The Mysterious Nazca Lines & a Desert Oasis

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From Cusco we jumped on our 16 hour super cama (first class) bus ride to Nazca. Like two little kids we were over excited about:

a) Free headsets (like we don´t have our own)
b) Blanket & pillow (agin like we don´t have our own cooler ones courtesy of my Ibi)
c) Free hot dinner (even though we paid about $160AUS for the ticket)
d) Free movie (with stereo sound that included special background static all the way through)
e) Extreme reclining leather seats (they were actually very pimp)

It was pretty cool though going on a bus ride together with all the luxuries and giggling as we took photos of each other. Pity we sat next to the toilet!

After 16 hours we were ready to stretch and get some fresh air in Nazca. Not really possible. Straight to the airport to jump on a scenic plane to view the famous Nazca Lines. These are one of the world´s great mysteries. They are a series of hundreds of lines and figures in the red desert sand of Nazca. You can´t really see them from ground level but from an aircraft above amazing figures and animals appear. Archaelogists have several different theories as to how, why, when etc and there are many unanswered questions about the lines.

Basically it is believed the Nazcas (a culture of people from around 900BC and AD 600) created the lines by removing the dark stones from the ground and piling them on either side of the lines, exposing the lighter coloured soil. I don´t know...sounds liek too much history to me and a bit too confusing. I just wanted to see the cool animals and stuff. And we did.

Monkey, spider, whale, funny little astronaut man thingy, flamingo and hummingbird. A couple of others too. The photos didn´t turn out too well cos it was really bumpy and hot and humid in the teeny tiny plane and I felt a little off colour as the pilot (who I had the pleasure of sitting next to) literally tilted the plane so sideways I thought I might plop out onto the wing. Then he would hand crank (yes, hand crank) this little thing next to my foot each time he wanted to turn around. It was a hot, stuffy, long albeit interesting 40 minutes. Nice to be back on solid ground.

We made a run for it out of the hot and dusty town and onto a hotter but far more beautiful place. We headed to Huacachina a supposed little oasis in the middle of the desert that we had heard about. And that it definitely was. A real, true oasis. A little lake, a little town completely surrounded by outrageously huge sand dunes. We loved it and decided to spend a couple of days.

Of course the thrill of sandboarding and dune buggying up and down the dunes helped cement the thought of relaxing here for a day or two as did the conveniently located hammocks and the frozen fresh mango juices. And the warm sun and the not so many toursits and the friendly locals and our favourite little chill out place and did I mention the sandboarding!

Hillarious. We jumped in a hot pink and lime green dune buggy and that was it...we laughed for the next 2 hours and we screamed our way over, up, down and around enormous sandy dunes and we came flying out of our seats as the loco driver went as fast as he could.

Then he stopped. And out came the sandboards. We were so confident that it was going to be like snowbaording and since Stace & I actually met snowboarding in Canada you can imagine how cool calm and collected we were, thinking we were going to cruise on down the hot sand in style. End daydream one right there.

You should have seen us! Perfect example...? The loco driver says "Sharon it´s called sandboarding not bum boarding". We kinda mosty stuck to going down on our tummies from then on. We flew and I mean absolutely flew down these massive dunes and I screamed my guts out. I´ve done sandboarding in Australia and dune buggying in Oregon, USA but nothing compares to these crazy Peruvians laying,s tanding,s itting on these flimsy boards and racing down the steepes sand mountains I have ever seen. Stacey had to push me down the last one cos I was too scared to go! I thought I was going to end up flying over to the bloody Sahara at the rate I was travelling. Instead I ended up with half the Peruvian desert inside, outside and all over my body in places where there should never be sand.

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Comments

[Mike K]

Not sure about the dune buggy, it looks ready to do wheel stands.. only looks half full and the rear tyres look flat... have a ball chicas..