Ballestas Islands and the Paracas National Reserve

We left early in the morning - again - and headed towards Paracas and then by boat to the "Mini-Galapagos" Ballestas Islands. It's famous for it's unbelievable number of habitants, namely Humboldt penguins, seals, albatrosses and many other sea and flying creatures. Let the pictures speak (sorry, there are many of them, but otherwise a baby seal would have died):

The small beach was filled with seals and their babies, making a lot of noise!

After the two-hour long boat ride we jumped on a bus again and went to see the Paracas National Reserve, a desert, where it never rains either, apparently. 

 Even vultures like to read about themselves

 Walking on this beach we collected some heart-shaped stones, some shells and seal teeth (oh yes)

 Playa Roja

 Some crazy French people were there too..

Huacachina oasis

Nearly a month of travelling took its toll on us, especially after riding the night bus to Nasca and the downhill in Arequipa, so arriving to this paradise in the middle of the Peruvian desert was just brilliant timing. 

Huacachina is built around a natural lake and surrounded by sand dunes. Popular for dune buggying and sandboarding. Temperature topped 35 degrees during the day and didn't fall below 20 at night. Perfect for relaxing and having some fun on the dunes. 

 A pool and a sand dune in the backyard

 The oasis looks like if it was drawn by a child or came straight from a fairy tale, a perfect combination of an oval shaped small natural lake, palm trees, and surrounding sand dunes

 This street has a dead end. A massive sand dune.

Az utolsó őrült tánc

Homokdeszkázás és buggy rodeo

Zsolt hamarosan jelentkezik egy, az utolsó állomásunkat, a Huacachina-oázist bemutató cikkel, addig is fogadjátok szeretettel az esti sivatagi buggyzásról és homokdeszkázásról készült videómat.

Nasca

Travelling on the night bus was long, uncomfortable and smelly, and when we arrived to Nasca we still had a couple of hours till the airport opened. We had a bright, warm morning and finally we've managed to squeeze ourselves into the little plane and taken off. 

I'm not going to talk about the Nasca lines, everyone knows them. So let's see the geoglyphs!

 Astronaut

Whale

 Monkey

 Hummingbird

  Spider

Tree  

 After the flight, we headed to see the 2000 years old irrigation system around the city and couldn't miss the beauty of local transportation 

But again, here is one of the channels

 Access holes

Some giant sand dune

Cochineal / carmine - the famous(?) insect that is used for colouring (check your yoghurt ingredients..)