Nasca and Arequipa

---

It was a tiny plane that took me over the Nasca Lines, room for only 5 passengers and the pilot. I was with a family group of four so I was lucky enough to have a seat up front with the best view. The plane’s console was all buttons, dials and leavers and I almost didn’t want to watch as the pilot fiddled away with them. It just looked to mechanical to me.

The plane flew out over the red desert. The Nasca people were around from 200 BC to 600 AD and during that time they made huge line drawings in the desert, geoglyphs of animals and people. The red rocks that cover the desert were swept aside showing the pale earth and sand below allowing them to draw pictures on the ground for the Gods to see. Two thousand years later they’re still visible and I was about to see them. (you may need to enlarge the pictures to see the lines better)

We had been given leaflets for us to track the pictures as we flew over them. As we approached each one the pilot would point it out and circle tightly, first to one side then to the other so everyone in the plane got an excellent view. The desert seemed even vaster from the air. The barren land disappeared into the horizon in every direction. I was fascinated by the lines in the desert. I think that seeing evidence of cultures from ancient times holds a certain fascination and here there was a mysterious quality to it. The people themselves would never have appreciated the drawings from the air as I was doing but that was how they were meant to be seen. All the figures we passed over are iconic in Peru. It would be impossible to go a day and not see one of the symbols somewhere. The famous hummingbird, monkey and condor to name a few are made into jewellery, on advertising boards, hotel and a restaurant sign all over Peru and it’s easy to see why the people are so proud of this legacy. I was very special to be able to see them.

I had the rest of the day to kill before I caught the bus in the evening to Arequipa. I arranged a private sightseeing tour with the guide to see the aqueducts, Nasca Lines close up, pottery and gold workshops and Chauchilla Cemetery. Before we left the guide asked if I didn’t mind that he’d like to grab some breakfast first. He took me to a local café, all odd chairs, wobbling tables and concrete walls. He suggested I have a jugo which is a blended fruit drink very popular in Peru. He ordered his choices and I sipped as he munched on his food. I noticed that the girl at the counter was ladling some brownish liquid into the blender along with the piles of fresh fruit. It looked the shade of dark apple juice from where I was sitting. “What’s the brown liquid she’s using for the jugos?” I asked. Puzzled my guide answered “Water”. I think my face must have dropped. “Bolied water” he tried to reassure me. I had just finished my jugo. I had drunk the local water and I had been so careful during my trip! I had visions of upset stomachs and being glued to the toilet for days. There was nothing I could do, I would just have to wait it out.

The aqueducts are again form the Nasca times and some are still used today to irrigate the land. The desert here is a terminally dry place. Average rainfall is about a centimeter a year. The only way people could live in such a place was to harness the underground streams that flow from the Andes out to sea. They built complex underground aqueducts with beautiful spiral walkways down to collect the water from the source. Some of these have been maintained and some you can even crawl inside to see the stone lined tunnels that connect them. I didn’t fancy getting wet no matter how hot it was so I just admired the earthy architectural quality of the structures.

I then had the opportunity to see these famous Nasca lines close up. Nearby was ‘the Loom’ depicting thread, needle and woven cloth. The ground was covered with largish red and purple rocks about the size of a fist. These had been cleared to one side to reveal the lighter ground underneath. The piles of rock at either side of the clearing are only about 5cm high. It’s the stark colour contrast and not the piles of rock that make the picture so easily visible. It was such a simple structure but effective and enduring.

Next I was taken to two workshops. Firstly to a pottery where the woman gave me a demonstration of how they make the Inca style ceramics using traditional clay and techniques, while her very small dog attacked my toes under the table. The gold workshop was a surprise. A man gave me a talk in ‘Allo Allo’ English about how they mine and extract the gold from the rock. If I remember correctly 60kg of rock produced 1g of gold. Part of the traditional method was to crush the sand from the rock even further using a huge stone roller, a plank of wood and someone doing the Samba on top to rock it back and forth (a human mortar and pestle). He demonstrated with a little model of the equipment and a plastic man doing the Samba on top. I thanked the man very much for the talk and he encouraged me to go off and take some pictures. He gestured for me to look over the wall and what did I see? I saw four people doing the Samba on a plank of wood on a stone roller with the radio on! I thought he’d been telling me how the Nasca people extracted the gold, not that this was how they still did it! It looked like I’d stepped back 500 years (apart from the jeans they were wearing). My guide explained that it was mostly students who volunteered to do this job in the afternoons after class for some pocket money. A very odd sight if ever I’ve seen one.

After lunch of chicken kebabs and chicha morada (a local berry like drink made from black corn), we headed out to Chauchilla Cemetery. Even though this was the second most visited attraction in Nasca we had the place to ourselves. It was incredibly peaceful. Set in the desert along a dirt track road, not far from a rare green strip of land lay the cemetery. The graves had been found by tomb raiders. Anything of value had been taken and sold but what was left was still fascinating; well preserved mummies. About a dozen grave sites were left open and the contents intact, people included. The bodies were wrapped in cloth, hair and teeth still intact. Some bodies had been beheaded as sacrifice during particularly lean times. It was unlucky to be buried without a head so these people had been given a pumpkin head as a substitute (I kid you not - Halloween will never be the same again!).

Later that night I boarded the overnight bus to Arequipa. I wasn’t sorry to leave Nasca. It was a purely functional town with little character in itself. However buses in Peru are renowned for crashing at night so I hardly slept during the journey but I was thankful all the same that my dice with local water had come to nothing after all.

When I arrived in Arequipa at 7am I was dog tired. My guide took me to the hotel and I slept soundly until lunchtime. This would be my only day to explore the city so when I woke I showered and headed out to walk the sights. Arequipa is a small city in the mountains. Two extinct volcanoes frame the city on one side. My hotel was next to the Santa Catalina convent so I made this my first stop. I was taken aback by how picturesque the place was. It was more than just a convent, it was a small town with I town. It had immaculate cloistered quadrants with religious friezes alongside chapels and living quarters. It boasted cobbled streets with wrought iron work on the doors and windows with the walls terracotta, azure blue or simply white washed. Geraniums dotted the complex as each corner turned into another picture perfect view. One small courtyard had been converted into probably one of the prettiest café’s I’ve seen. Waiters in white shirts, black waistcoats and long black aprons fussed over the customers. The food was just as flawless too. The convent had so many open doors and alleyways to explore I almost felt Gillian had to be exploring the place somewhere ahead of me.

The rest of Arequipa city centre had just the same charm to it. Even though there were tourist shops to be found the town hadn’t quite surrendered completely to us foreign invaders. The main street still had local Peruvian shops and bakeries. I walked through the city taking in the white churches and the quaint streets. The Plaza de Armas had a wonderful feel to it. The Cathedral was huge and took up one full side of the square, in fact it looked more like a palace than a Cathedral. From one angle the snow topped volcano framed the scene. I liked Arequipa. It had the old style charm that Nasca couldn’t offer.


I slept well that night looking forward to my overnight trip to Colca Canyon the next day.

---

Photos

Nasca Lines
The whale

Nasca Lines
the owl man

Nasca Lines
Monkey (top left)

Nasca Lines
Condor

Nasca Lines
Green valley in the Nasca desert

Nasca Lines
Humming bird

Nasca Lines
I kinda wished the pilot had been concentrating on flying the plane instead of taking pictures of me!

Nasca Lines
Desert and the shadow of the plane

Nasca Lines
The Loom