Lima Day Two, Pantanos de Villa

We found a local bird guide in Lima to get us to and guide us around Pantanos de Villa.

Lima is a coastal city with cliffs along much of the coast. To the south of the city there are the Pantanos de Villa Wildlife Refuge, protected wetlands full of many species of shorebirds and huge numbers of birds, and a standard stop for birders. It’s a beautiful area and the city in the area was really interesting to watch as we drove to the site.

On the drive out we talked about birds we’d see in the park yesterday, about things to see in Lima, and how cool we found Peru. She also mentioned that she saw a Guayaquil squirrel near our hotel. They’re not native to Lima, but a population has been established. We spotted one in San Isidro the next day, and though it was camera shy, it was cool seeing a new mammal species.

Our first stop was an area where we could hire a park employee to take us out in a rowboat through the marshes. Paddling kept the boat pretty close to silent while we worked out way through some beautiful wetlands. These wild spaces that are teeming with life have a special feeling about them that’s hard to describe, though it verges on a certain sense of sacredness.

On the flight out I’d read Kenneth Graeme’s Wind in the Willows (a copy with E. H. Shepard’s illustrations). In that book, the meeting of Pan by Mole and Ratty was in the river full of reeds, a space full of verdant life and wonder in nature that is described wonderfully in the book, and here we were in just the kind of wild space fit for a literary nature god.

The boat got us in the middle of an amazing ecosystem, the reeds and water lettuce covered areas were lovely to be in the middle of, and there were a ton of birds.

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From the marsh we went to the beach.

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The beach was lovely and full of wildlife and full of many new bird species for us. While black skimmers are in the US, we’d never seen them before, and got a nice photo for showing the crazy beak on those things.

We also got more time with flamingos which was great.

When we were done at Pantanos de Villa we came back to the hotel. We were right next to Parque el Olivar in San Isidro which is a large urban park with a lot of birds and diversity of species. We got there in the eve so the light was fading but we saw some really cool birds.

We heard a lot of parakeets and enjoyed walking around the park. On the walk back to the hotel we stopped into Parroquia Nuestra Señora del Pilar for a minute. Old Catholic churches are fascinating as repositories of art and culture, whatever else you think about them.

From there we ate at a really good Preuvian criollo restaurant (and had amazing lime-ade) and made our way back to the Hyatt.

next: Lima Day Three Parque el Olivar