Nazca lines

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goodbye Haucachina/Hello Nazca

We arrived back in Haucachina and were surprised but happy to find Heidi still there, we decided to stay for a few more days, John needed to get back to work and he got stuck into that while Heidi and I enjoyed our last few days taking advantage of the pool and the great weather. It was Heidi's birthday and she wanted to celebrate in Ica, we jumped a cab a to the big smoke, now here's the thing, Ica is a large town but it was virtually impossible to find a decent restaurant, Ica is an odd place still recovering from the earthquake in 2007, many of the streets are in a tumbledown state and many building remain vacant and appear unsafe. Unfortunately it also has a reputation of being very unsafe. We eventually settled on a unremarkable place in the main square which surprised us by having the most amazing food. After Friday night adult beverages we chilled out Saturday and packed and after a sad goodbye to Heidi we left Sunday for Nazca.

Took a 2 hour trip from Ica to Nazca having reserved a room in a hostel called Nido del Condor, a place that sits immediately across from the airport, We choose this place because it had a pool and Nazca is uncomfortably hot but to our disappointment they where cleaning the pool and it was empty, Cool showers were the other option.

An early start Monday saw us in the airport awaiting our flight over the famous Nazca lines, We took anti-sickness pills as we had been told the planes can be pretty wobbly, I was glad that we did, We had a half hour wait and where ushered along with a Scottish couple and a Korean chap and boarded a five seater plane. I admit I was a wee bit nervous as these planes have had bad press due to a few tragedies which had recently occurred, I took comfort in the fact that there are so many planes leaving this airport for the lines everyday that statistically our chances of something happening were small.

After buckling in we had a smooth take-off and were soon gliding over the most spectacular scenery, I was so impressed with the colours of the dunes and mountains below us, The lines are everywhere unimaginably straight, the monkey was the first famous one we came across, The sheer size of these beautiful engravings is amazing, when you think that they can only see them from above its a wonder to think how they got them so mathematically correct, There is one line that measures 63km and and is only out by 6 inches at one point, pretty impressive. We went on to see all the famous ones and with each the pilot would swoop down closer leading to the lady in front of us being very ill, poor thing. Some say these lines where a gift to the gods pleading for rain from the Nazca people, others an astronomical calendar and of course the old explanation of extraterrestrial van goghs also comes into play as an possible reason.

The whole place is so arid and hot yet so beautiful, you can see the outlines of hundreds of riverbeds where supposedly a rain phenomenon called a mega nino happens every 500 years and this is what remains, this is one of the driest areas on earth and its thought that this is probably why the Nazca people left this area, the unforgiving drought driving them to water, The area is supposed to have been lush and green and one point and had sustained a lot of people, In 1931 a young German physics graduate called Maria Rieche came to the lines and devoted her life to preserving and unearthing their secrets until her death in 1996.

We landed safely and headed back to the hotel.

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