We had organized an early morning excursion to the Ballestas Islands. Having negotiated the hawkers & people selling food for the pelicans in order to have your photograph taken with them, we boarded our boat - a 10m fibre glass monohull powered by twin 150hp outboards, carrying 40 passengers & 2 crew. We were very quickly across to the other side of the harbor & cruising close to the shore to view the seabirds. These included lots of grey pelicans, a pair of turkey vultures, seagulls & gannets (boobies). We then moved along the coast further & saw Inca terns on the cliff. A pod of bottle nosed dolphins swam close by the boat & stayed around for several minutes. The smell of guano was also very obvious. Mining guano is a big industry in this area. It was amazing seeing the desert extend right down to the sea. We also stopped to see a large Nazca Line type hieroglyph artifact on the side of a hill. No one seems sure about its origin. We then motored across to the Ballestas Islands. Here the coastline was quite spectacular with caves through the cliffs & several small islands all covered with birds. Hats were essential as there wasn't way to avoid the deposits from the thousands of birds flying overhead. Here we saw Humboldt penguins, cormorants, boobies, more Inca terns as well as all the other seabirds. Several sea lions were dozing on the rocks & were obviously used to tourists - at times they even looked as if they were posing for us. There were a couple of boats off the shore of the island with divers using hookah gear. Although the Ballestas Islands are now a nature reserve there is no marine reserve. The boat attendants were more interested in showing off their catch of octopus to the tourists than worrying about their divers. Our boat was over the top of the hookah line before our shouting at them alerted them to the potential danger. The rusty old compressor also left a lot to be desired. Although we had initially been a bit dubious about the touristy nature of the trip, it was very well done & a great experience to see the wildlife in its natural habitat. It was then time to catch a bus to Lima for our last night as a group. Although we used a public bus, Katy our guide was very careful to make sure that we were on an express bus as the other public buses are not safe.
Our evening meal was a freewill dinner for the current group of people, several of whom we'd spent the last 7 weeks with so it was quite sad to say goodbye as we all go in different directions.
Tomorrow we head for the Amazon for a week where it is unlikely that we'll have access to the Internet so we'll be in touch again as soon as we can.