When we arrived at the station in Nasca, we were surprised to find the owner of our next hotel waiting to pick us up. (I do not recall him saying he would, but we'll take a free ride!) Ivan took us to the hotel - Nasca Oasis. Very cute hotel just a mile or so outside town (a whole 4 soles taxi ride).
As we had the afternoon free, we let Ivan talk us into hiring his
Some Nasca lines trivia: During the summer and winter solstices the straight lines in the glyphs align and point to the sun on the horizon. They believe this is how the Nasca people told the seasons. Maria Reiche, a German scientist, spent 15 years in the 1930s sweeping the lines clean. With a broom, no less. No wonder the locals thought she was crazy.
There are many theories about the lines: how they got there and what they mean. One is the obvious go-to for the unexplained: Aliens. Another is the Nasca people believed their gods could fly, so they wanted to worship them by making glyphs they could see from the air.
Our next stop was the aqueducts. They are so cool! They were built by the Nasca to irrigate their fields and provide drinking water. Now we knew how they could grow crops! The aqueducts intersect underground water flows from the Andes. They still function and the people still depend on them. We saw people washing their clothes in them.
These spiral structures were built to allow workers to go into the aqueduct to service them. Not much headroom down there!
Renardo pointed out the cacti which is grown not for the cactus itself. Can you guess what they use it for? Apparently there is a parasite which grows on the cactus whose blood is used in cosmetics like lipstick. Farmers inject the bug into the cactus then collect them when they're grown.
Up next we explored Los Paredones which was some sort of administrative outpost for the Inca to watch over areas they had conquered. They know it was Inca by the way the rocks were cut to align perfectly for the temple.
We got dropped off in town and dropped by Aeroparacas to book/confirm our flight over the lines the next day. We had emailed with them a few months prior to the trip, but they don't give any kind of official confirmation number or paperwork so we wanted to be sure we had seats on the plane. Then we ate dinner at a cute restaurant with about eight other backpacker tourists. A enjoyed another fruit smoothie.
During dinner we kept seeing costumed kids heading toward the main square. We headed that way and found a festival of some sort. Turned out to be a week-long tourism festival.
Getting a taxi back to the hotel was an adventure. First, they're not clearly identified as taxis. They are decorated by the drivers even though they don't own the cars. They put names across the dashboard, flashing lights all over... and other people do the same thing to their regular vehicles. Second, no one seemed to know our hotel. We got blank stares even when we handed them a card from the hotel. We did finally find one guy who seemed to know and a random dude going by on a motorcycle overheard and pointed him in the right direction.
The next day after breakfast we were picked up by an Aeroparacas worker and driven to the airport. Time to fly! If you've ever been to the airport in Plant City, Florida, you know the size of the airport in Nasca. A was impressed the tarmac was paved. We were all weighed (for even distribution) then we paid the 25 soles per person airport tax.
We only waited about 20 minutes before our flight was called. Then we headed out to the taxiway and boarded the 8-seater plane. We had two pilots (all the flights do) and 5 passengers.
A got stuck in the very back as he was the lightest person. He wasn't too thrilled about that. They let us listen to the pilot-tower communications. Then we were off!
It was 35 minutes of 45-degree banked turns. One girl on our flight got airsick, but we were fine.
A was most impressed with the straight lines connecting the figures.
Some people had warned us the figures weren't easy to spot. We thankfully had a clear day and had no trouble finding them. This is the whale.
They call this one the astronaut.
Two bird figures. The first is the hummingbird, the second is the Condor.
The spider.
This is a view down to the lookout tower. If you don't want to fly, you can see some of the figures from there.
The tree and the hands.
This is the parrot.
We both felt the flight was well worth it. There is no other way to see the majority of the figures, and all of the popular ones. We never felt unsafe, even though there have been issues in the past.
We went back into town for lunch. Now, when I say "town", you should picture a population of 23,000. Two main streets. One main square. It's not very big.
We had lunch at a place on the square. Way too much food for only 7 soles each! (That's about $2.67!)
After lunch we got picked up for our sandboarding trip. There were two other people in our group (besides the guide and driver) - a brother/sister duo from Australia. We rode in our dune buggy out to the Usaca dunes. It's a big of a drive, but we stopped along the way at some archaeological sites. A decided the dune buggy was more dangerous than our flight over the lines! We were flying over the hills.
