The Nazca Lines

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My bad luck with transport continued I managed to miss my bus from Lima to Nazca and ended up getting the late service which arrived into Nazca about 2am. A 7 hour journey, pritty nice bus though, plenty of leg room.

NAZCA, Peru

*Height Above Sea Level : 592m
*Miles From Luton : 6379

Checked into the Hotel Estrella del Sur and arranged a flight over the Nazca Lines in the morning, well a few hours later. The cost $55, it seems in Peru that US Dollars are taken everywhere and preferred if your spending big bucks!

7:30am its baking hot I'm knackered and being driven by the hotel owner to the Nazca Airport. The flight is at 10:30am, I try a full American style breakfast to sort myself out - which I'll later regret.

The plane was a 4 seater Cessna, I was up front with the pilot and two German tourists in the back. I did asked but he wasn't going to let me have a go at flying. The flight was fun but really bumpy with plenty of sharp turns so both sides could see the lines below. And yes I was sick on the way back, the heat and bouncing around just got the better of me, the Germans where fine England 0 - Germany 1.

So the Nazca Lines are drawings etched in the desert created in the pre Inca era. They where accidentally discovered in the late 1920´s by the first people to survey the area from the air. Nobody is really sure what they are supposed to mean or represent.

There are drawings are of a Bird, Spider, Whale, Dog even an Astronaut the most impressive are the Trapezoid, Humming Bird, Monkey and Condor. They vary in length from less than 100m to over 1000m. But to honest none of them are a patch on the White Lion at Whipsnade. I´ll take a chalk White Lion on the Dunstable Downs over a dodgy looking Astronaut in the desert anyday!

The area around Nazca is dusty desert and hardly gets any rain fall. I hired a local tour guide for the reasonable price of $13. Our transport was his beaten up old car which he drove as fast as possible and on the wrong side of the road. I ended up having to give him a bollocking to slow down and stay on the right hand side of the road.

First stop was a pre Inca burial ground it was only discovered in the early 1990s. Because the land is so dry the bodies decompose very slowly. The graves have complete skeletons including teeth, hair and some skin tissue aswell! The whole area is covered with bones and bone fragments just lying on the surface. The guy gave his tour in Spanish I didn't really understand much but with lots of hand waving we got a good understanding going.

Next stop was Nazca's other industry gold mining, minerals ( Quartz) are taken from the local Andean mountains and gold is extracted. And it seems they´re using the same process as was used a 100yrs ago. In short it involves a guy dancing to the local Samba radio station on a big rock, crushing the mineral, hi-tech stuff. Mercury is then added and the gold extracted. Not much in the way of health safety here. About 20 people worked at the place I visited and they reckon to produce about 1 gram of gold a day, which is worth about $10!!! Its a poor country.

An interesting thing about Nazca is that the main street is currently being dug and the piping replaced. The interesting bit is the local women of Nazca are doing all the work while the Men stand around watching. Not even supervising just watching the women digging these huge holes in the road. Those crazy Peruvians!

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[Sam Courtney]

The Adventures of Big Mouse
Chicks do love a woolly jumper!