Upon my arrival at the small town of Paracas, I found out it was having a blackout, apparently because everyone had turned on their tvs to watch the soccer game. Once the electricity had come back on, I went out looking for a place to eat. Finding nothing open, I opted for the classic college meal of cup noodles. The chicken tasted great but the undescriptive “meat flavoured” one was gross. I ended up feeding the noodles to the hostel cat who loved me during my 1 day stay there.
The next day was the tour to the Ballestas Island, also known as the poor man’s Galapagos because of the variety of animals that can be observed on the island and costing a merr fraction of the price to visit the real Galapagos. The tour is done by boat and you stay I the bot the whole time. About 10mins into the boat ride, our boat stopped working and we had to wait for another boat to come, the captain looking suspiciously like a pirate because of the bandana on his face, rescue us. In the middle of the water, we hopped over to the next boat and continued on our way…only to have another problem with our boat again. After what felt like 20mins, another boat with passengers passed by. Their captain hopped onto our boat and magically, managed to fix the problem. We were finally on our way. The island is inhabitated by thousands of birds, everywhere was completely covered with bird poop, 5 cute penguins and many families of seals. Like the cost, the variety of species of animals is a mere fraction of what there is on the Galapagos but still a nice tour to do.
After the tour, I sat on the beach to soak in some sun before visiting the Paracas National reserve, preserved because of its unique environment with a desert on the coast of the ocean. The stark contrast between the 2 made for quite a scenery.
The beautiful natural scenery was well appreciated before heading to the hectic capital of Peru.