Nazca Lines

For all the hype about the Nazca lines – stories about how the lines came to be, intriguing documentaries on TV, weird supernatural events said to have occurred there – we wanted to go check it out for ourselves. Unfortunately, the best way to see the lines is to contract a private plane ride over the area, which was, first of all, out of our budget, and second, an impossibility for Ricardo who hates planes. Even I would be hesitant to get on one of those small planes knowing the lack of safety regulations in Peru.

But we heard there was also a mirador (lookout tower), from which you can view some of the lines and still get an understanding of the place. So we headed in that direction, once again through dry, sandy Peruvian desert.

We arrived to the lookout tower, which is just alongside the main road from Lima to Nazca. It was an old metal tower, with a couple guards and people selling handicrafts underneath, and a handful of tourists climbing up, not really very mindblowing. 
 

They charge 2 soles, which is less than a dollar, to climb up. From the top, you can look down onto the two Nazca images immediately below – one is supposedly a tree, and the other is two hands.

the tree (roots to the top left of the picture, the rest are branches)

 

the "hands" are behind me

 

I was utterly unimpressed. Ok, maybe I missed out because I didn’t take the plane ride and only saw two of the hundreds of Nazca images. But they were very shallow lines and the images weren’t really on the grand scale that you imagine when you hear the stories. The shapes were interesting, but I felt like I could have made a Nazca image myself just by dragging my shoe in the dirt. According to the guards we asked, the lines don’t erode because there is so little wind in the Nazca valley. The images have been there, supposedly, for longer than anyone can remember – no one knows how or why they are there. 

Maybe we were disappointed because of all the hype about Nazca. Stories abound about the images being created by beings from another planet so that when they came to visit earth they see the images as the spaceship is landing…that they could not possibly have been made by humans because humans can’t even see them except from the air. Except that there are mountains around, and you can see the images from the mountains, and also it seems quite feasible to me that people could have built structures like the tower we were on to view them as well. The question remains, why would people make these images? Well, why do people do any kind of artwork? It looks pretty. The designs that we could see from the mirador were quite simple, so probably given the chance to see the others, I would have been more impressed.

If you ask me, I found the mountains and the sunset to be much more spectacular than the actual Nazca lines.





We asked the guards at the mirador if we could stay the night in the parking lot there (after all, it might not be too late to experience some supernatural phenomenon, we thought). They said no at first, that it’s not allowed, but after some begging on our part, they told us that there were no guards at night to bother us if we stayed, but we had to promise them we would stay in the parking lot and wouldn’t go to the lines during the night to mess with them.

We set up our chairs in the parking lot and opened a bottle of wine to enjoy the colorful desert sunset. Incredible.

It wasn’t too long until our "supernatural phenomenon" occurred, though…Ricardo started feeling sick and was very sick all night. We don’t know if it was something he had eaten, or some Nazca voodoo, but it was a rough night.

The next day we stayed in the parking lot for most of the morning, and then finally got moving on down the road towards the city of Nazca. On the way is another viewpoint, this time a small hill you can climb to see more lines. These aren’t images, but mostly straight lines crisscrossing the land.

on the hill

We overheard a tour guide talking about these lines and how they may be airplane/spaceship guidelines. What do you think?

 

From there, we headed into Nazca city to recuperate for a couple days before heading on. It was a nice town, actually; I enjoyed it.

plaza de Nasca

There happened to be a small parade and flag ceremony in town…

The band had the music clothespinned to their backs.  Good idea guys, haha!

During our stay, we also visited some nearby ruins. One was called "Cantalloc" – it had an extensive aquaduct system with many of these circular wells –

 

 

 

The next site was called "Los Paredones" – this was very close to the city itself. This was an Incan city, and it is supposed that the ancient city probably extended much farther, but the current town of Nazca is built over top of it.

While we were there, the place was completely deserted, except for a boy who wandered up and offered to give us a tour. Well, how can you refuse this guy?

Our tour guide, Jefferson, told us all he knew about these ruins – he was actually quite good. He explained all about the section that was an Incan "jail" where they would lock up the lazy people who wouldn’t work, haha.

Jefferson even brought us to a "mummy museum" he knew, which was actually a little shelter in the backyard of a woman living nearby. Inside, there were old skulls, bones, hair, and pottery, most just thrown unorganized in cardboard boxes or on shelves.

The relics are said to be Incan artifacts taken from the ruins site. Some of the skulls even had skin and long hair still attached. Creepy!

Our last stop before heading out of Nazca was the "Las Agujas" (The needles) viewpoint, from where you can see more Nazca lines, this time in a zigzag pattern.

 

In the end we did enjoy our visit to Nazca, even though we didn't do the plane ride over the lines – it was more than just the legends say about the mystery of the lines…there are plenty of other things to see and do. A cool place to visit.

Next, we would head east in the direction of the most famous tourist attraction in Peru – Cusco and Machu Picchu. But that’s for another post!