Cold Spaghetti

Pelicans up close. 

The Candelabra. A mystery! We don’t know who or why (I’m not even sure if we know when). The figure is etched into the coastal hill and is over 150 meters high and 50 meters wide. According to Lonely Planet: “Some connect it to the Nazca Lines, while others propound that it served as a navigational guide for ancient sailors and was based on the Southern Cross constellation. Some even believe it to have been inspired by a local cactus species with hallucinogenic properties.” It was pretty cool to see just hanging there on the desert rock.

A bird follows us back from the islands as we head back towards land.

Here is Little Man giving us a yawn at the end of our tour of the Islas Ballestas. He had a blast checking out all the animals — waving, announcing the sighting of birds (you can imagine this was a pretty daunting task, all things considered), and generally being adorable.

After naptime and lunch, we took a 2:30 bus trip out to Paracas National Reserve. The majority of the reserve looks like the surface of the moon… one of the driest places on earth. Years ago, the water table was quite high and you could dig just a few feet for water (supporting plant and animal life) — now, the water is approximately 30 meters down. We toured the reserve with a guide and an extended Peruvian family with three boys; they were great and very friendly. Mist shrouded some of the key vistas within the reserve (see below) but we are still happy we went. The museum within the reserve was very interesting (more than we thought it would be) and was home to some impressive textiles, trophy heads and other skull remains (did you know that the Incas were into head-shaping and brain surgery?), and mummies! One of the coolest parts of the museum were remains from the Paracas Necropolis, a 5000-year old site of the Paracas culture (predating the Incas by more than a thousand years). 400-some funerary bundles were found (check out the mummy below to see what I mean about “bundles”) wrapped with colorful textiles and loom work.

Will and I outside of the Paracas museum. I also took pictures of Paul with the travel bunny here — he’ll post those, eventually…!

Some stuff in the Museum. The mummy here is actually a copy — the real one is in the big museum in Lima.

Paul and Will at The Cathedral! They are standing by the protective wall and Paul is holding Very Tightly on to Will! 

The Cathedral. A stunning rock formation in Paracas National Reserve. Because of the fog, we were not able to travel down (along the other side) to the beach view of this. By the way, I took this a few steps from the edge. I was very careful, but let’s be clear: it’s a long way down! (Will was on Paul’s shoulders the entire time and Paul kept way, way back.) 

Boats on the seashore. This little fishing nook provides approximatley 80% of all the seafood in Lima. Little boats like this provide the thousands of pounds of grub consumed daily by a city of over 8 million! Wow.  

Seaside swimming hole — complete with seafood stands — in Paracas National Reserve. Note the arid ground. This is one of the driest regions in the world… and why archaeologists are able to dig up petrified mummies and other artifacts thousands of years old!