Ballestas Islands, Paracas, Peru

These are the Ballestas Islands just off shore from the town of Paracas south of Lima. This island is home to thousands, probably millions of birds, some Humbolt penguins and sea lions. As we pulled toward the islands in the boat they appears to be dripping with white icing. Of course, this isn’t icing, it’s bird guano (poop)! Over the period of seven years the guano builds up to a height of about 10 meters or roughly 30 feet. Peru brings in 300 men for 3 months to clean the islands and collect the guano which is highly prized as organic fertilizer. Chile actually tried to take the island from Peru because they wanted the guano for themselves. Who knew poop could be so valuable. We had to keep our hats on for the trip because poop was dropping all over the place. One little boy without a hat got it right on top of the head. They are just entering the spring when the sea lions will have their calves. There is a beach called maternity beach where all the mothers go to have their babies. In December their will be more than 2,000 sea lions on this small beach. It was hard to catch the names of the birds because much of the tour was in Spanish. Their are terns, boobies, gulls, etc. Many of the same birds I saw in Alaska – I think perhaps they migrate but it was difficult to ask. We also saw a starfish called the sun star fish that is only in South America.