Peru gets off to a frustrating start! We arrived at Lima airport in good time, and full of anticipation went to pick up our hire car. And immediately ground to a halt. Despite us being able to show the man at the National Car Hire counter the confirmation email we’d received from National with the correct date, time and type of car we’d booked, he denied all knowledge of our booking and refused us any help. An angry phone call to the head office in Lima resulted in them offering us a 4x4 pick-up truck later in the day, totally unsuitable for keeping our luggage secure, an issue we’re probably paranoid about now, given our previous experience in Canada. So much for customer service, the whole reason we’d booked with National in the first place since they’d been so helpful in New York. Instead we were passed over to the next-door Budget counter, who did at least have a car available for us to take straight away. But it was smaller than we’d booked, had two partially flat tyres, has an intermittent fault in the electrics which means the engine conks out on an impromptu basis and refuses to re-start, though we didn’t realise this until we were firmly stuck in the traffic in the centre of downtown Lima. And if that wasn’t enough, it runs on a kind of fuel that doesn’t seem to be stocked by any of the petrol stations, so it looks like we’ll be pushing it back to Lima soon. Or maybe pushing it over a cliff in frustration!Much later than anticipated we finally chugged into Pucusana, a small fishing port south of Lima, and at last saw some Peruvian birds. As the fishermen threw scraps into the water, birds fought to pick up the pieces: Inca Terns, Peruvian Boobies, Peruvian Pelicans, Guanay Cormorants, Red-legged Cormorants and Belcher’s Gulls, all new for the year. With so little time and so much to see, we dashed around the corner to a secluded cove splashed by sea spray as the waves forced their way through a narrow fissure in the cliff. Pottering about on the rocks, dodging the waves with ease, was a Peruvian Seaside Cinclodes behaving more like a Surfbird than any passerine – a brown Thrush-sized bird complete with wingbars, a long tail, and a pale throat. Next we jumped in a tuk-tuk taxi for a very bumpy uphill ride, pursued by a gaggle of barking dogs to a viewpoint overlooking the town and down into the next cove along. With light beginning to fail, we hurridly scanned the sea for our target species, Humboldt’s Penguin. We were in luck and picked out just one bird bobbing about in the swell. We enjoyed good if distant scope views of our first penguin of the year, though it was incredibly how long the bird could remain underwater.
Bird species total: 2748
Posted 16th July, Paracas, Peru