El Sabor del Peru!

Inka Cola - The flavour of Peru...If toxic yellow drinks do it for you then we agree. Arrived in Paracas near Pisco on the coast of Peru yesterday. It`s a tiny village about 25mins away from Pisco, 17 hours on the bus from Cusco. We drove down the Andes with numerous explosive ear popping moments on a super sweet bus, got dinner and then breakfast and the seats were nearly as good as beds, depisite my mp3 player dying after 10 hours and Sarah´s seat being stupid we made it in good spirits. Sarah got in a mood when we realised it didnt have a cash machine (she normally does when we get to a new place) But this dissapeared quickly when we realised we could get the bus to Pisco for 1 Sol instead of paying 20 for a taxi! We took our washing with us as Paracas also has no laundry service.

Islas Ballestas

After an amazing meal of sea bass with sauce (as many sea creatures pilled on top of it as you could name, Sarah had Peruvian rock cod) we got talking to a guy who had been learning English for 5 months, we helped Ronald and he helped us with a few Spanish phrases and words, it was very productive and of course we got ourselves a free Pisco sour! We booked a tour to the Ballestas Islands (the poor mans Gallepagos islands) and this morning set out on an overcrowded speedboat! En route we spotted lots of dolphins swimming around our boat and then headed out into the rough sea. Thousands of birds covered the islands and skies above and penguins strolled about as if they owned the place, we didnt see Pingu but I think his brother flipper was present. We headed around the islands to see the rock that looked like jesus (kinda) and the Inca God rock that looked up towards the island (that one must have been made up for tourists). The largest sealion colony in the world lives on the islands and we saw hundreds of them lazing around on the rocks and then even more on sealion beach, fighting, swimming around and making funny noises! There were lots of pregnant sealions too! Meeting up with Ronald again tonight, lets hope the food is as good!

Hopefully off sandboarding when we head down to Ica in a few days, we are right on the edge of the desert yet somehow there are penguins living here, menthol!