Having admired the wonderful surroundings over breakfast we headed into the local fishing village where we got a boat out to Pan d\u00b4Azucar with two of the local fishermen.\u00a0 It was great being on the sea and after a short while we got to the island.\u00a0 The island looked two tone in colour with grey rock covered with white.\u00a0 From a distance it looked like strange rock colouration but it was actually guano (bird poo) from the multitude of birds which inhabit the island.\u00a0 The extent of this was amazing until we saw a penguin poo and realised how there was so much of it!\u00a0 The penguins were humbolt penguins and it was\u00a0great to see so many of them in the wild.\u00a0 There were also pelicans everywhere and various other seabirds on the rocks, in the sea and in the air around us.\u00a0 The island is protected there is no access allowed on foot so we continued in the boat.\u00a0 As we passed more penguins we were treated to three sealions, a mother, father and baby who were sunning themselves very close to us on a large rock.\u00a0 They put on quite a show with the male making obligatory grunting sounds every few minutes.\u00a0 We left the sealions and continued round where we saw a sea otter swimming.\u00a0 This was the rarest animal we saw and we were extremely lucky as there are only one thousand left in the wild in Chile!\u00a0 As we continued around to the head of the island the rocks changed shape and then we realised that what we were actually looking at was a whole colony of sealions.\u00a0 At the corner point where the sealions were resting the water level was lower over rocks and we turned around and headed back to the shore.\u00a0 On the way back from the island there was a strange shape in the water like a shark fin.\u00a0 I pointed it out and the fisherman steered the boat over towards it.\u00a0 It was possible that it was a killer whale, albeit slightly unlikely, and was hard ot make out.\u00a0 As we got closer we could just see it was a sealion with its fin poking out.\u00a0 For a moment we thought it was dead but then it twisted and sped off.\u00a0 It turned out just to be having a little nap!\u00a0 The whole trip was absolutely amazing and we couldn\u00b4t have asked for more wildlife.<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
Back on dry land we headed into Chanaral town for lunch.\u00a0 The town didn\u00b4t create the best impression being rather poor and desolate.\u00a0 We had an okay lunch though and headed back to the National Park.\u00a0 On the park road we went passed some locals hitchhiking and stopped to pick them up.\u00a0 Although I thought there were two people there were actually three and it was somewhat cramped for Mum in the back with them.\u00a0 As we got towards the village they pointed out the information centre and Mum translated this as them wanting to be dropped off.\u00a0 There was a little bit of confusion as I pulled over and it transpired they were just trying to be informative!\u00a0 When we had dropped them off at the correct location we bought some fish from the local fishermen and headed back to the cabana.<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
Having put the fish in the fridge we headed back to the information centre where the ranger hobbled over the road to us and gave us a map.\u00a0 He told us how to get to the\u00a0mirador (viewpoint) and we headed off in our van.\u00a0 He had been muttering something about keys and, as we turned off the main road in the park, we realised that he was trying to tell us that we needed a key to get through the gate.\u00a0 So we headed back to the information centre where, a somewhat amused, ranger gave us the key.\u00a0 Back on the road we got to the track and opened the gate.\u00a0 It was fun driving up the sandy off road type track and we eventually got to a parking area.\u00a0 When we got out the views down over the coast were stunning.\u00a0 We were looking out to sea when Dad pointed back to the van where a small Andean fox was wandering about.<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
In the evening we barbequed the fish we had bought from the fishermen and rounded off the perfect day with fresh fish and a bottle of wine.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Having admired the wonderful surroundings over breakfast we headed into the local fishing village where we got a boat out to Pan d\u00b4Azucar with two of the local fishermen.\u00a0 It was great being on the sea and after a short while we got to the island.\u00a0 The island looked two tone in colour with grey […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.zelmastrip.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/149"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.zelmastrip.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.zelmastrip.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.zelmastrip.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.zelmastrip.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=149"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.zelmastrip.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/149\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.zelmastrip.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=149"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.zelmastrip.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=149"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.zelmastrip.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=149"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}