After a good night sleep in a king size bed in Ica we were ready to discover a new part of Peru: the Ballestas Islands!
We set our alarm at 6 a.m. But again Elien was wide awake at four. We had a lovely tiny breakfast and we were picked up by a van. After a short drive, we had to exit the van and the driver said: "wait here!". So we waited without any clue what was coming next. Soon a lady appeared, our guide Olenca. She took us to the boat. It was a wonderful trip! We saw pinguins, peruvian boobies ( i mean the bird of course), sealions and lots of other birds! So we were quite impressed with the "guanno islands", also nicknamed the shitty galapagos.
At the side of one of the big sand dunes was a enormous drawing which was there for 1000 years. The funny thing is that they don't know for sure who made it, the Nasca culture, pirates or saint maarten... But it was astonishing to see!
After we grew acustomed to the smell of guanno, we left the island to tour the nearby national park, Paracas. Here we marvelled at the emptiness of the baren landscape. Here we rode along a salt road, leading us to steep seaside cliffs, where we saw sea eagles hunting for prey. Here the contrast between a lifeless desert and the sea filled with life was quite striking. We continued our trip, leading to our last stop, the red beach. It is quite literally red, due to the iron oxide, which has corroded from the cliffs. It gave us the oppertunity to take some nice pictures, the blue sea, the red beach and the yellow sandy dunes on the background.
After this day of overwelming beauty of Peru's nature we went back to our hotel between the sand dunes. No need for 'Het zandmannetje'.
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