Poor mans g and nazca lines

  Nazca, Peru
Friday, April 13, 2007

01 - Early start in Pisco

Pisco & Poor mans Galapagos

The three of us bused it down the panamerican highway to Pisco and found a boat to take us out to what the lonely planet had dubbed the poor mans Galapagos island. For $10 we were speed boated out to an island in the pacific and watched sea lions sunbathing, penguins swimming around the boat, pelicans fishing, blue footed boobies strutting and smelt the heavy scent of thousands of years of rotting bird shit, mmmmmmm! The animals would pose for photographs and it was clear they had no fear of people being extremely close.

02 Gulls

03 Sea lions

05 Sea lions looking

06 sea lions roaring

07 sea lions

09 The daddy

Nazca and the lines

The next morning we bused it south again to the desert town of Nazca. The next morning we took a 4 seater airplane over the famous lines to see what the great, still unexplained mystery was all about.

What follows is an almost true account of how the Nazca lines came about:

Around 3000 years ago the local Nazca tribe was sat around waiting for someone to invent t.v. so they wouldn´t be so bored. One bright spark sat up and suggested they all troop out into the desert and draw massive animals in the arid ground over a 500 sq km area. Wait a minute said another more intelligent tribe member, the airplane wont be invented for another 3000 years so we will never be able to appreciate our work. He was ignored. So off they went and for the next 1500 years, until AD 600 the Nazca tribe sketched out enormous animal shapes on the dessert floor. As well as the normal animals found in the local area they also added a few extras which still today are un-explained. There is the killer whale (Nazca is about 100km away from the coast and how did they catch it?). There is the the astronaut, which gets all the weird UFO believers excited, a 3km long runway for only God knows what and enough other mystery`s to keep archaeologists happy for many more years.

11The huming bird

12 the dog

08a The astronaut

09a The killer whale

Our flight over was muchos fun. The pilot banked around all the lines and made us all feel very sick but it was well worth it. Tonight we take an overnight bus to Arequipa.

Cooper & Brown Out

Love Dan & Kat & Dan