Our aim was to head to the North Coast of Peru to get some beach time, and along the way was the famous Nasca where they found the Nasca lines of the ancient people after many years. We took an overnight bus from Arequipa and arrived in Nasca about 8am in the morning, so we got a hotel and headed straight for the tour agencies to see how much a flight was.
The price was reasonable, and since there are 11 famous figures at least to see, the only way to do it properly was to jump in an even tinier aeroplane than the one I complained about last time!! Funnily enough, I actually really enjoyed this flight! It was bumpy as, and the pilots did really hard turns so that you could see straight down at the lines. So you wouldn’t want to have a fear of flying or get motion sickness in this flight, it ALMOST felt like aerobatics. I was comforted by the fact that our pilots looked old enough to have experience (he could have got his license last year but somehow his age made me feel comfortable).. AND the pilot was criticing another plane that was landing and telling his co pilot what that guy did wrong (“This guy knows what he’s talking about” was going through my head).
Anyway, the flight lasted about 30minutes and this is what we saw…
Very fascinating! And amazing that they were able to create these figures so long ago. There were lines everywhere through the ground, and other figures as well. Some figures had roads going through them.
Our next stop that afternoon was a tour in a cool sand dune buggy through the desert and out to some interesting ancient sites such as: an ancient aqueduct system that filtered the water, pyramids and temples they have unearthed in the desert and also an ancient cemetery, ending in some sand boarding.
The buggy ride was heaps of fun! He was driving the dirt roads rather fast and because it was all open it was great to have the wind in our hair! The aqueduct system is above, there are many of these throughout the Nasca area. Today the water in them can’t be drunk because the city has polluted it. Water is one of the biggest issues here as they are a city in the middle of the desert! Our driving around the area in this buggy really highlighted this fact as you can see in some of the pictures! Pretty amazing that this is where the Nasca’s chose to live!
The cemetery above was amazing! I think we drove over bones… There were these white arm, leg and skull bones everywhere, HAIR floating around, and some of the bones looked to have flesh on them… and oh… over to our right was a MUMMY, just sitting there in the middle of nowhere! The mummy was of a child perhaps 12 and they had no head… Many of the mummies found out here were headless, and it’s most likely because they were sacrificed. The Nasca’s were a pretty demonic people and slit peoples throats and carried their head around as a sacrifice to the gods. Yuck. They also mummified the bodies which is why many of these bones etc are preserved.
The amazing thing was that this was all just on the side of the road. Not fenced off… not protected. Just chilling there. There are apparently another 15 of these kinds of cemeteries out here in the desert.
After we recovered from the cemetery it was a spot of sand dune fun!! We slid down the sand dunes on sand boards which was fun! Pretty much just a really big slide… The best bit was getting in the buggy and the driver driving us up and down the sand dunes for about 10minutes. It felt like we were in a roller coaster! So much fun!
The sand dunes were beautiful as well. They made for gorgeous pictures at sunset!
Here’s a video of ripping up the sand dunes in our buggy:
We only stayed one night in Nasca. The next morning it was a bus to the capital Lima which we arrived at in the afternoon.
Timeframe: 22nd – 23rd October 2013
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