¡Buenas!

So we headed to Paracas for just a day and a night to do a trip to the Islas Ballestas, often coined 'the poor man's Galapagos' - they weren't joking.We did a morning trip around the islands in a boat for about 15 bucks, and in two hours we probably saw more birds than we saw during an entire week in the Galapagos (which cost about 2000 bucks :).Of course the tour 'experience' was nothing like as amazing as the latter, and we didn't get to leave the boat, and the birdlife is not as extraordinary, but still we'd definitely recommend going on this great value trip to see some incredible animals.The skies were literally thick with birds and distant rocks looked like they were covered in a sort of avian carpet. There were lots of familiar faces about too, including cormorants, pelicans, penguins, and boobies (just plain old 'grey-footed boobies' though), not to mention thousands of sea-lions.

The islands are a valuable source of guano (bird poo): one of the best plant fertilisers known to man, and a multi-million dollar business for the Peruvians who come to harvest the guano - which can be metres thick in places - every six years.Fortunately, against the odds, we returned bereft of any samples of this prized commodity on our clothing.

R&M

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