Walk the Line

Today was a fantastic day! I finally felt like I've started my trip. My guide, Oscar, recommended we start with Chauchilla Cemetery first for two reasons: let the morning clouds burn off before I fly over the Nazca Lines and we'll beat the crowds. As we were driving, he pointed out the different crops being grown (cotton, onions, corn, cactus for their green dye, paprica, and a tree that is grown and harvested for its medicinal properities to stop bleeding. I was surprised to learn that the desert could support this kind of agriculure, but there are green valleys. Nazca sits on the Nazca Fault Line and has suffered several recent devastating earthquakes. Oscar pointed this out, and I can only assume that that was the explanation for the conditions, rubble, and construction. In a conversation with Oscar I asked him how he learned English. He said as a couch potato; he watched a lot of tv with subtitles. And he's been able to improve on it with his job in tourism.

We were alone at 8:30 in the morning in the middle of the desert. This is the kind of desert where wiseguys offer one-way trips. There it was in the middle of nowhere--Chauchilla Cemetery, an ancient necropolis. Grave robbers plundered the tombs long ago and left the remains scattered across the desert where they stayed. The underground burial tombs were discovered in 1920 and some mummies date back to 200 AD. The mummies have been well preserved due to the arid desert climate. Remarkable. All artifacts are genuine, but the excavated tombs have been recreated. What's more eerie than seeing ancient Peruvian mummies staged in tombs out in the open air desert are the real human bones still left scattered in the sand.

The Nazca Lines were amazing! I survived the 30 minute flight in a 5-seat Cessna. It was a very bumpy ride that turned my stomach In. Side. Out. The pilot circled each figure a few times for photo ops. This allowed for everyone to see them from their side of the plane. I just hope the lurcing plane didn't affect my pictures. I was snapping away like crazy frantically trying to find the figures below then aiming my camera. They are such an enigma. How? Why? But in person they seem so unassuming. There are hundreds of lines, geometric shapes, and figures throughout the Nazca valley. They even overlap and cross through each other. I find it amazing that after all of these hundreds of years not only has time left them alone, man has, too. Nazca is the perfect place for something like this to be created and survive: the stones are made of gypsum which becomes sticky with dew allowing them to hold their place, and the heat absorbed by these rocks helps to create a protective barrier against the winds.

Nazca is a place rich in history. The town is small has hasn't really changed itself for the tourism. It's raw and real. I like it. Although it was out of the way (15 hours roundtrip on a bus), the trip down the Panamerican Highway to experience Nazca and the desert was worth it.

Interesting things: the airport tax at the airfield the see the Nazca Lines includes a single use of toilet paper. I thought it was a paper towel in case you got sick on the flight and had to clean up a mess. I figured it out later.

You can nurse a baby while walking down a public sidewalk in Nazca, Peru.

There are no Health Inspectors keeping watch over establishments selling food. I entered what I thought was a little market. Instead I entered a disqusting butcher market that had raw meat set out on the counters at room temperature with 6 stray downs attacking the scraps left on the floor. I passed on eating meat for the rest of my time in Nazca.