The Nature Bloggist

Well there was a bit of a hiatus between this post on our trip to Peru and the last, thanks to the world wobbling around a lot due to COVID 19, but we have decided we should finish this, since Lima was really cool and worth remembering.

This is our post from the day before when we visited the Pantanos de Villa Wildlife Refuge.

On our third day after we ate breakfast we decided to revisit Bosque el Olivar (also called Parque el Olivar). It was walkable from the hotel in San Isidro and is a hotspot with ~50 species with many passerines very different than the shorebirds we’d been seeing. The area is a beautiful urban park to walk around in, heavily planted with olive trees.

The park is broken up with green, generally wooded blocks on the edges with larger sections as you head in, and has ponds and little fountains and gazebos and things. The weather was very nice when we were there, so we wandered along checking out the park and the bits of San Isidro we were in. The area has a lot of embassies and a few upscale boutique areas and a few restaurants and cafes that looked intriguing.

The area is home to a lot of species of birds. The eve before we looked up a checklist to refer to.

We found a few interesting birds right away.

There were a ton of vermillion flycatchers out. While to the locals they’re common and less interesting, I have only seen one once before (on my street – cool). They’re really beautiful little things and the ones in the park were fairly acclimated to people so they mostly ignored us so we could get a nice look at them.

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Lima has a population of melanistic vermillion flycatchers too. So cool!

I spotted a pacific parrotlet in the park, though it was gone by the time I got Haley. We saw a few species of parakeets in the park, and heard flocks of them squawking fairly often. The species in the park are not really native to Lima though they’re native to Peru.

The thing that made this area really amazing for us was the saffron finches. While they’re called “finches” they’re in the tanager family (like Darwin’s “finches”). They’re small, yellow, and very finch-y, though, so the name is understandable. We saw a number of flocks of 10-20 birds wandering through munching their way through the seeding grass. We sat quietly in the park near areas with a lot of dandelions and they hopped quite close as they picked their way through.

We sat around different spots in the park for hours watching saffron finches chomping away at dandelions, grass seeds, and things and I wandered to track down interesting bird calls and things.

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Since we were sitting a lot I managed to drop my phone. This was esp bad since it had a couple credit cards and my driver’s license in the case. I used ‘Find My Phone’ on Haley’s phone to track it and found it at a police kiosk on a nearby corner. After some delays and filing of papers and a slightly complicated Spanish conversation I got it back with the cards/license intact.

There were a lot more birds besides those, croaking ground doves, and other doves, pigeons, flycatchers, and things. This was our last day in Lima so we spent hours enjoying the park, then wandered back to the hotel which as about .5 km. visited the church near the park which was lovely and interesting.

Then we walked back to our hotel to start the long trip back home.

next: The Long Journey Home and Mexico City

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 

We woke up in Lima. We still had a bit of sunburn, the bit of down time at Pisco had helped, but we were still processing all the things we’d been seeing. Penguin chicks! Flamingos! Llamas! The Andes! Sea Lions! I like forests and especially wet forests, but the dry coasts were very beautiful in their way. Lima’s an oasis built on the coast against really lovely cliffs.

On our first day we wanted to go out and see the city and local culture. We decided to visit the the Catacombs in the Basilica of San Fransisco which would put us in a good part of the city to explore by foot.

The basilica was lovely, esp. the woodwork around the entry. And it had a ton of pigeons.

The tour of the catacombs had a no photography policy.

While the basilica was beautiful and very fascinating, we respected their no photos policy for the interior of the basilica or the catacombs. The basilica has got a lot of beautiful neoclassical architecture, interesting art, amazing old hymnals and ancient books that were fascinating and lovely to behold. In the center of the building was a really beautiful, heavily planted courtyard. There we saw sparrows, more pigeons, and some West Peruvian doves (Zenaida meloda) that look and act very much like white-winged doves.

The church did some English tours of the catacombs. The catacombs are full of tens of thousands of skeletons with bones presented in various, sometimes artful ways, and were really interesting to visit, though we really enjoyed the tour through the church as well. I really found the giant, ancient songbooks in medieval notation and the huge library with a huge collection of centuries old books really striking, and the place is full of some really incredible painted ceramic tile work.

After we finished with the tour we sat for a bit in the entry to rest and I wound up talking to a guy who was a translator for the courts. He knew quite a number of languages and was really interesting to talk to, and we chatted in Spanish a bit. Then we headed out.

The first thing we really noticed was the power lines – amazing.

We ate at a local place near Parque de la Muralla. Trying the ‘limonade’ it was again lime-ade and amazing. From there we wandered to the Plaza de Armas.

The Plaza de Armas is a really lovely and interesting space in the middle of the historic center.

The whole area’s wonderful to walk around and see the buildings and monuments.

We stayed there until dark, visiting the Cathedral of Lima for a bit. We love visiting old Catholic churches to see the art and architecture. (Cathedrals are the seats of bishops so they’re big and typically very interesting spaces.) From the plaza we got a ride back to the hotel and got to bed.

next: Lima Day Two, Pantanos de Villa

We left Paracas and headed to the Doubletree in Pisco. The plan was to have a down day here relaxing after a lot of go days. That turned out to be a really good idea since we both forgot sunscreen before the kayaking and we were close enough to the Equator for that to be a big mistake. We both were sunburned so relaxing and staying in the shade for a bit sounded good.

