Ballestas islands

While we were failing to sort out our Galapagos tour in less than 2 weeks time, we stopped at the next best thing on the drive to Lima - the Ballestas Islands. They are commonly referred to as 'the poor man's Galapagos' because of the volume of wildlife in such a small area. A lot of the animals are similar to those seen at the Galapagos, such as sea lions, penguins and cormorants. There aren't many penguins, but there are a lot of sea lions and about 40,000 birds. The skies are slashed by long lines of flying cormorants and a couple of people on our boat were hit by bird poo.

The stench of the guano was overpowering as we got close to the islands. The guano is farmed once every 7 years to be used as fertiliser, and that is the only time humans go on the islands. Dee complained that the smell made her feel sick and had her hand over her face for most of the journey.

There was a part of one of the islands that had a beach which was packed full of sea lions making loads of noise. All around the boat, sea lions poked their heads out of the water just a few metres away to look at us. If this is supposed to be the poor man's Galapagos, I can't wait to see what the real one is like.