Continueeeee

Ok, so we got into the taxi.

We drove through Pisco at night, so we didn´t see a whole lot... but there was a really bad earthquake that hit there last August, and they are still recovering from it, so we did see a lot of piles of rubble. A LOT. Anyways, we got to the hostal safe and sound, and checked in using our pretty sweet Spanish. We even asked for our tours, and an extra pillow without any trouble! Heck yes!
That night we planned on sleeping. However, the farm animals outside had other plans. There were dogs fighting in the street all night, who apparently did not care that there were four tired Canadians trying to sleep next door. At around 4am, someone decided to slaughter a few chickens, which was not too quiet either. The rooster next door woke anyone who had been able to get back to sleep up with the sun, cockadoodledooing sometime between 5 and 6 am. Crazy times in Paracas!
So eventually we crawled out of bed and met our tourguide in the lobby downstairs. He took us too the dock where we would be getting on the tour boat, and we waited for about 10 minutes... just enough time for two crazy things to happen:
Crazy thing # 1: The people in line in front of Kels and Jess were Canadians! From New Brunswick! From 5 minutes from where Jess grew up. Small world!
Crazy thing # 2: There were pelicans everywhere, and a local man caugt my eye and waved me over. Feeling adventurous, and knowing that Celine was watching me to keep me safe, I wandered over. He put a fish in my hand, and gestured that he wanted me to feed his pelican. Gross. So gross! So I held the fish out to the birds, and he kept going ´not yet, not yet´, and so I was waiting but the pelicans knew I had their brekfast and kept following me around they are HUGE so I was not loving it and so I just threw the fish. The man got a little mad, because none of his crazy birds caught it they all scrambled to gobble it up from the ground but if you know pelicns you know that they have huge beaks and therefore can not pick something up off the ground without a lot of struggle. And they kept hitting beaks. I got out of there preeetty fast. Sorry pelicans!
Ok, so we finally got onto the boat, put on our ´Carol Adventures´life jackets, and headed for the Islas Ballestas, or as we like to call them, The Poor Man´s Galapagos Islands. The boat ride was about 30 minutes, and along the way we stopped to check out this crazy catcus-like sand imprint that was in a dune... I can´t really describe it, but I took pictures. It´s a very mysterious thing! Anyways, we continued on until we saw the islands. And then we smelled the islands. Blech. There were a kind of yellow colour, but our tour giude told us (and you could tell by looking at the bottoms, where the ocean kept them clean) that they were originally a dark red. The yellow was the product of years and years of birds pooping on them. Fancy.
The island, although stinky, was very cool. we saw a gazillion birds (Maria, never bring your mom here), some penguins, sea lions, and vultures. The penguins were the coolest, but pretty short... maybe a tall one would be up to my waist.
After the island tour was the reserve tour. Buuuut that will have to wait for another time! Sorry!