PERU:NAZCA:lines and tiny aeroplanes
Trip Start
Oct 01, 2008
1
48
63
Trip End
Ongoing
Nasca,
Peru
Wednesday, February 18, 2009
after a nightmare of trying to get a bus from inner city lima on the same day.... dont recommend it to anyone... i finally get a bus, with the help of a local girl who sees i am about to explode at some rude woman behind the desk who refuses to help me. even though she could...argh! a typical shrug of the shoulders is all she can do...
anyhoo... a very unconfortable 7 hour ride later..think space back like the chicken buses...we arive in nazca. naszca was inhabitated back by the nazca people about 1000 years a go. during their civilastion they built these lines, a series of animal figures, and geometric shapes, some upto 200m n lenght. they are drawn across 500km squared on the stoney , sand floor of the desert. they range in styles from straight lines to the shapes of monkeys and hummingbirds, and spiders...there is even an astronaut!
most probably buiilt by removing the hard stones of the plain to leave the dust beneath, and as its so dry out here, they have lasted. they were probably some kind of agricultural calendar related to the sun, highlighting certain mountain peaks, letting them know its time to harvest etc, whilst at the same time, some of them would have been for paths to sacred points. however, there have been a lot of theories, and lukey´s favorite is that they were built for the aliens to see..... or in the nazcas time, for the gods to see..... lol!
we only stay over night, and book our flight first thing the next morning, wasting our time wandering the streets, as we have officially hit TOURIST LAND! touts are everywhere, and everything is twice as expensive. everything is aimed at tourists....and not suprisingly we dont like it!
but were excited for our flight, and grateful that we take some travel sickness tablets. our plane only holds 5 of us, and is tiny, two small propellers at the front. we have to wear head phones to block out the noise of the propellers, but we laugh as we get excited at this little adventure.
the pilot sweeps left and right, round and round the lines, pointing out the different shapes. you dont see all of them, but most of the main ones. we are surprised that they dont seem as large as we initially thought. i guess when you see them in a book, with no perspective , they look huge, but up from the air, obviously large, they arent hundreds of metres across like we thought. the plane ducks, dives, and even with my tablet, my stomach is in my mouth. the girl behind us is sick, but we enjoy being able to have this luxury of seeing this curious history.
my feet are very glad to be back on main land. not being much else to do in this small dirty town, we spend the day shopping and wait for our nightmare bus across the moutains to cusco.....