The Doubletree was resort-style, so we couldn’t walk through the fun parts of Pisco, though this was fine for a recovery day. The resort was more upscale than I like, with expensive food and people who learn your name and refer to you by it at the desk.

Also they have art furniture.

We also managed to try a Pisco Sour here. These are really good for this kind of drink. I tried some straight Pisco and it’s not nearly as horrible as I expected. (I have a kid palate – alcohol has always just tasted vile to me). Pisco is a grape brandy, and the town of Pisco is a beach town in the middle of a desert which puzzled me. It turns out the drink is made in wine making regions elsewhere in Peru, but the original port it was all shipped from was Pisco, so the name came from there.

The staying in the shade didn’t last very long for me, because the resort was on the water and the shore had birds.

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We spent a day here recuperating, treating sunburn with aloe, and messing around looking at birds. I also saw rufous-collared sparrows on property and followed some around to get a good look.

While the Doubletree was fine for us since we were trying to stay in and recuperate, this place is really isolated from the more colorful and fun parts of Pisco and is more of an isolated resort than a base to visit Pisco. Pisco is a really cute, though very dusty, beach town with a lot of character that looks like a fun place to spend time in.

The next day we ate and had a leisurely morning, then checked out. We took a taxi to Pisco, to the Perú Bus station. We’d booked the bus from Pisco to Lima online which worked out fine. They stowed our luggage underneath for the ride.

I read some of the phrase book on the bus (still doing homework), and we watched films dubbed in Spanish with Spanish subtitles. Iron Man II is not a good film to learn Spanish from. Charlotte’s Web (2006) was ok. Wallace and Gromit: Curse of the Were-Rabbit was great.

We pulled into Lima around 7 PM, and got a taxi to the slightly over-fancy* Hyatt Centric in San Isidro, Lima, ate at the hotel’s restaurant (mushroom risotto), then got to bed.

* Any hotel where staff learn your name and then refer to you by it when they see you is way to fancy, and also somewhat distressing in the awkwardness that ensues. Hotels that use golf carts to get you to your room are too fancy. Hotels that have their own tailored pillow scent are cool for that, but also too fancy.

next: Lima Day One 

The next morning we got up, ate some breakfast which was very good, played with the dogs a bit, looked at shore birds and watched the Peruvian boobies dive. Anahi, Luis, and Pablo were all great hosts and we felt lucky to get the opportunity to hang out with them and talk about this beautiful place, dote on their adorable kids, and eat amazing food. The AirB&B listing is worth posting again since this was a highlight:

https://www.airbnb.com/rooms/30707377

After lunch we headed out on kayaks, Haley and I shared a kayak, Luis had a kayak, and a friend of his with a background as a nature guide came along.

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After we we got back from kayaking, we ate a bit and prepped to go out on Luis’ boat.

Off the coast of Paracas National Park in Pisco Bay there are a number of islands very rich in bird and sea life that are called the Ballestas. These islands have huge colonies of thousands of birds, large sea lion colonies, and Humboldt penguin colonies.

There are tour boats that go out to some of the islands. We saw the tour boats – they were crowded, the captain’s itinerary is set in a fairly fixed course, and things wouldn’t be fun with a camera with a big lens. We went out to Isla Blanca which isn’t on the main tour boat itinerary so it’s quieter, has a sea lion colony, a penguin colony, and has a ton of birds. Having a private boat was great. We wanted to take a look at the sea caves, so we pulled up near them – they were cool sea caves. We took our time around the islands getting the boat in position to get nice views and photos.

We went along the coast of Pisco bay until we got to the Candelabra. The Candelabra is a huge geoglyph in the hillside similar to the Nasca lines. It has an unclear history. While there are ancient pottery shards that suggests it’s very old, the earliest account of it was by Eurpoean colonists, and little is really known about it. It might have been made as a navigation aid, since Isla Blanca is due north of the candelabra.

As we approached Isla Blanca we saw large numbers of terns, gulls, cormorants, and boobies.

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next: Pisco

We took a domestic flight from Cusco to Pisco and landed in a very dry place.

Off the coast the Humboldt Current runs up from Antarctica keeping the surface temps so low that there’s no evaporation. In the past 60 years this region has seen one day of rain (resulting in a catastrophe for Pisco). Near the coast there are a few tiny plants that subsist off dew, but there’s no rain, so there are no succulents/cactuses, etc.

The coast of the desert here is rich with life. On our drive in we spotted a group of bright pink Chilean Flamingos on the beach and tons of shorebirds. And the Ballesta Islands here are host to huge amounts of wildlife, including Humboldt Penguins.

While researching this area, Haley had found an Air B&B listing for a place inside the park on the beach that was a working scallop farm. We planned to take kayaks in Pisco bay to see the local birds, get close to flamingoes, and spend time in a really unique and amazing ecosystem, and arranged to take a boat out to see the islands.

