Desert, raw fish, and flamingos!

I believe I left off describing Amy´s and my adventures in Paracas. First, we took a boat tour out to the Islas Ballestas and saw thousands of birds/lots of bird shit...I wore my hood the whole time because our guide (Luis) said that having your head shat on while you are out in the boat is not that uncommon...I decided not to test him on this, haha.

The second half of the day, Amy and I were also on a tour...for some reason though, no one else was as interested in this tour, so it was just Amy, Luis, the driver, and me. We went out to the Paracas National Reserve, which is a huge desert...right next to the ocean. It was a little bizarre to see such a barren stretch of land next to something so blue and lively. Luis said that the desert was the dryest desert in the world...it only rains some very small amount of millimeters in a year. This is because the Andes Mountains are nearby and they are so high that the moisture from the ocean can never rise high enough in the atmosphere to condense and become rain...interesting, huh? Keep in mind that this is a super simplified version of what he said...there was also some wind blowing in from the east involved, haha. Anyhoo, we tramped through the desert and saw a ton of fossilized shells...then we walked next to the ocean and found beautiful seashells that had been washed up on shore...they were whole and colorful, the kind that people pay good money for back in the states at craft stores and whatnot. It was very scenic...I will upload pics once I´m on a computer that can perform such a feat, haha. For lunch, Luis took us to a seasfood restaurant where Amy and I tried cerviche, which is kind of like the Peruvian version of sushi...it´s very raw fish marinated in lime juice. And we´re talking all kinds of fish, including mussels and octopi and squid and some kind of conch with a bright pink organ (we think it was the liver) still attached...it was tasty, but my stomach could only handle so much. Afterwards, Luis and I hiked through the desert in search of Chilean flamingos...they hang out on the edges of the reserve but are very shy and very endangered, so they can be kind of hard to see...I got a few blurry pics from a distance. Anyhoo, I need to go now coz Amy needs a salad (she´s such a rabbit, haha) but I´ll finish our adventures later.

written by

kfox on July 18, 2010 from Cusco, Peru

from the travel blog: Peru Adventure!

Send a Compliment

comment on this...