Mystical symbols or gigantic graffiti?

  Nazca, Peru
Wednesday, September 6, 2006

A short 2 hours yesterday took us to the (surprisingly backwater) town of Nazca. There's not much to the town itself and the Nazca Lines are the only reason people come, so when we got here, we booked our Nazca Lines flight and just bummed around for the afternoon.

During part of our exploration, we stumbled upon the Maria Reiche Centre expecting some sort of museum dedicated to the woman who contributed most towards the study of the lines. What we actually got was a shack in the middle of a backstreet run by a random lady. She offered to give us a lecture, but like all good Daily Mirror reporters, we made our excuses and left, opting instead for the very professionally run lecture at the Nazca Lines Hotel. The talk took place in a small on-site planetarium and was very interesting. Afterwards, we were allowed to use the hotel's 54x magnification telescope to look at Jupiter and its surrounding moons as well as our own moon. The detail we saw was incredible right down to individual craters!

The next day was the big day - we woke up bright and early ready to be picked up by our tour guide at 8:30 am. 9 o' clock came and went and, by 9.15 we were starting to get a little worried. Had we been stitched up by a rogue street seller? Steve went to ask the receptionist whether she knew the guide we had booked with and whether he was trustwrothy. "Oh yes," she said, "he rang me earlier this monring with a message that he would be late!" Grrrrrr!!

We eventually got pícked up, the delay having been due to poor flying conditions and after a lot of hanging around we finally made it up into the air. We were in the back of a 4 seater light aircraft, with the pilot and a Japanese guy in front. Initally, it just looked like we were flying over desert and then suddenly the first figure came into view - a spaceman carved into the side of a hill waving upwards at the heavens!



Outstanding! The lines were all suprisingly clear and some of the figures we saw included the Monkey,



the Hummingbird,



the Spider



and the trapeziods.



We really enjoyed the flight (despite Tara feeling a bit queasy due the the sharp turns we were making), but not as much as the Japanese guy who, true to stereotype took a photo of every figure with not one, but two cameras! We decided to just enjoy the occasion - you can get much better photos on the web.

Leaving Nasca the same day proved to be a bit tricky - the bus we wanted to travel on only had one space left. Luckily, it was a "Royal Class" bus which had a card atable and bench seating up the front, so we took it in turns to sit there and admire the desert as it rolled by. A nine hour bus ride brought us into the city of Arequipa.

DAILY FACTS

- Stayed at: Estrella del Sur, Nasca. Average. Room was OK, had a TV without cable and the receptionist was a bit dippy. Not a bad place to stay.

- Tip: Ormeno Royal Class busses are definitely worth sterthing the udget for when leaving Nazca.