This was a great decision – they’re an excellent AirB&B deal. The place had what amounted to an outhouse, electricity was limited primarily to solar panels, and we slept on an air mattress in a tent, but it got us right on the coast in the middle of an area rich in amazing wildlife.

On arriving we walked around the beach and spotted a lot of Peruvian boobies scanning and diving for fish which were fun to watch.

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Also there were a lot of American oystercatchers.

And there was a juvenile Chilean flamingo hanging out on the coast of the scallop farm.

We also saw Wilson’s plovers, curlews, sanderlings, greater yellowlegs, gulls, terns, Peruvian pelicans, and various cormorant species on a short walk.

Anahi and Luis were really awesome to hang out with. Great hosts, very thoughtful folks, and wonderful to get the chance to talk to. We talked about the local wildlife and ecology, and I finally tried to sort on the deal with Español and Castellano. We paid a bit extra for full board and were really glad we did, they were amazing cooks.

We looked up birds in a copy of Birds of Peru we ordered used online. Luis had a hardback of the same version. We used it through the trip, the illustrations are good, the maps helpful, and the layout standard enough to be easy to use. We’ve found traveling with a paper field guide covering an area works well since looking things up online in apps is much less reliable outside the US, at that point I had limited data on a Peruvian Claro plan, and we had serious battery limits.

The farm itself is a netted area off the shore where scallops are grown out in the rich waters. Luis’ father Pablo ran the scallop farm, and the ten dogs at the site were his – he told us all the dogs names. He didn’t speak much English, but we chatted in Spanish.

We walked along the coast, ate, played with dogs, checked out birds and shells and wildlife, and had a nice time talking to Anahi, Luis, and Pablo in the evening and eventually we went to bed.

next: Paracas Day Two and on to Pisco

We slept well, and the next morning we woke up in Casa Inka to the squawks of parakeets red-fronted parakeets screeching away in a nearby tree.

In the morning we were awake from the parakeets and roosters, went down those grueling stairs and had a nice breakfast – mostly eggs, fruit, cheese, and bread. We saw more rufous-collared sparrows, drank some more local tea, packed our O2 canister, and headed to the train station to visit Machu Picchu.

PeruRail runs this line. We booked tickets online, and boarding was easy. They run observation cars on the trains, the path is through the Sacred Valley, mostly alongside a river, and with tunnels and things – a nice ride and a beautiful space.

The mountains all along the Sacred Valley have patches that are terraced, sometimes miles long. This massive terraforming goes back to the Incas and it really was amazing to see how much the Incas had shaped this vast space. 

The train took us to Aguas Calientes, the town below Machu Picchu. Aguas Calientes has buses that run up to the archaeological site, or if you can climb the many horrible stairs in a long hike up to the site if you are young, acclimated to the height, and insane.

We strolled around Aguas Calientes which was an incredibly pretty place but we were O2 starved so we strolled very slowly. We checked out trains, looked around at birds and local sights, took breathing breaks, and bought our bus tickets to get up to Machu Picchu. There’s no way to order these online, bring your passport to the bus ticket office.

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Eventually we got on the bus and wound our way up the switchbacks to the site. We were dreading this part, since the air is thin at 8000 feet up, and Machu Picchu is a monument of stairs – so many hand carved, carefully laid stone stairs. Apparently the Incas loved cardio workouts.

Altitude sickness was a little worse than the previous day, but the O2 helped with Machu Picchu. We were tentative at first, but after a while we learned to use it before we felt the great burning thirst for air rather than in response to it. Machu Picchu is a fascinating place, a beautiful spot, and there were a lot of rufous-collared sparrows and swallows flitting around and occasional small brown mystery birds, and we spotted  some nice sized lizards and some brightly colored flash mystery birds. Some red, some yellow, a bit of blue on the body somewhere, then gone. We heard parrot/parakeet squawks in the distance at times.

We wandered around until we’d taken it in, and as we headed back peals of thunder hit, a light rain started, seeming like it was only going to get heavier. We had already been heading back so we made it onto the first bus back down before the crush from the rain and explored Aguas Calientes for a bit, changed the return time for our train ticket back to Ollantaytambo, and headed back. The train station had a decent sized garden that had a few birds flitting around with a few hummingbirds visiting.

By the time we got back to Ollantaytambo it was dark. We took a mini-taxi from the station back to the main square. These photos are surprisingly effective at capturing the feel of a ride in the local tiny death traps:

The main square is a really cool place. The town has been continuously inhabited since the 13th century, and while there are touristy things, this is a living old town with a lot of history and charm. It also was a last holdout of the Incan Empire against the Spanish. We ate pizza and fries and got ‘limonade’ that was really good lime-ade and took another mini-taxi back to the B&B where we got to bed.

The next morning we were awakened by the parakeets again (along with some roosters), spent a bit looking at the local hillside with ruins, birds, and interesting things. The folks at the B&B Inka Hotel were great through our stay, helped us arrange a taxi back to Cusco, and also packed a lunch for us for the drive.

We took a flight from Cusco to Pisco on LatAm, which went smoothly, then at Pisco we had a driver pick us up to take us to Paracas.

next: Paracas National Reserve