Arrived into Nazca, disoriented and bleary-eyed from a way-too-long and uncomfortable bus ride, and we were met by the welcoming committee of pers
istent touts trying to sell us flights, tours and hotel rooms at 6:00 in the morning! Drank Nescafe in the street and played with a friendly dog, that kept trying to eat our shoes, for about an hour until Juan from Nazca Trails arrived. We had reserved on-line a flight with his company the day before. We walked five blocks to their office on Plaza de Armas. Not surprising that the walk on the main avenue was lined with touristy shops, restaurants and hotels.... and lines... Nazca lines... from the bus stop to the sidewalks to the parks... there were lines everywhere!
After paying, we were driven to the airport where we had to pay an airport tax (what a rip!) then off we went in a 4-seat Cessna. The pilot pointed out everything and circled around the lines so we could get a good look and take photos. It was pretty damned cool seeing these crazy lines in the middle of the desert, but still feeling a bit nauseous from our long bus ride, I was glad when we touched down a half-hour later.
From what we had seen so far of Nazca, we decided not to spend the night in another ugly, dusty, touristy town. Like Aguas Calientes and Machu Picchu, the city clearly spent a lot of money 
beautifying the touristy areas for the gringos, their primary source of income. But so sad that they let the rest of the outlying areas go to crap, including a municipal pool where the locals could go to cool off from the desert heat. So we booked yet another evening bus for further south to Arequipa, nine hours away... what were we thinking??? Back-to-back night buses... OY again! Feeling grungy and tired, we had a good 12 hours to kill in a town that had nothing to do or see, except for the lines of course, but we had already done that. Somehow we managed... went to a nice, but overpriced little archaeological museum, then to a series of touristy cafes, just to kill time. Spent the last couple of hours in the bus terminal watching really bad movies on TV then FINALLY... we were off...
Erik: When we decided to make the very long side trip to Nazca, all I could think of were my childhood memories of watching Leonard Nimoy's “In S
earch of...” TV show – exploring unexplained mysteries of the world, and always emphasizing the paranormal, extra-terrestrial theories for such things. I recall them hypothesizing that the Nazca lines, including the strange, waving spaceman drawing, were some sort of alien landing pad, where benevolent ET's came to help build the world's wonders, such as Machu Picchu, Chichen Itza, the pyramids, etc. Thinking about my childhood wonder at such mysteries, and then noting that I really wasn't so excited about actually seeing the lines, I suddenly realized that I'd lost a good deal of my childhood imagination and wonder (this despite my still acting like a child whenever possible!) I wouldn't call it an epiphany, more of a simple acknowledgment of my own world
-weary, travel-weary ennui, and this made me a bit sad.
Still, that being said, the flight was fun and interesting. The lines are quite amazing – monkeys, whales, pooping dogs, spacemen, hummingbirds and huge, many-mile-long perfectly straight lines and trapezoids. Even to the somewhat jaded, it does make one wonder how and why.
Our photos don't do the lines justice (you try shooting clear shots on a monochrome desert landscape through the window of a tiny cesna many 100's of feet in the air!).
I heartily agree with Talor that we'll never again waste 12 hours of our lives just to save a few bucks on a bus and hotel fare – in my very sleep-deprived state, it was verging on self-inflicted torture.
Anyway, here are our fuzzy photos of the lines as well as the oh-so-enchanting town of Nazca:
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| Nazca, Peru |
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