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Published: February 12th 2016
Ready to take off!
Our teeny tiny planeMy last morning in Arequipa was a lazy one, before I boarded my bus to my next location: Nazca. I booked online with Cruz del Sur because I had heard good things about it and I was not disappointed. The service at the station seemed a bit disjointed, but I was starting to get used to that. However, I had booked the VIP seat for an extra $12 and it was perfect. The seats were much bigger and more comfortable than on Tranzelo which I had taken from Puno to Arequipa, so I was starting to get excited for my next bus ride. First things first - Nazca.
Leaving at 1:30pm, I got to see a lot of the scenery for the next few hours, but most of it quickly became isolated either on the mountainous coast or in a vast desert. There were movies playing the whole time and I got to read and sleep some. I arrived after 11pm, and we waited what seemed like forever to get into the small bus station. Finally, I was off and quickly found a taxi to my hotel, Casa Andina - a whole 2 minute drive. I was ready to be
lazy the next day as I thought it would be too late to set up tours for the next day. However, at the hotel was someone I assumed that was a worker assisting the very busy receptionist with about six people waiting to check in. Turns out, the guy was a guide and he set me up for the plane ride over Nazca lines at 7am. Worked out well so far, so I went to my room - pretty nice. The guide had told me not to eat or drink anything before the ride as I might puke due to the turns. Yikes!
Nazca Lines The next morning, right at 7am, my guide, Raul, took me to the airport and set me up with AeroParacas for the first ride of the day. They weighed me (which I didn't get to see the result!) and I was on the next plane with four other tourists and two pilots. The female co-pilot took photos of us in front of the teeny, tiny plane and assigned us seats, me being by myself in the very back. Then we lifted off and the pilot took us over various sites while the co-pilot
told us where and when to look. The pilot made tiny circles over each site first on the right, then on the left. This is the type of move that would make people puke, definitely. I thought it was fun, but it was definitely affecting my body.
It was amazing to see all the different lines; there are animal figures, geometric shapes and thousands of lines all over the place. It is pretty amazing to see, they are everywhere. And according to a later tour I took, they are still expanding the protected area, finding more all the time, including new figures. Unfortunately, the figures were not really identified until the 1920's after planes started to fly over this area; so some roads, like the Pan American Highway, have cut across many of the lines and figures.
The lines were created by the people digging or removing rocks to a depth of approximately 20 centimeters, which exposed the white earth beneath. The reason these ruins have remained is due to the weather patterns here. Most importantly, it almost never rains and when it does, it is almost negligible. They have also identified weather patterns over the lines themselves;
the airflow within the lines creates a kind of buffer to the airflow above so the wind never really gets inside to disturb the lines. Furthermore, according to a later tour, this airflow also creates small dust devils within the lines, making them "self-cleaning". The last one I'm not so sure about but the others make sense.
On this ride, we got to see the most popular: the whale, astronaut/owl/shaman, monkey, dog, hummingbird, condor, spider, heron bird, parrot, tree, and hands. The astronaut is the only one on this hill side, so I got the best photo of it against a darker backdrop than those on the desert floor. The rest of them are fairly bright and difficult to make out, so at a certain point I just stopped trying to take photos and enjoyed the 30-minute experience. We also flew over the aqueducts which I wanted to see later and over the city and some old ruins.
Side note: One of the things I often think of when I think of the Nazca Lines, is an incident that occurred in December 2014. Hoity toity environmental group, Greenpeace, decided to make a statement for their beliefs by placing a large, self-promoting banner across the lines, near the Hummingbird. In doing so, they damaged the area. The reason these lines have remained for so long is because there is no rainfall and few people. According to our guide, Greenpeace knew what they were doing. They came into town late at night and at first break of day, took their own cars to the desert and left as soon as possible, only issuing an apology after there was an uproar and they were safely in their home countries. Pretty much what I understood from the news as well. I've never been a fan of Greenpeace and now I actively oppose them. What a bunch of d-bag hypocrites. In order to save the environment they are willing to literally walk all over other causes, such as the preservation of archaeological sites, which are just as important to the world. I will never, ever support such a horrible, entitled organization and I encourage you to do research on the organizations of this world who preach to do right, but do not practice what they preach or only select certain agendas and to hell with everyone else. End side note.
