Day 76 - Ballestas Islands and the Paracas Reserve.

By 8am, we’re lined up by the pier, next to several other groups all set to visit one of the two main attractions – the Ballestas Islands, home to numerous species of sea birds and animals, sometimes described as a ‘poor man’s Galapagos’. An enterprising fisherman is feeding a bunch of pelicans, who follow him around like a pack of dogs; he brings them close so that tourists can take photos and hands out his cap for a tip.

Since I’ve been to a similar marine nature reserve in Chile, I’m not quite as excited as the gaggle of tourists next to me, but feel that it’s my duty to check it out, in spite of the warning that the nautical conditions may fluctuate between mirror-still sea and nausea-inducing ten-metre waves.

When we actually do set off, after an hour’s delay due to fog, it’s somewhere in between: we bounce along small waves until a flash of fins to our left alerts us to the presence of a school of bottle-nosed dolphins. “We are lucky,” our guide tells us. “They were away for three weeks, but now they have come back.”

We sail past a giant cactus petroglyph on the sandy hillside; some say that it’s been put there by 16th century pirates as some kind of navigational tool. The islands themselves are twenty minutes away and I smell them long before we get there. The stench of guano is impressive, as is the sight of thousands of nesting Peruvian boobies, cormorants, seagulls and terns – grooming, fishing, squabbling, of Humboldt penguins waddling around the low cliffs, the giant stone archways, and the packs of sea lions asleep on smaller islets. The sky is dark with birds above a further island; we don’t get too close, as it’s an important nesting ground. The nearer island has a couple of decrepit-looking wooden huts, where a couple of people live permanently, making sure that no one lands on the islands, and a low stone wall runs along the border of the first island, making me wonder who put it there, and whether people used to live here, centuries ago.

Back on the mainland, it’s immediately time for a tour of the Paracas Reserve – the vast stretch of desert immediately beyond the village. I love the desert and particularly enjoy being let loose in a section where we go looking for 40 million-year old fossils, as this all used to be underwater. I find a few petrified spiral shells; they crumble into bright white crystals in my hand.

There’s a viewpoint overlooking what used to be a natural monument – a giant stone archway eroded by the sea, known as the Cathedral. It collapsed after the immense 2007 earthquake, but the remaining stone island is still home to clamouring Peruvian boobies. Far below, I can see sandpipers running away from encroaching waves, then turning around and pecking at the sand as the sea retreats.

The tour is pretty controlled, but we do get some free time, which I use to sit and stare at the sea, enjoying the smooth texture of shells and pebbles in my hand. I feel oddly comforted by the steady roar of the large Pacific waves.

At lunch at El Che in the village of Lagunillas, I get talking to Ann, a thirty eight-year old Italian-American photography professor. She’d taught English in Vladimir, in Russia, but was forced to leave before completing the year because she was denounced by some market traders as a Chechen rebel because of her dark hair and olive skin; it was 2004, just after the Beslan atrocities. She knew enough Russian to argue with the special forces, but they wouldn’t believe that she was American, even after she’d shown them her passport, and wouldn’t let her call the US embassy. Only when they took her to the school where she taught was the matter cleared up, but the US embassy then advised her to get the hell out of Russia. Well, I guess I don’t have to worry about going to Russia as a Russian and not as Her Majesty’s subject; even if you have a foreign passport, if they want to disregard your basic rights, they will do so, it seems, so it makes no difference.

Lunch goes on far too long, and Ann is cross about missing the opportunity to shoot the boats in the desert – that’s the kind of conceptual photography she’s into, she explains. In the morning, she didn't go to the islands, choosing to stay in the village and photograph the fishermen bringing in the day's catch. Her presence caused immense confusion, since tourists normally only come here for two things. "But why aren't you at the islands?" she was repeatedly asked.

I finish my rounds of Paracas and am glad to have found a couple of decent places not mentioned in any of the guidebooks.

That’s it. Research over. For the three-and-a-half hour journey to Lima, I’m engrossed in my book and trying to ignore “Hannah Montana - the Movie”. Met by Mike (wearing a dashing cap) at the Oltursa bus terminal and taken to my home away from home – his and Monica’s apartment in Miraflores. Even though it’s been two years since I’ve been here, when I sink onto my beanbag in front of the TV, it feels like I’ve never been away.

Looking forward to a week of rest, writing, and numerous culinary adventures.