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Published: July 17th 2008
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Ready for take off
Pretty small, huh? Blogger Dougo Today we awoke in our hotel in Nazca early to be ready for the transfer to the airport to view the Nazca lines. Unfortunately, we walked out our hotel room to be greated by a thick blanket of fog covering the town (and surrounding area). So we waited. We played cards, taught a few of our group members our new found passion, Shithead. We waited. The bloody fog hung around until 12 noon when it cleared to be an absolutely perfect blue sky day.
At 12:30pm we finally got our bus transfer to the small, light plane airport about 15 minutes from our hotel. We were orginally booked in to fly at 10am. Only three planes can be in the air at one time. Each plane carries a maximum of 5 people. Each flight lasts about 30 minutes. So if you do the math, there is no way that every person who rocks up to the airport on a clear day is able to fly. This didn´t start out a clear day. Neither, we later discovered were the previous two days, which meant that there was a back log of passengers waiting to fly from
The Astronaut
I reckon it's an alien, but what do I know. the previous day. Coupled with the fog delay today and a completely disorganised check-in procedure, chaos rained.
The planes need to make sure they are balanced and conform to strict weight limits. This meant that I was able to fly as someone my size didn´t rock up and so if anyone asked, I was Eddie. A quick security check (I am not sure who would want to commandeer a 5 seater Cessner) and we were strapped in ready for take off.
Now, prior to coming to Peru, I really had little idea about what the Nazca lines were. I think I might have seen a doco on them ages back, but otherwise nadda. Having watched a DVD about them prior to taking flight, I was still unsure of what I was going to see. IT WAS MIND BLOWING.
If you are like me and have no idea then check out the wiki link, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nazca_lines.
I was in the back and had a window to clearly see the landscape on my side. The pilot tilted the plane sideways to give us a clear view of the patterns on both sides of the plane. The constant sideways tilt
gave some in the plane a bit of motion sickness, but I was fine. It was fascinating to see the lines and the geoglyphs, but what also struck me was how flat the plateau was. It was like a giant chalk board waiting to be drawn on. You could also see where ancient waterways wove there way across the plain so ancient that their traces were underneath the Nazca lines, which themselves are thought to be over 1500 years old.
It was an amazing experience and I consider myself lucky to have got the opportunity to see them. One member of our tour group had to fork out an extra nights accomodation so he could come back the next day to fly, whilst we went on to Arequipa. The price of the flight was also more than double what we thought, USD$80. Well worth it nonetheless.
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