Mysterious Lines

Day 3

Crazy traffic

On the move again, aside from our time in Cusco it's one night and moving on everywhere.  Which means lots to see!  Today we've left Ica for the more southern Nazca.  Still in the desert and Nazca promises to be our hottest destination.  It was amusing to see that only a few rooms had AC last night, it's started to become a competition for who has the nicest room!

The drive has been interesting because people can't necessarily afford vehicles so Ica is filled with tuktuks, the little 3 wheeled vehicles you see a lot of in Asia.  Today they were driving in packs to get through the traffic, it was something truly crazy to see.

Cindy and I in the desert

We've moved from the desert into the mountains, we'd call them foothills here.  We were passing through a lot of vineyards and farming and are now into the desert and it feels a little like Mars here right now.  And oddly enough we keep passing all these claimed lands.  People will build all sorts of little houses on empty land in hopes of filling them to claim it at a later date.  It mostly means that you pass a lot of huge empty swaths and then all of a sudden a bunch of little shacks that look abandoned pop up.  I have no idea how people get there easily or why they would want to be out there, but it is a trend I've noticed, that people are really big into the land ownership.

One part I really enjoy about the bus tours is getting to hear about how the country actually operates.  We're typically staying in the affluent and touristy areas so you don't really get a real idea of how the country works.  Today Diana touched upon the education system.  They do their best to offer school to all children, only some are better than others.  And the distant and isolated locations have a real struggle.  Due to many families needing the kids working or helping out they usually do 2 shifts of school, which would explain why there were always kids around.

Speed bumps.  Peru has soooooo many speed bumps.  And big ones designed to make you really slow down.  Which I understand because many drivers have 2 speeds, not moving and speeding!  We've been going through some valleys filled with winding roads with a lot of sharp turns and we don't tend to slow down a lot!  It makes for an interesting perspective from the front seat.

Our major destination today is Nazca.  I'll put it out there.  Ancient Peruvians are a little nutty.  They tended to worship the sun and the earth which is great, but did a lot of work to let their gods know that they were there.  And the Nazca lines are a perfect example.  The people of Nazca created kilometres of lines dug into the ground, sometimes moving massive volumes of rocks.  In fact Maria Reiche spent her entire lifetime studying the lines.  The only consensus is that it is a religious configuration of some sort, most likely related to getting water, which is a precious source in the desert.  And seems linked with the stars as well.  There are kilometres of just lines, random shapes, animals and plants. Another puzzling thing is that they are best seen from the air but built back in the BC years.  It's quite the enigma.

Nazca from above, but this is actually just a recreation

As I've said before, flying above is the easiest way to see the lines.  I was a little apprehensive about being up in a small plane flying around in circles so we stuck with the viewing platform and were able to see 2 of them from there.  It is quite incredible to see that they are still around after all these years.  The tower was interesting, for a few soles you get to climb the stairs for a panaramic view of the lines.  You aren't allowed onto the area where the lines are as most of the damage has been in recent years due to tourist.  Oddly enough there were some people wandering around with giant pieces of cardboard on their feets, like snowshoes, except for the desert.  They had vests and such so I'm thinking it was an official visit.

One of the Nazca Lines

After dropping off part of our group for the Nazca flight we had a bit of time to wander the city.  Not that it's a really big city but there was still something to see.  We went to the local market which was odd because they had all sorts of chickens just sitting on the counter, unwrapped and out in the heat.  They also had this huge squash which they would just cut a big slice off for you!  We all tried some of what my travel agent calls snot fruit.  It's a type of passion fruit where you peel the skin off, rip open the thick white membrane and suck out the seeds and goo from the inside.  They were really good, just very unusual.

Another oddity we keep coming across is the money exchangers.  They mill about on the streets with thousands of dollars in their hands to get people to exchange their US money into soles.  These people would have massive stacks cash.  They give better rates than the banks for the locals.  But what made this is really strange is that nobody would have change.  We were rejected a few times for something that cost only a few soles but we only had a 20 sole bill and they had no change.

Mummies

An optional excursion was the Necropolis (cemetery) with mummies.  They found it in the 1920's and it was used by the Nazca people between 200 and 900 AD.  They had an extensive burial procedure for mummification.  They put them in the fetal position and then let the desert air dry the bodies out.  It was incredibly windy out there.  We got sand facials and saw how well the dry air would work for mummification.  The Nazca area is one of the driest places in the world.  While we were out there it felt incredibly desolate and bleak yet 5 different civilizations have thrived there over the years.

Learning about pottery

Along with the mummies we also had a few chances to learn about some handicrafts.  They were just loosely disguised trips to buy stuff.  But they did give us a little lesson on what they were doing.  One stop was a pottery stop and the other was weaving.

There was a talk at the plantetarium dedicated to Maria Reiche further discussing the theories of the lines being related to the stars and water sources.  They also showed a bit of the skies and it's always strange seeing the same constellations from home a little different here, such as Orion looking more like a bowtie instead of the hourglass here at home.

Bus stop in Nazca, they really liked to put images of the
line everywhere!

Now we're just getting ready for our big driving day into the Andes tomorroe.  Next destination is Cusco, it'll take us a few days to get there but it should be an interesting drive moving from the stark desert up into the mountains.  Only catch is we are really starting to gain elevation so now it's the test to see how we all hold up to the altitude (and I wrote this before we started our drive up not realizing how ominous this sounds...  But don't worry we all came out well at the end!)