To Pisco 29-31 Jan

Friday
After breakfast we started off through the centre and south of Lima heading towards the Panamerican Highway again that would take us south to Pisco a couple of hundred kilometers away.
Celso got very frustrated as he tried to guide me through the Lima streets. The problem is that, for some unknown reason, each of Lima's streets has two names so the writing on the street signs is very, very small and nearly impossible to see at even the slow speed we were driving at. However, we finally made it and then had an easy few miles on the dual carriageway to the outskirts of Lima where we stopped to visit the Temple complex of Pachacamac. Started in about 200AD it was still in use when the conquistadors arrived in the mid 15th Century. Pachacamac was an early Peruvian (pre Incan) god (the creator god) and the complex was originally dedicated to him with a painted temple and totem pole like effigy. However, succesive cultures took over the site and added to it without destroying the previous buildings so that it now consists of at least 17 different ramped pyramids dedicated to several different gods. In the temple of the sun they found several hundred mumified virgins who had been sacrificed and on the outskirts of the complex they found a building that appeared to be a kind of school for young girls who were taught all the arts of a 'good wife' for the Gods, such as weaving and ceramics.
Though much of the site is more 'modern' (by 1000 years or so) than the temple of the moon in Trujillo it was not as nearly as impressive because the latter is so well preserved. At Pachacamac there are only slight signs of the grandeur that must have been there with flakes of paint on the painted temple and remains of the red plaster on the temple of the sun.
After our visit we headed on south through yet more desert, punctuated (rarely) by a green oasis, to Pisco. Pisco is home to the drink Pisco (in Pisco sour), yet I have no idea what it is like and have no desire to try it! Pisco was devestated by an earthquake 3 years ago in which over 600 people died (300 of them in the Cathedral attending mass when it collapsed around them). The private companies such as banks and supermarkets have rebuilt but the public buildings and the roads are in a horrific state of repair and many buildings are still not reconnected to the water supply.
We found a hotel and organised tours for Saturday to the Ballestas islands where you can see sea lions, penguins and other sea birds and to the Paracas nature reserve (a 50km stretch of coast and desert designed to protect the whales, dolphins, sea lions, turtles and other marine life of the region.

Saturday
We were up at 6:45 to get ready for our trip, and by 7:30 we were in a little battered local bus rocking and rolling down the poorly maintained roads to Paracas, a small fishing community that is now the place to start boat trips out to the islands. However our plans were foiled as one section of the Jetty had collapsed and they weren't allowing anybody to board the boats. Even by 8:30am the sun was extremely hot and we eventually had to move inside to avoid the intense heat. We waited around until around 10:30am and then boarded another rusting hulk of a bus to go on our tour of the National reserve. It was a great 5 hour trip visiting various parts of the reserve, crossing the desert with other cars whizzing past and very little semblance of safety! We stopped at several points with breathtaking veiws out over the sea, pelicans, seagulls and vultures soared in the howling wind, great collonies of roosting birds suddenly took to the wing as though there had been some sort of signal to all take off at once. The waves crashed against the rocks and clouds rose up out of the sea over the cliffs and raced across the desert towards the mountains (but at such a pace and at such a low level that they never drop any rain here), and all the time the sun beat down on us so that we could feel our skin tightening in the heat and dry wind.
At one place we stopped for an hour to give us a chance to take a dip in the sea, but it was so cold compared to our hot and sweaty bodies that we only managed to get in up to our thighs! We found loads of red and yellow (tiger like) jelly fish washed up onto the shore, some more than a foot across, and a huge pink and yellow crab.
When we returned to Pisco we were hot but happy and we shall try the boat trip again tomorrow before we head south to Nazca.

Sunday
Last night there was a power cut that lasted from about 6pm until the very early morning when we were rudely awakened by the TV coming on! The candle that we were given did not give us enough light to pack so we had to get up at 6am to get everything ready to go. Then at 7:30am we drove down to the dock at Paracas where the jetty had been fixed ready for our trip around the Balestas Islands about a 25min jet boat ride off the coast. Previously there had been a large Guano collection operation on the islands, but since 1975 the islands have been protected as part of the Paracas National Reserve, the remaining buildings and jetty have been well taken over by the natural inhabitants.
On the way out we passed 'The Candelabra', a drawing in the desert on the sloping cliff. It has not been damaged because it doesn't rain here and the wind at that point of the coast seems to blow 25cm above ground level due to the lie of the land. It is made in a similar way to the Nazca lines simply by creating a trench about 10cm deep in the sand. It is not known by whom, when or why the figure was made, but it is believed to be early conquistador as there are no other examples of this type of shape on any indigenous pottery or textiles; so , it is believed that it may have been some sort of sign for Spanish Mariners or perhaps pirates in the mid 15th century.
Then on out to the islands with brief sightings of 4 dolphins on the way. The islands were fantastic, full of sea lions, pelicans, vultures, guillemots, Humboldt penguins and other sea birds (perhaps Boobies, but we are not sure), there were also enormous mulitlegged starfish and anenomies clinging to the rocks. It is breeding time for the sea lions so the beaches were full of mothers and babies and huge males strutting their stuff. Some of the cliffs looked dark from a distance but as we got closer we could see that it was infact just a multitude of birds and the sky was a swirling mass of birds on the wing... fantastic.
On our return to port the fog came down really suddenly so that we could only see about 50m in any direction, and then, just as quickly, it lifted again and we returned to the fishing port well wind blown but really happy.
After a breakfast of boiled choclo (white maize with grains about 1cm across), we continued our journey south to Nazca, again through desert, desert and more desert, but now heading inland from the coast.
We have found a hotel on the main square and organised trips for tomorrow, so we can relax for the rest of the day - bliss.