When
I got back into the airport, my guide was still waiting for me and talked me into a tour for later; the clincher was that another American girl was going - I felt a little too weird going on my own, but I think that is fairly common in Nazca. So we waited for her to land and then took off. First we stopped to drop me at my hotel so I could eat my breakfast and get things together for the tour, but the other girls was just in town for the day, so I guess she had breakfast with the guide.
Cahuachi Ruins The first stop on our tour, about a half hour drive down dirt roads adjacent to the river, was an old ruins site that has recently been investigated and even more recently open to the public (2 years ago). These are the ruins of the Nasca people, which are about 2,000 years old, so much older than the Incas. They are trying to make the connection between this site and the lines, which have been connected due to the designs on much of their ceramics. It was pretty incredible, and according to Raul,
The hummingbird
Eff you Greenpeace! encompassed 24 square kilometers. The site is currently being excavated by an Italian team as the Peruvian government has put very little money and interest into exploring the area. This is unfortunate as there are so many things to be seen, some of which you can see in the hills in the distance. Not to mention, many of the local people come and hang out near the ruins, potentially damaging some areas and you can see evidence of this. There was also literally no one else there except for us. Reminded me of Salalah…
Reading up on it later, it sounds like some of the ruins surrounding the main site are actually just facades to made the site seem bigger than it is. But there were still a lot of things to see and I'm sure, plenty more to discover. The main draw is that there are pyramids here, though mainly what is left are the bases of these pyramids and you can see them dissected. There were not people that actually lived there full time as it was more of a religious complex and pilgrimage site. Raul demonstrated the wonderful acoustics as he shouted and clapped to demonstrate
the echo, which also assisted in their religious ceremonies. He said that the architects designed arches within various buildings which, if you stand in certain positions in each room, you could talk to another room without leaving. Pretty interesting. There were four "refrigerators" we saw which are holes buried into the sand and lined with clay which kept the internal temperature constant, cooler than the heat of the sun and warmer for the cold nights. There were a few cisterns, which were pretty large as well, enough for 10,000 liters of water he said. So, hopefully in a few years, this site will open up some more and bring in more much needed money to the area.
Cauchilla Necropolis The next site we went to was another twenty minutes down more dirt roads, but this site was a little more known than the previous ruins. There was actually an entrance fee of S/8, which is worth it. Raul took us to the first few sites and explained some of the burial customs of the Nasca people. There were about 800 gravesides in this area, of which half were excavated, many of which had been the victims of graverobbers.
The graves were dug down, lined with clay bricks, covered with wood from a certain tree common in the area, and finished with a mud roof, so the graves were actually open and completely sealed. Now, open, they have been exposed to the elements of the hot sun and wind. Fortunately, it only rains about 5mm a year here, so they have been preserved. They have also been covered by thatch roofs and a wall to deflect some of the wind.
The first site we saw was a single shaman in the grave with the remains of two infant sacrifices nearby. A little macabre! Then the next site were two people, a male and female shaman as our guide told us that men and women had fairly equal rights. Both had extremely long hair which was tied together and wrapped around the base of their remains. The hair of all the remains was bleached by the sun, so rather than the black hair of the people, it was reddish and light. Most of the remains were of the upper and middle class as they were fully "mummified" - their brains and internal organs were removed and placed in jars,
which was a long process.
Upon stating this, our guide also discussed the possibilities of travel between the various ancient cultures. There were such similarities between the ancient Egyptians, the Mayans… of course they travelled. At least, this was his theory and it made sense. I really enjoyed Raul - whether he was right or not, he was extremely knowledgeable and had evidence to back up his theories. His father was a history teacher and he worked as a guide in Cuzco and Trujillo, so he had a true love of the historical side of Peru. So, I think he is one of the best guides I have had on my whole trip. I gave him a good tip. 😊
Aqueducts Our last stop of the tour was a visit to the aqueducts, very near the main part of town, with an entrance fee of S/10. This is the area I had seen from the plane and they looked a bit different from above; I thought they were made of like a concrete, but instead the walls are lined with carefully placed rocks and the spiral paths to the water below are simply dirt. It is pretty
amazing to see how they constructed this, about 2,000 years ago. The water moves underground and comes from the mountains - snow and glacier melt primarily. As mentioned early, this is a vast desert with only 5mm of rainfall per year, so this is their only source of fresh water. And you could still drink it now and they do. The walls have held up this whole time, but Raul said that the insides occasionally needed maintenance even back in the day, so when the water flow was low, people would go inside and clean out any debris or such. There are 18 of these aqueducts at this location as well another location near town that also has aqueducts. Very interesting.
