White Lines...

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(Thanks for the title Grandmaster Flash)

From Pisco we headed inland and started our climb back into the hills (the Pampa Colorada), resting in Nasca for a night. Nasca is a small and not particularly exciting town but is included on the Southern Peru, Gringo trail as the Nasca people kindly etched a few large scale lines and figures into the desert in homage to their Gods - probably in 900 BC. They removed sun baked stones from the surface of the desert and piled them on either side of the lines to expose the lighter gypsum laden soil, below. They used this process to create geometric patterns, intricate pictures of their gods and important animals which are best viewed by aeroplane from above. Why they did this and how they could tell what the lines looked liked from above, is still contested but T prefers Erich Von Daniken´s explanation that they were extra-terresterial landing sites! These images are now featured in every hotel lobby floor, park bench, sign board and flower bed, in Nasca.

This morning we checked them out from a 6 seater Cessna aircraft. A daunting experience, considering there´s only one propellor but also made more scarey by a tale from our friend Ben from the Inca trail, about a flight before his, which had made a crash landing. Everyone on the flight (except the one heart attack victim) was OK. Eeek!!!! Still, we lived to tell the tale or "to write the blog entry" and were wowed by the scale and perfect formation of the images including a condor, monkey, parrott and supposedly an astronaut. Maybe Erich von Daniken was right after all....

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Photos

Ready for Take Off
Our trusty steed and the very chilled out pilot await.

El Perro
Reproduced on the paving in the town square