Story 031 · Peru · NOV 2019
Gateway to the South
Paracas is where the Atacama Desert meets the Pacific in the most dramatic way — dune buggies tearing across ancient sand, and the Ballestas Islands swarming with penguins and sea lions.
It was time for us to leave the North behind and start a completely new experience in this big country of Peru. Our totally overpriced flight took us back to the beginning for one day. 😅✈️ We just used this one day in Lima to relax and try peruvian/italian Pizza again. Let’s just say, especially Christian really misses the tasty pizzas we got in Germany. 🍕
On the next day it was time for a really early bus ride again. 🚌 Luckily this time it was just 4 hours. We arrived at our first destination in the South: Paracas.
Paracas is a really small and touristic seaport city. It was quite a shock to us to see so many tourists in one place! 😅 The last few weeks we just had contact to one German guy and now they were all over the place. It was time to realize that we are starting the touristic route of our travel in Peru. So it didn’t took us too long to book the most famous tours around there.
Into the desert
From the green heart of Peru Iquitos we now landed in the desert part of the country.
The big Paracas National Reserve right nearby is a protected natural area consisting of desert, ocean and islands. Spanning over 3,350 km², it is home to over 400 species of flora and fauna, including the Humboldt penguin, the Peruvian booby, sea lions, humpback whales and dolphins.
We decided to experience the desert part with a mini-buggy tour to see all the main tourist spots. The cool thing was that you can drive the mini-buggy yourself! Of course you do that all in a group and with a leading vehicle that you have to follow all the time…but nonetheless it was fun to drive through the desert! 😁
We stopped a few times to experience stunning views over the ocean. One spot was Playa rojo where the sand of the beach has a red color.
Of course our 360 camera had to be a part of this and so we did a short little video about this adventure!
Penguins, sea lions…and tourists
Our next touristic trip started the next day and took us to the 20 km away Ballestas Islands, which are a group of rocky islands located off the Pacific coast, also called “The Poor Man’s Galapagos”. But before we arrived we were reminded again that we are now in the Southern part of Peru…
Surrounded by hundreds of tourists we were standing at the harbor, 8 a.m., waiting for our tour guide to figure out when we can finally enter our speed boat. Boat after boat left the harbor…all heading to the same direction. We really didn’t like this part at all! 🙄
Finally on the boat we followed the other tourists to the island. Trying to forget that our tour guide was chasing us through, we enjoyed the view of some penguins, sea lions, pelicans and thousands of birds! Especially the birds were quite stunning as they covered the whole island. Seeing the wild sea lions relaxing on rocks right near the boat was also an amazing view!
But as we said, we were chased through the tour and so the whole experience left a bit of a bad taste afterwards. Touristic South here we come! 😅