Our first stop was at Cahuachi. It's a religious site with a temple and pyramid which is still under excavation. A crew was setting up a lighting system for a show honoring Maria Reiche.
Next we stopped at the Estaqueria, where there are rows of a specific type of tree potentially used as a calendar and might have been a sight for mummification.
Then we stopped at an unmarked location in the rocky, sandy hills. We were sitting in the buggy and our guide asked, "Do you see the mummy?" All four of us looked at him, glanced around, responded with "What?" "Do you see the mummy?" Well, do you?
Yes, that is a real mummy. Sitting out in the open.
That was crazy enough. But then we turned around and realized a huge area (at least a square kilometer) was completely covered with scattered bones, materials and pottery shards.
Tomb raiders had opened up the graves and strewn the mummies and non-precious items everywhere. The area is not fenced off. Not monitored. If we had wanted to take something, we could have. (Important note: It is illegal to take artifacts out of Peru. Don't do it!)
There were skulls with hair still attached. Body parts which still had some tissue (gross!). Tons of broken pottery pieces, rope and cloth.
Some earlier travelers made an interesting sort of tribute.
Then we drove a bit further and found the desert!
Our driver had fun then - charging up a dune, over the top and flying down the other side. It was like a roller coaster where you can't see where you're going. They chose a medium sized hill and it was time to sandboard! Here's how you do it:
Step 1: Climb up the hill. Not easy. Sand slips from under your feet.
Step 2: Wax the board.
Step 3: Choose your position: Stand, sit, or on stomach.
Step 4: Launch yourself down the hill.
We quickly learned it's best to go down face-first on your stomach. It's easier to control the board and keep your balance. We moved on to bigger hills and kept progressing downwards. So much fun!
We headed straight to the bus station when we arrived back in town because....
STRIKE! Apparently some miners in the area were on strike and not allowing anyone to travel from Nasca to Arequipa, which happened to be our next destination. We decided to actually use our travel insurance and call Travel Guard to have them figure it out.
First problem: We can't get an operator to put a collect call through to Travel Guard's collect number. The nice guy at Movistar (a phone company) helped us out for a long time.
We tried a different phone per the operator's suggestion to see if we could get a collect call to go through. Um, nope.
Over a period of about three hours we tried to get in touch with Travel Guard. We gave up on a collect call and used all our small change to buy phone time by the minute. Eventually we got them to agree to call our hotel at a set time so we wouldn't have to keep feeding the pay phone.
In the midst of all that, we grabbed a quick dinner. Not a raw chicken, though the stands were plentiful.
The next day we slept in because we were told the bus company wouldn't have any updates on the strike until around noon. We headed into town to the Museo Didactico Antonini which has tons of artifacts found at the Nasca area digs.
We walked back to town to check on the strike situation. No news yet, so we headed to lunch. We didn't eat at this roadside restaurant, though we were tempted to try it.
While there was no official news, the bus line employees told us they were not optimistic about the strike ending in time to get a bus to Nasca to go to Arequipa. We went ahead and booked tickets on an overnight bus to Cusco for that night, just in case.
We ate lunch at this cute restaurant who lets their customers write on the walls. Tons of fun messages.
Let's pause to talk about the dogs. In most of Peru, the dogs wander freely in the streets. They sleep there, eat there. We asked about it and were told the puppies are pets. They take care of them, feed them, etc. Once they grow up, the owners turn them out on the streets. They stop feeding them. They usually allow them to come home at night, but they don't take care of them.
Eventually we got some news on the strike - no buses to Arequipa that day. Guess we weren't going on the overnight bus as planned. We made a game-time decision and cancelled our tickets to Arequipa and went with Plan B - to Cusco!
So let me break down our re-routed trip.
Original Plan:
Lima
Paracas
Nasca
Arequipa
Puno
Cusco
Inca Trail
Lima
Our new plan in order to ensure we made our tours in Puno, but sadly missed out on the ones in Arequipa:
Lima
Paracas
Nasca
Cusco (for one day only)
Puno (extra day)
Then the rest as planned.
It worked out fine, though we wish we'd been able to see Arequipa, Juanita the Ice Maiden and the Colca Canyon.
Coming up in the next post: All about overnight buses, altitude sickness and the world's highest navigable lake!
