Lines in the Sand

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They may be just lines in the sand, but lines that are believed to be 1,500 Years old and completely mystifying. The Nazca Lines are more than drawings that you need to fly over at 2,500ft to make them out. They are enigmatic art using the desert floor as a canvas creating one of the largest art gallery in the world high on the Nazca Plateau. They end up leaving you with more questions than answers.

After leaving Cusco, it was the mad dash to the finish of my travels. I took a 14hr overnight bus ride from Cusco, Peru to Nazca Peru to see the mysterious Nazca Lines. I have to say this overnight bus ride was luxury compared to my other experiences. It had Wi-Fi and I actually slept. Although the fact that I was up for 26 hrs straight the day before may have something to do with the sleep thing. :)

Nazca is not much a town, but it has the famous Nazca Lines. I have heard about the lines since I was a kid who didn't have a clue where Peru was let alone Nazca. This far off land was as mysterious to me as the lines were. Flying over the lines the town wasn't so mysterious anymore but the lines were and more. Seeing perfect drawings, some over 300m in length, sure makes you question what their purpose was and how they could be drawn so accurately at such a large scale.

You get to see 14 drawings on the 35 minute tour in a 4 seater Cessna. The first drawing, a whale, was hard to make out at first and then all of a sudden it jumps out at you from the desert floor like it is jumping out of the water. We saw drawings of dogs, spiders, condors, trapezoid shapes that look like runways and a man that is called the Astronaut because, well, it looks like an astronaut. Put the last two together and it makes you go hhhhmmmmm. The largest figure was the Parrot at 230m, perfectly drawn!

Who were these people who created these massive drawings? For what purpose? How could they create drawing so accurate from the ground that you can only make out thousands of feet in the air? Is the Astronaut drawing really of an Astronaut??? Questions no one really knows the answers to.

Nazca is the unofficial end to my 54 day adventure though South America, unless something unplanned happens. :) I spend one day in Lima tomorrow and then back to Canada to the realities of life and a Canadian winter. I may not have found any answers flying over the Nazca Lines or wandering through Machu Pichu or Tiahuanaco, but I got to see more world wonders with my own eyes that just reinforces my belief that we live on a piece of rock amongst trillions in our known universe that still has much ancient knowledge to teach us. We often look at these ancient societies and naively or arrogantly believe that they were not as smart or advanced as us. We believe the past is backwards and the future is, well, forwards in intelligence, knowledge, and that it is only the future with its new technologies that will give us the answers we all seek about why we are here and what is our purpose. But when you look on these wonders with your own eyes you know, in some part of you, that these mysteries of the past somehow hold the keys to our future.

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