Friday 5 November 2010

Boobies, lots and lots of boobies: Islas Ballestas

We did a day trip from Paracas to the Ballestas Islands, nicknamed the "poor man's Galapagos".  We saw dolphins, penguins, sea lions, and more birds than all the birds I have seen in my life added together - mainly vultures, boobies, and cormorants.  The dark patches on the island in the photo are not rocks but hundreds of thousands of cormorants.






The islands are periodically mined for guano (bird poo, used for fertiliser), which is very valuable and necessitates full time staff on the island to guard the poo.

Along the way, the boat drove past the Candelabra geoglyph, which no-one seems to know anything about, including who created it, when, and why.

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