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Published: April 22nd 2010
We crossed from Ecuador into Peru and headed to a cool little beach town called Mancora for a couple of days, its a nice place and famous for its surf so we lazed on the beach for a couple of days to get us ready for our 20 hour bus journey down to Lima
Lima what a dump our least favorite city in South America so far (didn´t take any photo´s) so we didn´t stay long and boarded another 10 hour bus journey down to the desert town of Nasca. Its a nice little town that is famous for the Nascar lines that are hugh drawings in the desert made by the Nasca people over the period of about 800 years. We went for a talk on the lines at the local planetarium which was very interesting as it shows you the theory that the lines are part of a massive calendar and that many of the lines show important days like the summer and winter solstice. After the talk we went outside and because the sky over the desert is so clear we got a quick astronomy lesson from the professor in which he pointed out all of the
major constellations.
Next day we headed for the airport for our flight out over the desert and over the Nascar lines. The plane was a tiny little prop plane with just 5 people in it and lasted about 40mins. The lines are hugh with the longest stretching nearly 30km´s and also the drawing which can be upto 800 meters long it really is quite a sight especially when you consider that a lot of them were made 800 years ago!
After Nascar we board anther bus (18 hours we are getting sick of these) and head onto the gringo trail to Cusco in the Sacred valley and the heart of the Incan empire. Cusco is a really beautiful city if a little touristy with a grand square in the centre and lots of Incan ruins nearby. We arranged to do a day trip of the sacred valley which takes us to local villages where the indigenous people still wear traditional clothes which they hand weave themselves and to a massive Incan City called Ollantaytambo it was a really interesting trip and got us nicely prepared to to a 5day trek to machu picchu called the salkantay trek (see
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Emma McClement
non-member comment
Lines.
Watched a documentary about those lines which was fascinating. Cant wait to hear about your trip to MP. Charlie has two little teeth! Mia has a limp and that is the news from Perth. Going to look at pics now. Have fun.