Penguins!

I have seen penguins for the first time in my life. 

These weird looking creatures have the northernmost range in South America and are called Humboldt penguins after the German Alexander Humboldt an early naturalist and European explorer of South American flora and fauna.

We took a boat ride to the Ballesta Islands about ten miles off the coastal town of Paracas. 

We left Rusty aboard GANNET2 and the campground owner Odón drove us in his Great Wall Wingle truck to the boat docks. It was my first ride in a Chinese pick up and it looked pretty much like any other. Odón said it’s okay but the quality isn’t as good as Japanese but it  is  half the price. He loves American iron and admires big American pick ups…

They have a whole fleet of tour boats to take people out to the islands. In Key West we used to call them “head boats” because we captains counted heads to make sure no one was left behind. The less kind term is “cattle boats” but they get the job done. 

The cattle dutifully wearing life jackets. 

The rather sleek looking catamaran had Peruvian registration numbers which whetted my curiousity. You don’t get many cruising sailors down here as the wind and currents are against you, it’s mostly cold and gray and there aren’t marinas or facilities along the coast. Sailing here would be an expedition. 

There is a rock carving in the heights above the channel out to sea and they call it the candelabra but no one really knows much about it or why it’s  here. 

Our bi-lingual guide. They were very good about swiveling the boat so everyone gets a view. That didn’t stop the passengers all leaping to the side to get the first view. The boat handled the shifting very well and didn’t heel too much at the sudden shift of ballast. 

A twenty minute ride at 30mph powered by two 250hp outboards got us out to the islands, slicing through the cold damp air. 

Oystercatchers. 

The islands are protected but every decade several hundreds laborers are ferried out to dig the guano which is the white stuff splattered on the rocks. It’s three feet of bird shit that accumulates and is dug up and shipped off to be used as fertilizer. Before the advent of commercial chemical products guano was a massive trade on the pacific coast of South America and fortunes were made if you can imagine that. The structures are all dedicated to guano removal. 

These are Peruvian terns I am also told. 

These crags remind me of the Farallon Islands off San Francisco. 

And there was our first penguin huddling on the beach. 

Eyes right! 

A dormant seal. 

These islands are huge tourist business and the boats go right up to the rocks. 

A more cooperative mammal posing for us: 



The research center. 

The dock for scientists and others who actually land. 

We followed this couple ambling and hopping down to the water for a swim and a snack:  

We later watched them swim rapidly off into the ocean. Another local sailboat heading out: 

Paracas from the sea: 





An endless supply of tourists for the boats: 







Twenty five cents to pee. And kids pay too. Don’t argue. 

Boating makes you hungry so we bought some sandwiches to take back to our home for lunch. One pork roll and one fish roll and none with French fries sticking out. 

Home sweet home and a dog very happy to see us. 

Racing Through Lima

Lima enjoys a fearsome reputation among overland travelers for horrendous traffic and snarls and so forth. As you can see we had a taste. 

Capital cities in Latin America are where the action is, where the leaders live, where the opportunities exist and where you can find all the consumer goods not found in the hinterland. 

I was a little intimidated after hearing absolutely everyone say driving through Lima is the worst but we decided to form a plan and give ourselves options if everything went wrong. We left our campground before eight o’clock and drove into the PanAmerican in heavy coastal Pacific fog. If we met impenetrable traffic we had places marked where we could pull off and even camp for the night safely and try again the next day. We were ready. 

Lima was founded in January 1535 by Francisco Pizarro who laid out a city in the and where the Rimac River entered the sea. He didn’t want to have a capital in the mountains like Cusco was for the Inca but wanted easy access to trade and communications by sea.  

Today 11 million people live in and around the city which has gone through periods of boom and bust, earthquakes, urban renewal and invasion by Chilean soldiers in the 19th century. It’s a vast agglomeration of impoverished neighborhoods built in a fan around the ritzy Miraflores neighborhood near the beach. There is incidentally a well known free camping spot with overnight security on the beach where overlanders stay but they want to spend money in Miraflores at the top of the cliffs overlooking the beach. However this time of year gray marine inversion clouds clamp down and the sun is mainly seen a few hours in the afternoon. The air is cold and clammy the rest of the time and our plan involved getting through it as fast as possible. 

