On the road from Lima to Pisco we passed the colourful but deprived shantytowns on the edge of Lima, a lot of derelict buildings and villages along the coast and some huge chicken coops.

Pisco was hit by a massive earthquake in 2007 and 80% of buildings in the town were destroyed. Since then there have been protests and strikes as money that the government promised to rebuild the town either hasn't materialised or has been pocketed by corrupt officials.

Around the main square most of the buildings have been reconstructed - there are restaurants, hotels, a bank, a pharamacy - but not all of them have been rebuilt and I didn't have to go very far to see large patches of land with scant evidence that buildings and walls once stood there. I saw some compounds of small, brightly-coloured, new houses that must have been built after the earthquake.

Pisco was the starting point for our trip to the Ballestas Islands, known as 'the Galapagos of Peru' - by all accounts it's not a patch on its namesake but it is still well worth visiting. The small group of islands are densely populated with birds and sea lions and we took a speedboat tour out to marvel at the wildlife.

Along the way we passed the enormous 'candelabra' design cut into the hillside on the coast - it's been there for hundreds of years but it's not clear who put it there and why.

At Islas Ballestas we saw sea lions swimming in the water and sunbathing on the rocks, little penguins vying for space with the millions of seagulls, terns with red beaks and feet, a little hawk, some cormorants, crabs and mussels on the rocks and my favourite - the black and white pelicans with their colourful beaks. It was amazing just how many of them shared this small area and it was great to see it up close.