After arriving in Nazca, we stayed in Hostal Yemaya just outside the “Plaza de Armas” (the main town square), for both of the nights we were there. On the first night, after arriving in the afternoon, we went out for dinner at Las Cañas, a restaurant we came to love for its pasta and club sandwiches (but mostly just because of the treehouse we insisted on sitting in!) See photo. We then booked our bus tickets with “Cruz del Sur” who are supposedly the best bus company in Peru, and most of South America (they had better be after costing so much!).
Earlier in the day we had booked tickets to see a presentation in a nearby planetarium, on the famous Nazca lines. This mysterious phenomenon is mainly what drew us to this dusty town; 30km outside Nazca, in the Nazca Desert, are huge etchings of geometric shapes and intricate animal figures in the ground. Whilst no-one knows exactly who made these and why, the generally accepted view is that they were created by the Nazca culture over a thousand years ago, by removing the sun-baked top layer of rock to leave the lighter rock underneath. These were related to religious rituals based around water. Another theory proposed by Maria Reiche was that the lines were based on the stars. The lecture in the Planetarium explained these theories and gave us a good insight into the history of the lines (with a bonus of some star-gazing afterwards, including seeing Jupiter!)
The following morning, instead of taking an over flight (which cost $200 for ½ hour!!), we got the bus out to a “Mirador” - a rickety observation tower on the side of the Panamericana. From the top of this 30 ft structure we were able to get a rough idea of the lines first hand. We were told that it was very easy to flag down a bus (hurtling along the road at high speeds) back to Nazca……we found it slightly harder. The problem was not that they didn’t see us…they just chose to flash their lights and wave at us as they drove past! A friendly Peruvian trying to do the same thing offered to help us and had more luck!
On our last day in Nazca, we went on a tour out to the Chauchilla Cemetery to see ancient bones, skulls and mummies in tombs around 1000 years old, from the Nazca culture. The tombs had all been uncovered and grave robbers from nearby towns had dug them up in search of precious metals, leaving bones scattered across the desert, which have now been reassembled into tombs visible for tourists. On the tour, they were only us two and a friendly Israeli man who served as our translator and photographer!
After a hearty lunch, we left the dusty town behind and prepared for out 9 hour bus journey to Arequipa, on which we happened to be sitting behind the Israeli man we´d met earlier!
