Nazca Lines

I have come to enjoy the places in Peru not exalted online, the ancient monuments we discover almost by accident on our travels by van. Think of Sipan, Chan Chan and Áspero, evocative slices of history, monuments to pre Inca civilizations developing in isolation on this remote Pacific Coast, places never before heard of that predate the more famous monuments of the Middle East. We’ve seen them and following along on our iconoclastic path you have too. Not many outsiders or Peruvians have.

And then there are the Nazca Lines mysterious symbols etched into a remote inhospitable corner of coastal Peru a few hours south of Lima. They were seen and ignored by Conquistadors crossing the mountains and looking down into the valley. They were seen in the age of flight in the early 20th century and in the 1970s they were the subject of preposterous alien theories which we heard of alright. It was as though impossible to believe brown people 2500 years ago could create outsized art in the desert so we attributed these designs to aliens on a desert vacation. 

Archeologists have figured them out and attribute to them   no  practical significance but suggest they are one more example of religious symbolism to communicate with the gods they hoped ruled their lives.

By carbon dating wooden pegs found at the location sciebtists know when the lines were built, a period of  five hundred years either side of the birth of Christ. They planted pegs and scribed arcs with string or drew straight lines removing the dark pebbles and creating light colored lines a few inches deep. 

Other than that no one knows anything about them so if you want to believe aliens came here to draw pictures of what they found, you are welcome to, but what none of us can deny is their fame thanks to the looney alien speculation. 

That people lived out here boggles the mind. 

That’s the original smaller observation tower now closed. 

It’s an odd spot to do such elaborate art work which is invisible from the ground. And then to run the PanAmerican Highway through the middle of it seems odder still. 

Loud telephone conversations intrude on any attempt to meditate or puzzle out or just feel these places. 

The foreigner checking souvenirs. His name was Stefano and he lives near Venice. He looked like Cary Grant (with the inevitable modern  reusable water bottle) in North by Northwest waiting for a bus. We extracted him from his fate and gave him a lift back to his hotel in Nazca. 

We spent half an hour here and determined we wanted to take a flight to see more.

We loaded Stefano the Silent in the back and he was grateful for the ride and that it was free which struck me as odd as a bus ticket for a half hour journey couldn’t cost that much.  We travel high on the hog. He was interested to see how much gas cost us and how far we could drive on $70 of regular (about 300 miles). 

We dropped him off and set our course for the airport on the south side of town planning to spend $70 each for a thirty minute flight. 

The hustle was on as we saw planes taxiing in continuation as we drove up. A man in an orange vest flagged us down and that was our doom. He started in on how we had to hurry as the plane was leaving - hurry hurry- and so forth. 

Then when we got to the building the hurry ceased and the price increases began. $600 for a plane to ourselves. Or two hundred dollars to share a six seater. And surcharges and I don’t know what. We looked at each other and got up. “Special price,” he yelped. Suddenly discounts appeared but we put our heads down and trotted back to the safety of our lockable home. He followed yelling and sent a woman to talk to us but I got in gear and left. 

And that is why we did not fly over the lines. 

We met a Venezuelan refugee who sold us empanadas for lunch with no hustle. 

But we skipped the famous sand dunes at Huacachina where we had wanted to ride a dune buggy as the hustle was tremendous and there was no secure parking for GANNET2 away from the tours, the crowds, and the pimps selling whatever they thought you wanted. We were not leaving  Rusty in our home unprotected on the street filled with humans on the make. We fled. 

We’ve enjoyed sand dunes in the peace and serenity of a US national park and the more I travel the more I look forward to going home and wild camping in our peaceful wilderness at home. 

We kept on driving toward Arequipa the colonial city off the coast but on the southern route to Cusco the former Inca capital. I’m growing less sure I want to deal with Machu Picchu.