The plan was to stick to the left lane of the PanAmerican right through the city, and it wasn’t a bad plan. Occasionally I had to move to the center lane to avoid forced left turns but by keeping to the left we avoided most of the jerks trying to force their way  forward with rapid lane changes. 

And we spread the wealth buying chips and bread and wildly over tipping the vendors. I gave one woman a two dollar tip and she ran back with tears in her eyes calling on God to send many benedictions upon me. I shall bring her to mind when I’m at the pearly gates. 

There were a couple of accidents in our direction so we did get stopped for a while, maybe half an hour so Layne got to make me tea and use the loo without fear of getting pitched off the toilet by sudden braking. 

I have to say our strategy either on the whole and we ended up getting through the dreaded city without excessive hassle. 

It’s a hell of a way to make a living so tipping them so little seems the least I can do. 

We sat long enough I could turn the engine off and read a book. There was plenty of warning before we took off again. 

The motorcycles with black or orange boxes are food deliveries and they pay for their bikes by racing through traffic with no regard for their safety. I must be sounding old as I might have been guilty of some occasional slightly reckless riding in my youth. 

There was a toll booth too which slowed us down. The charge was $1:75 which seemed not enough for all the hassle of waiting in line to pay. Plus they took credit cards… we used cash for 6:60 soles. And check out the height marker. 2.3 meters is seven and a half feet. Check out the truck passing underneath. Something isn’t right there…

We busted out of the city before noon so we were feeling pretty pleased with ourselves. The air was cool and fresh and we were bowling along between 50 and 60 miles per hour. 

There were warnings on the iOverlander app about corrupt police but we met none and no one hassled us. We had Detective Bosch playing from an audio book and  the scenery was flowing by and all was well with our world. Not so much the trucker below lying under his vehicle: 

One of our planned stops in case of delays was at a huge truck stop and on closer inspection there was a bakery on site. It was lunch time. 

They bake empanadas here that they call “little stuffed breads.”  Take your pick among ham, cheese, sausage,bacon smoked pork and olives. And I’ve probably missed a few. 

We got a bunch of empanadas for later and a slice of pizza each with a juice. I got papaya and Layne got passion fruit. 

While you wait you can wander in back and watch the ovens at work. Pretty cool. 

Layne was right there too. 

Cabanossi and cheese was one of my empanadas where cabsnossi is a type of Peruvian smoked sausage. 

Oddly enough our favorite was a mixed green and black olive empanada.  Never had that before and I hope we see it again. 

Back at headquarters I met Jaimie an inspector of the mining trucks stopping at the gas station. His retirement dream is an RV to your Peru so he got a tour of our home. He works two weeks in and two off and has a second job to get his kids through private school. 

Then a couple of passersby stopped off curious about the van. It felt like Colombia where we were constantly waylaid by the curious. They’ve seen campers on YouTube but it’s not easy to see them in real life hereabouts. 

And then a traveling coffee salesman and his wife stopped by and we got coffee samples in exchange for a chat. Nice people, and she’s keen to RV so he’d better pull his socks up. 

The coast road, an easy drive south. 

Pee break and some leg stretching for young Rusty who is now 12, and not so young. 

Peru does have pull outs, informal and often full of trash when near towns and villages but there is room to get off the road which is nice. 

Late lunch break for the truckers. They run across the median to get their tables. I am going to have a hard time re-adapting to the formality and rules of driving in the US but I do use my turn signals like a gringo my theory being if I tell them my intentions they have no excuse for running into me. Something like that. 

After our two hundred mile day this was our campground near the Paracas Peninsula National Park.  

Rusty is snoring somewhere out of sight, entirely happy. 

A bar is on premises as is a washing machine and excellent bathrooms with steaming hot showers for $11 and a one time $10 fee for Rusty for some reason. He’s worth it. 

And the Pisco sours, made with  Peruvian brandy and lime juice and egg whites are excellent.