I don`t believe that story about aliens being the creators of the Nasca Lines, so I had to fly over them myself to witness the great feat of the Nasca people.
Mummies with hair
The first part of our tour took us to the cemetery where we looked in some Nasca tombs to see mummies sitting in the foetal position, shrouded in sacks, facing the rising sun. They had been buried with some pottery pieces and often other members of the family who died later or earlier. Many of the tombs contained long tresses of hair, and by long I mean 2 metres long. The women would grow their hair and then wind it around their heads like turbans.
Some of the mummies came complete with paperbark-like skin and scary looking scalps of hair. There was also a tomb full of babies which I hadn`t seen before and kind of gave me the creeps.
Nasca Lines
Our flight over the Nasca Lines lasted 30 minutes and we flew twice around each of the 13 main figures. They were actually a lot smaller than I had been led to believe and I almost missed seeing the whale, the first figure we went past. Other figures we saw were trapezoids and then the much more interesting monkey, spider, parrot, hands, hummingbird, condor, alcazar (a long birdy thing with a snakey tail) a tree and dog. We also saw the astronaut in the hill which didn`t resemble the other figures.
They were very angular and had lots of straight lines on the pictures. During the flight I also saw some other figures and more trapezoids on the ground. Unfortunately I didn`t get to see the lizard that got cut in half by the Panamericana highway. The flight was US$45 and I think I got my money`s worth.
The flight was followed by a boring video by a guy who was basically poncing about interviewing Nasca Lines fanatics and sketching different conclusions about why the Nasca people did the lines and how they made them. The most sense came from making the pictures for the gods to send them water, since they are in the middle of a desert which only gets a couple of minutes of rain each year (if they`re lucky) and during part of the Nasca period, there was an intense 40 year drought.
Not like MY oranges
As we were on the bus from Ica to Nasca, we passed through the town of Palpa which made offerings to a god so that they could always have the best oranges in the country (in the middle of the desert). I felt obliged to do some worldwide tasting and can tell my parents with confidence that the oranges I got on the bus (Valencias) pale in comparison to the juicy, wonderful tasting oranges that they produce.
Things I Learned
* Tombs are so much more interesting when they actually contain the original contents and are not shoved in a museum somewhere else.
* Many Peruvian schools have three sessions, morning, afternoon and night.
* There are lots of cool little Nasca souvenirs to fill my backpack with.
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