Day 56: Paracas, Ballestas Islands, Ica, Huacachina to Nazca (Peru)

Tuesday, February 20th, 2018

Day 3 of G-Adventures Inca Heartland tour

In the morning we get at Sunset Hotel Paracas an extra to pay 20 SOL (5 EUR) breakfast (which is fair for that coffee, toast, ham, cheese, joghurt, cereals, juice, scrambled eggs). The hotel is backpacker style with basic rooms, but a great pool. From 5 pm to 7 pm there was something like a happy hour and music was turned on. But it was not too loud. They are used to take groups.

We are ready to leave at 7:45 am for a boat tour to the Reserva National Islas Ballestas, a former guano mining place with 1.000s of birds. We pre booked it with G Adventures for 20 USD pP. You can get it cheaper here (5 + 11 SOL = 4 EUR), but so a girl picks us up from the hotel, leads us the way, hands us over the tickets … everything is managed.

We are completely alone at the boats #sarcasm.

They use speedboats with as much seats as possible.

On the way to Ballestas Islands we pass by a 120 meters ancient geoglyph, the Candelabro de Paracas.

The tour is about 2 hours. We see Pelicans, sea lions and lots of different birds on islands, which have a strong guano smell. Sun is burning hot and there is no shadow. We sit uncovered in the wind. So we have to take out our wind jackets an put them on. All the time in a crowded and bumpy boat – a standard economy seat is lots of place and luxury in comparison to this.

But there are no Humboldt penguins. No seasons for them.