much guano that they harvest it every 8 months or so. This is sold around the world for fertilizer. I hope they where Hazmat suits. We can smell it from the boat. Not a nice job “Guano Harvester”!

 

This is the sea lion “maternity beach”. All of the little black things along the waterline are baby sea lions. The mothers are pregnant for 11 months and come to this beach to give birth to their babies. It sounded like they pretty much give birth and get pregnant again very soon after. One pup a year.

 

The rest of the day is spent very lazily.  Greg and I look over the recommendations given to us by Alfredo, who met us after the boat cruise to see what we had decided for the next few days of our time in Peru.  Still contemplating we told him.