9/7 (Sunday)

We were awake before our 4 a.m. call. It was a lot warmer in our room last night after we closed one of our windows that we had left open the night before!
Last night we had KFC delivered to our room. My current convertor either blew a fuse or died. I was asking Kimberly, from Texas, where I could get another one. She showed me hers which she got at Radio Shack in Lima. It was a monster of a thing ($30) and weighed more than my little computer. She offered to let me keep it until we leave in Oct. I took her up on it because there was no way I would be able to charge my camera or computer. She said the reason she got that monster was because there are a lot of power surges in Peru and that can hurt your equipment. She´s leaving for the states tonight and won´t be back until May so I´ll leave it at the hotel for her.
Our driver, Vicente, called for us right " 4:30 and we were on our way in the pitch black and mist. Once we dodged the pot holes of Lima we were on decent roads for a good stretch of the way they even had four lanes.
Our first stop about 8:30 was at the Paracas Peninsula which is a National Reserve. We took a two hour boat ride first stopping to see El Candelabro, a huge hillside etching of a chandelier that has mysterious origins. The wind and surf have sculpted odd shapes and tunnels into the rock. Because of the warm winds and cool ocean no rain falls on Paracas. This area has one of the world´s largest collections of seabirds (about 200 species) including the Andean Condor, 2 types of sea lions, a rare otter and the endangered Humboldt penguin.
Hundreds of thousands of birds were roosting all over the rocky islands covering them with guano (also known as poo poo.) It has 20 times more nitrogen than cow poo and thus is highly coveted. Between 1850 and 1870 Peru had a guano rush. They dug nearly 20 million tons of the stuff off the islands lowering the height by as much as 30 meters!



We saw cormorants, boobies )not the blue footed ones pelicans, seagulls, penguins and Inca terns. the sky and rocks were thick with them. I told barbara not to open her mouth if she looked up. she didn´t open her mouth but still took a direct guano hit on top of the head. She resorted to wearing a plastic bag on her head.



By 10-30 we were out of there and continuing on our way to Nazca. By this time the sun had finally come out and we were cruising along until we had to stop and change a tire. We were on the Pan American Hwy between Lima and Argentina and it was filled with big rigs going over the mountains. It was one hairpin curve after another.



We passed through lots of desert land and small villages. the boss called at 1'00 and said we had a 1`30 ``fly time`` We hurried on. The driver was a nervous wreck and driving like a bat out of hell when it became apparent we weren´t going to make the 1'30 time. We arrived about 1'40 which pushed our fly time back to 2`10. We got in a 6 passenger plane with five other people. The man sat in front with the pilot, Barbara and I behind them and the wife and daughter behind us. The wind was blowing fairly hard so I expected it to be bumpy but it wasn´t. We followed a clockwise path beginning with the lines of the whale etched into the desert. Some of the line formations you can see are_ the dog, monkey, condor, spider, humming bird, astronaut and parrot among others. The pilot would tip the wing all the way to one side for the people on the left to see then come around and tip to the other side. Before we took off he pointed out the barf bags in the pocket in front of each seat. About half way through the flight I thought I smelled something. When we landed Barbara informed me that the girl behind me had used her bag!



We hadn't had anything to eat since before 8 a.m. so I was once again light headed and ready to faint. We went to a very nice restaurant in Nazca for lunch dinner.



We hit the road back to Lima at 5 p.m. Thank goodness there was still light when we were behind all the trucks crossing the mountain. I felt sorry for the driver because he was driving right into the sun and it was a bright one.



We finally made it back to Lima by 11 p.m. We were all exhausted especially the driver. Our journey took much longer than it took for me to fly from Orlando to Lima.