National Geographic photo of a guano worker on the island returning bones and feathers that have been sifted from the collected guano
The Guañape Islands are a group of islands belonging to Peru. They are made up of two main islands, North Guañape and Guañape South,and also several islets . The total area of the islands is 62 hectares and are of high ecological interest, because of the large number of seabirds . In 2009 the islands were protected by law in the National Reserve System of Islands, and became a nature reserve to protect the biological diversity of marine and coastal ecosystems of Peru
The Guañape islands are remnants of an ancient mountain range (Cordillera de la Costa) that originated in the Precambrian (between 600 and 2000 million years) and would have sunk in the late Tertiary and early Quaternary, in the section between the peninsula Paracas and the peninsula of Illescas, leaving only traces in the form of islands and rock formations, the same that marked the old guideline of this chain. These formations consist of metamorphic rocks dating from the Paleozoic era.
The Guañape islands are populated by thousands of oceanic birds that lay their eggs there. It is estimated that there may be a million birds on the islands. Therefore these islands are important breeding colonies of sea birds like the Peruvian booby, the guanay Cormorant , and the Peruvian pelican, which are among the largest on the coast of Peru. There are also small breeding colonies of red-legged cormorant and the Humboldt penguin, species categorized under Peruvian law as endangered species.
We explored around Guanape North Island which is about 1.3 km long and d 0.7 kilometres wide , with a maximum altitude of 73 meters .
Click on any thumbnail photo to get a larger picture
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Our visit to Isla Guanape was confined to a Zodiac trip along the cost of the island. Landings were forbidden, and furthermore would not have been possible on that coast with the swell. In fact the ocean swell confined us to the north coast, sheltered by the lee of the island.
The walls that had been built to stop the guano sliding downhill into the sea were very prominent.
The voyage on Silversea Explorer in South America