Our final stop before Lima was Pisco, about 100 miles south of the capital. Bloody awful place with no redeeming features. The only reason for coming was to visit the Ballestos Islands, dubbed the poor man's Galapagos. Standard fare - a few hours on a boat to some sanctuary out at sea. Saw the usual - plenty of seals (or is it sea lions?) and birds (big and small - sorry Grandad all those bird watching lessons were wasted). The treats of the trip were the penguins and the large family of dolphins. The latter were an absolute joy to watch as they splashed around the boat. Anywhere else you would pay big bucks to see the dolphins alone, here they were the taster on the way to the main event! The Ballestos Islands, whilst uninhabited most of the time, are used for farming guano (bird muck used for primarily for fertiliser if I remember A-level geography correctly). As it is farmed commercially, there is plenty of it. Being s***, it smells. Add to this the fact that we were on a little boat on the Pacific, and you can probably imagine the colour Lisa turned. Still, she perked (not puked) up when we got to the seals and held her breakfast in. Unfortunately she recovered a little too quickly and was well enough to buy some souvenir seals back at shore. Great! A short (4 hour) bus journey up the coast took us into Lima, the final stage of our coast to coast journey. S.