Goodbye South America

Today (26th August) is our last day in South America. Tonight we catch another fight to Miami then onwards back to the UK :-(

We couldn't have a big lie in today as we are hoping that today we will be able to go to the Islas Bastellas.

Given how stuffed we felt after breakfast yesterday we decided we'd do breakfast when we got back from our trip and just have a small snack before the trip.

The hotel staff had been busy all yesterday evening and this morning cleaning the hotel grounds. It was starting to look a lot better although lots more dust had settled overnight (our balcony had been cleaned when we went for dinner but was now dusty again).

Although the sky wasn't as blue and clear as yesterday the wind had almost completely dropped.

As we walked along the beach we found even more pelicans, egrets and other birds crowded onto the pier.

As we approached the pier where our boat was we could see people starting to be loaded onto one of the boats. The boat trip was on today. Wahoo! Lucky we had decided to take a bus from Pisco today else we would have had to have left at 9.50am and missed our chance to go to the islands!

As we waited for the boat to depart we saw a dolphin off on the distance.

With our boat full we set off for the Islas Bastellas, but first we had a look at 'The Candellabra', a giant cactus carved into the sandstone pointing out to sea. The carving had been dated to be more than 500 years old but why it was carved is unknown. Stories include pirates did it to mark their territory, it was used to guide ships or my favourite to let all passing boats know there were hallucinogenic cacti nearby! Photos taken we moved on to the main stop of the day.

As we approached the islands we could see thousands of birds lining the edges of the cliffs and more coming to the island flying in long straight lines.

As we got close we could smell the ammonia-like guano. It was really strong, much stronger than the bat caves we visited in Malaysia!

As we got close to one of the cliffs a passenger towards the front of the boat got a little present right on the head! On the bright side, guano is expensive and Peru mines it from the island for export every 7 years. With 7 million birds living on the island you'd have thought they'd do it more frequently.

Further around the island we saw some penguins and all the small rocks in the sun were covered with sea lions. The boat got really close to them so we could see the sea lions up close, so close in fact I'm sure the could have jumped into the boat if they had wanted too!

Thankfully we kept a little more distance between us and the sea lions that were fighting.

With our hour up cruising around the island we started our return to the hotel, however we had one last stop: the harbour to see the dolphins from earlier!

There were around 5 dolphins in the harbour and 3 of them decided to follow our boat, swimming under, behind and beside us!

Eventually they got bored and disappeared and we returned to the hotel pier with us heading straight for breakfast as soon as we returned!

When we got back to our room we rang the Concierge to book a taxi to take us to Pisco. On arrival at the hotel the Concierge had told us we just needed to arrive around an hour early at the bus station however the guy on duty today said we had to reserve tickets 2 hours in advance. Tickets reserved, just in time, and taxi booked we finished packing and checked out. Another dust storm was due to hit Paracas and Pisco at 1pm so instead of spending an hour in Pisco we got the 1pm bus back to Lima.

Just as we were leaving the hotel the staff had managed to get the place and pools looking clean again, ready to do it all again this evening after the next dust storm hit! We thought about suggesting that they should have sand bottomed pools to save them some work!

Arriving on time back in Lima (makes a change, Cruz del Sur are normally late however this time we took a local direct bus, Soyuz VIP), we went to collect our luggage.

We got to the hotel just after 5pm and I asked reception what time we should get a taxi. She said "now". Supposedly Lima becomes a car park after 6pm on a Monday so it was leave now and get to the airport for 6pm, 2 hours earlier than we wanted or leave in an hour and the journey would take at least twice as long!

So off we went, arriving at the airport 5 hours before our flight leaving us plenty of time to get through security (the salt from Uyuni in my bag looked like drugs so my bag was searched!) and have a slow dinner.