Pisco, Paracas & the Ballistas Islands.

We travelled south along the coast on our first of many coach rides, to a town called Pisco. Seven years ago Pisco was wrecked by a huge earthquake that killed 600 people and reduced the town to rubble; and today it is still clearly struggling to recover. Despite this, the attitude of the people of the town is overwhelmingly positive and welcoming. In the daytime as its generally too hot to function, people basque in the shade of local pastry shops and indoor markets. The square in the centre, the Plaza de Armas, comes to life after dark with people of every age sitting around talking, having picnics and observing children playing on mini cars until the early hours. Permanently in the background is a chorus of beeping carhorns from the millions of tuc tucs circuiting around. There are at least ten tuctucs for every person in the town and each is decorated with hilarious racing car memorabilia, they seem to be their owner's pride and joy.
We took a small boat out the the Ballistas Islands (poor man's version of the Gallapagas islands) and observed huge sealions lazily lounging aroud in their natural habitat, at the foot of enormous rocks coming out of the sea. The larger males were often surrounded by up to ten females each as they basqued in the glory of their lyre. Hundreds of exotic looking birds lined the tops of the rocks and Pelicans circled them from below. It was so surreal being so close to them, we had such a David Attenborough moment and they barely batted an eyelid at our presence.
We then travelled by bus to the Paracas national reserve. So many different landscapes exist here, from misty snow capped mountains to arid desert and lush beaches. The desertscapes were really weird, they used to be under water thousands of years ago so there are still smooth wave enduced ripples and reminants of shells scattered around. We swam in the choppy waters of a beautiful beach surrounded by the most incredible scenery of mountains, caves, pengins, pelicans and fishing boats with compresser divers looking for octopus.