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Sunday, December 14, 2003

Cool Thing #2

The Nasca Lines: I'd probably been looking forward to these more than anything else on the whole holiday (Katherine cites Machu Picchu - where we'll be in a few days - for this honour). There's a famous BBC documentary about the Lines, which I remember watching and being fascinated by a decade ago.

Anyway, we got the bus from Pisco to Nasca, an easy three hour journey, the afternoon after we'd been on the Islas Ballestas tour. Arriving in Nasca was a stressful experience: we'd already picked out the hotel and tour operator we were going to use, but as soon as the bus arrived it was surrounded by hordes of touts. We walked towards our hotel, and they followed us relentlessly for a good five minutes before giving up.

But everything after that went totally smoothly. Again, we checked into our hotel, and had a tour organised for the next day by tea time! We even managed to swap all our old novels at a book exchange in the hotel.

So, what are the Nasca Lines? The ancient (pre-Inca) Nasca civilization has completely died out, and left nothing, save for a few graves, some irrigation canals and the Lines. They're totally unique - on a huge, flat desert plain, the Nascans etched geotmetrical shapes and drawings of animals on a massive scale - so big that they're only visible from above. There're loads of them: a hummingbird, a monkey (with groovy tail!) and a wacky-looking dude, among many others.

Because they're so big, the only way to see them is to fly over them, and that's exactly what we did. Tickets were $35 each, a bit more expensive than the Pisco boat trip! For that, you get a 30 minute flight over all the major designs in a tiny four-seater plane.

Neither Katherine nor I had ever been in something so small, and it has to be said the experience was not entirely pleasant. The tour operator told us not to eat breakfast before we flew, and it's lucky we heeded his advice. We were both rather relieved when we touched down safe and sound!

We arrived at Nasca airport (basically a field with a couple of buildings nearby) at 9am, met the couple with whom we would be flying, and sat down to watch the very same BBC documentary that I'd remembered from all those years ago. Now up to speed on the Lines, we climbed aboard our plane with pilot and co-pilot at about 10am and were up in the air for the next half hour.

We flew a route past the biggest and best of the designs in the sand, banking so that those on the left could see, then turning back to give the two on the right hand side a view.

Despite my feeling horrendous - the plane bumps and skips through the air, and the slightest breeze knocks it off-course - the Lines themselves were entirely spectacular, and more than lived up to my high expectations! We all took copious photos, but I'm sure they won't come out - I'm uploading mine now so I'll have a look in a minute!

So, what did we see? In order: the whale, the trapezoids, the astronaut, the monkey (huge twisty tail), the dog (has two tails, for some reason), the hummingbird (the best preserved, and most visible), the spider, the condor (my favourite), the heron (the longest, with a huge wibbily neck), the parrot (although it doesn't look much like a parrot to us...), the tree and the hands (this one is cool: a big pair of hands attached to a little blob body).

There's an interesting story behind the trapezoids - one 'scientist' caused a bit of a controversy when he suggested they were landing tracks created by alien spaceships. More recent theories suggest they are a kind of map, pointing towards sources of water far away.

As for the animals, the BBC documentary suggested they were to be seen by a Nasca shaman, through his mind's eye in ceremonies, rather than to be physically seen by any gods or humans. The types of animals have special abilities that the shamans can use on their spirit quests. Sounds good to me...

We landed safe and sound, and retired to our hotel - with swimming pool - for a bit of a rest. We didn't eat much lunch! After a quick shopping trip to buy provisions, we caught a (late) bus that took us overnight to Cusco...

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