The Nasca Lines

The overnight bus from Arequipa arrived in Nasca nice and early the following morning and we got settled quickly into our hostel (Casa Blanca). I didn't sleep much on the bus so we got a couple of hours sleep before heading out to explore the small town and to visit the local Nasca Lines Centre.

This centre is dedicated to Maria Reich who is famous for bringing the lines to international attention, and for spending most of her life investigating and protecting the lines. Reich died back in 1998, and the centre is now run by a colleague of hers. Turns our her colleague is a really nice old lady who gives tourists a one-hour lecture on the lines, discussing various theories and the history etc. She's a bit mad though, and talked a fair bit about Peruvian corruption and all anyone is interested in is money and that nobody really cares about protecting the lines (apparently they are in danger of being lost for ever from flooding). After evading the issue of working with her as volunteers (I didn't get the impression she got to do any real scientific research or anything), we bought a book about the lines, thanked her very much for the lecture and made our escape!

My next plan was to try and hire bikes and ride out the 20km or so to the observation tower to see the lines close up, and also to ride to the nearby airport to see about getting a cheap flight over the lines themselves (which is by far the best way to see them). It's low season now but the flights were still US$60 per person (apparently it's US$120 in high season), which seemed a bit steep. Anyway, we couldn't find bikes anywhere so we had to get a taxi out to the airport, getting there just before 5pm. After asking at the various desks in the tiny airport it turned out there were 2 seats left on the last flight that day (total of 5 passengers). They tried to get us to pay the full fare of course, but we haggled quiet strongly knowing the flight was about to leave and if we didn't take the seats they'd just go empty. Once I showed the guy my US$100 bill he finally said OK and literally 3 minutes later we were lining up for take-off.

The flight was about 25 minutes, but seemed a lot quicker, as you get to see about 8 of the huge shapes with the pilot banking left and right to give the passengers on both sides of the plane a good view. I was busy trying to take photos too of course, so it all flew by in no time, but it was certainly worth it.

Later that night we went to another lecture, this time a tad more professional and organised. It was in a small planetarium in a relatively plush hotel in the centre (the hotel where Maria Reich spent her last 25 years in fact, something the hotel is very proud about). Anyway, the lecture was very good (although a bit repetative) and afterwards the guide took us outside to look at Venus through a telescope. It wasn't bad, and you could clearly see 4 moons and two bands across the surface of the planet, but nowhere near as impressive as looking at Saturn and it's rings in New Zealand!

So really we managed to cover just about everything Nasca has to offer tourists in about a day and a half, and so the next day we hopped on the bus to Ica, just 5km from which is Huacachina, an amazing oasis - a real one this time surrounded by desert sand dunes and fringed with palm trees and everything (good photos and stuff here - we stayed at the hostel with the photo of the pool, which was very nice I must say).