Paracas

So let us pretend for a moment that it is not Christmas but in fact December 23rd, 2010. We just posted yesterday about our trip to Ica and now would like to tell all about the second half of our short trip to Ica and Paracas. We woke up at 6:00 to eat some breakfast and head out to Paracas (about an hour from Ica) we were greeted by our guide and driver from the day before. There also happened to be one other person there. If you remember the driver from yesterday, we thought, was my guide from my tour last year in Ica. As it turns out, he is a twin so I am still not sure if it was actually the same guy, or if it was his brother, or if yesterday was the same guy from last year and today it was is brother, or if we had the same guy both days, or....I think you get the picture.

So we set off with who was either the guide from last year or his twin brother and rested a little bit on the trip over. When we got to paracas we and about 30 other people set sail that day for a two hour tour, a two hour tour (but the weather didn't get rough so the tiny ship was not tossed). It took about 30 minutes to get out to the islas ballesta (ballistic Islands) and once there we got to see hundreds of sea lions, penguins, and thousands upon thousands of other birds. This place and these birds are valuable to Peru because they harvest the guano, bird poop, and sell it for fertilizer (harvesting it must be a pretty crappy job *cue drums*). It made for a pretty bad smell but it was still really neat to see all those animals, islands, and other rock formations out there. There is also this candlestick that had been drawn in the sand and no one is quite sure who did it or when. Some say that is was early indigenous people, others that it was Spanish conquerors, other think it was aliens (the most obvious answer), but basically the tour guide says no one really knows but it was cool to look at nonetheless.

After we got safely back to dry land the tour guide took us in the car to the reserves. The reserves consists of a big area of land and water which has been blocked off by the government for protection from pollution and destruction. At our first stop the driver took out a knife to cut out a part of the road and had Rachel feel it and then taste it, she hesitated but when the driver did it first she figured heck why not. He did it to show that the road was actually made of just salt and sand in order to not bring any harsh chemicals to the reserve. He also showed us a bunch of shells and fish bones because the whole area was under water millions of years ago.

The next stops were at various look outs over the ocean. It was all very beautiful but the guide told us it was much prettier about 4 years ago but a few years back there was an earthquake that destroyed many of the rock formations (and much of the city too which we noticed on our tour yesterday). The final stop of the tour was a port where the fishers come in and bring their catch of the day. We weren't feeling adventurous to try the fish but we did get some shrimp that was good and then we headed back to Ica where we got a hotel room, walked around the city a bit and then went to sleep early (sleep has been one of the highlights of the trip, I think we are almost recovered from the complete lack of sleep during finals week).

Ok so we can go back to the current day of December 25th, 2010 and we may do another post later tonight or we may do some more time traveling tomorrow to get everyone fully updated on our trip.

Feliz Navidad a todos,

Brandon and Rachel