One of the things I learned later that night is that the town is on a very limited water supply. It is a desert after all. The water is only turned on between 7am and 8am and during that time, everyone gets their water for the day. The water is stored in the water tanks and if you are out, you are out. I haven't tried it and probably won't now, but apparently in the smaller restaurants here,
instead of having a running faucet on the sink, you have a bucket where you can scoop out water to wash your hands with. Crazy.
Maria Reiche Planetarium Maria Reiche is a name you see all over town - the airport is named after her, a museum, roads, and this planetarium as well as many schools throughout Peru. And for good reason. Born in 1903, she came to Peru in 1932 and Nazca in 1940 with the sole purpose of studying the lines and figures. The people here seem to really revere her as she spent the rest of her life living here and studying, making almost no money off the endeavor, doing it simply for the science. She had a background in mathematics, archaeology, and astronomy as well as speaking five languages, all of which she used to study the lines and bring them to the attention of the world.
She had many theories, including how they were built: making a small model and building the actual figures to scale. She noted that certain lines pointed towards the direction of the winter and summer solstices. She also noted that some of the stars rose at certain
points in the sky and there were lines leading to these locations. She and an early colleague originally thought the lines led to water or irrigation points, but started to focus more towards religious and astronomical significance; the truth is probably a mixture of all three. She persuaded the Peruvain government to make aerial surveys, protect the area, and sponsored the first tourist attraction, the tower near three of the figures. She walked the lines herself and spent her life devoted to this project. Amazing. Because she was so poor and living in a small house near the highway, eventually she befriended the owner of the Nazca Lines Hotel, who invited her to move into one of the rooms free of charge where she lived for the rest of her life. She died in 1998 and, of course, was buried in Nazca.
Anyway, I was most looking forward to the visit to the Planetarium (after the flight), but it sadly looked like the sky was going to be overcast. Bummer. The guy did put on a good show, which discussed much of her life and what the lines could potentially mean. We went outside and tried to identify some
of the stars as the sky was just starting to clear; unfortunately, I already knew the ones he identified. However, it was interesting to hear how they look in the Southern Hemisphere compared to the Northern. For instance, the Big Dipper is huge in the sky in Peru and only comes out very late at night and is upside down. Orion is also huge and on its side. I noticed this in the back of my mind before, but never really thought about it. Probably because I have not really had the opportunity to look at the stars due to the city lights and my early bed times.
The guide showed us her old room near the planetarium and which has not been used since she lived there.
Last Adventure
So, it looks like this would be my last adventure in Peru. I am currently waiting for my afternoon bus to take me to Lima. I originally wanted to go to either Paracas or Huancayo but the truth is, I want my last few days to be somewhat relaxing. The rest of February is also going to be hectic, so I may as well catch up on
sleep while I can. Also, since there is still so much left of Peru to see, I do want to come back - probably a combo trip with Ecuador. We'll see. Until then, happy travels!
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Ake Och Emma
Ake Dahllof and Emma Holmbro
The Nazca aqueducts
There are many incredible manmade structures in the world. The pyramids of Egypt, the Great Wall of China and Taj Mahal are three that are well known and get a lot of well deserved attention. But there are several just as impressive constructions that are hardly known at all. One of them being the aqueducts at Nazca. Therefore I am so happy to see that you visited them and decided to write about them. Those tunnels were dug by hand, are together more than a thousand kilometres long and they have carried water uninterrupted for more than a millennium. Thanks for writing about them making people aware of their existence. /Ake