ParacasDream - MyPictureDay Submission

Unfortunately, 5 days ago I came back from Spain where I had been on a student exchange. For security reasons, I cannot leave my home for 14 days (under threat of a mandate), so I will present some photos from my stay in Peru. I spent three months in this country in 2016 where I had an opportunity to meet amazing people, but also wonderful nature.

In the last week of my stay in South America, around September 10, together with a group of friends I worked with in Lima, we went for the weekend to the Paracas National Park, about 4 hours drive from the capital. Part of our trip was to visit the Reserva Nacionales Islas Ballestas, a group of small islands near the city of Paracas.

The islands are a reserve for marine fauna and birds. There is also a shitty history associated with Islas Ballestas. It is precisely the so-called guano. It is nitrogen-rich faeces of seabirds, mainly cormorants or silly birds, used as a natural fertilizer, whose deposits reached 30 m in height! In the 19th century, the production of this raw material on Peruvian "shitty islands" accounted for 80% of world income. It even happened that the guano deposits became in 1879 one of the causes of the so-called "war for saltpeter" between Chile and Bolivia and Peru. Although the exploitation of guano fell in the 20th century due to the use of artificial fertilizers, today it is gaining in importance again, due to the return to organic farming. Today, the biggest producers are Peru, Chile, Micronesia and Seychelles.

The island's landscape is still characterized by old, decaying buildings of guano mines.

In addition to birds, there are also whole colonies of seals and sea lions, known as Californian rays. As you can see, they love to pose for pictures 😊.