Last night we met up with our Peru Hop bus group for dinner. We went out to pizza of all things, but it was actually pretty good. Our guide, Nilo, is this awesome little Peruvian guy who sang a bit of karaoke for us. His song of choice was 'What I Got' by Sublime, so he's OK in my book. We sat at a table with 5 Irish guys and an American, whose dad owns a tree trimming business in Napa on Lincoln Avenue. Talk about a small world. The guys were all really cool, I'm excited to meet more people from the group.

This morning we finally get to do the Ballestas Island tour and Paracas Natural Reserve, the only things to do here in Paracas. The Ballestas Islands are a group of small islands a couple miles out from the coast. They are home to thousands of seabirds (including flamingos if you come at the right time of year, which we didn't) and pingüinos del Humboldt (Humboldt penguins)! From the boat we see 2 small groups of penguins up on the rocks chillin' out, they are funny birds. We also see Peruvian boobies (the birds, not the real thing :P), Inca terns, neotropical cormorants and a couple of the endangered red-necked cormorants, which have red beaks and white necks. Leave it to the ornithologists to be confusing. There are sea lions as well, or 'lobos' en Español, which translates simply to wolves. Again, confusion. As we pass the mainland peninsula we see a large geoglyph shaped like a candelabra carved into the rocks on a hillside. It was left here ages ago by indigenous Peruvians but nobody really knows why. It's very similar to the Nazca lines that we will be seeing in a couple days, which should be cool.

After the islands tour we hop on the bus and head out to Paracas Natural Reserve, which is thousands of hectares of coastal desert. We stop at a couple of lookout points to take in the beautiful scenery. The tall cliffs have been carved by 2 very large earthquakes that have happened in Peru in the last 100 years. The earthquakes, due to the South American and Nazca tectonic plate movements, have caused large chunks of rock to fall into the sea leaving behind stratified cliffs of various colors and minerals. Our guide explains to us that the Humboldt current hits central Peru and forms 2 great gyres, creating an extremely strong and therefore extremely dangerous current in this area. It is strong enough to pull sea lions under to their death and has deterred dolphins from visiting for the last 20 years or so. We find a couple dried up sea lion carcasses on the beach to lend evidence to this, as it is difficult to tell upon first glance that this one area is more dangerous than any other beach. Apparently the strength of the current changes with the movement of the plates underneath, so there is the possibility that dolphins will return in the future as the current changes. It is so strange standing on a beach and being surrounded by nothing but sand dunes and rock for miles and miles, I've never seen anything like it. It's absolutely beautiful.

After visiting the reserve we drive about an hour to the tiny town of Huacachina, an oasis in the middle of the desert right outside the town of Ica. There is a lagoon here that used to be natural, but with increased use and tourism the water levels have dropped and they now pump well water into the lagoon via a pipeline. Huacachina is almost completely surrounded by massive sand dunes. After checking in at the hostel we climb to the top of one to watch the sunset; the sand is super fine and soft and we are sure getting a nice workout. Tomorrow we will get to go out on dune buggies and go sandboarding. That's right, sandboarding! Just like snowboarding but instead of snow-covered mountains we will be shredding down giant sand dunes, I can't wait! I'll let you all know how it goes.

We enjoy the sunset and then decide to hit the bars and see what this town has to offer. Lauren and I try pisco sours for the first time, Peru's national drink. They are absolutely delicious! We are at a bar called Huacaf***ingchina, too funny. Pisco is a type of hard liquor made from grapes. It's a bit like tequila, a sweet clear alcohol, but I find don't particularly care for it solo. I prefer the pisco mixed into the drink but I will never turn down a free shot, which we receive as part of our bus tour. On Thursday we will actually get to tour the pisco vineyards and get some more free tastes, so that should be fun. So much excitement in the next few days, stay tuned!