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After a nice sleep in, I got up to have a quick breakfast before being picked to go to Nazca's local airport.
We arrived at the airport completely psyched to get into our tiny Cessna and explore the Nazca lines only to find out there was a delay and we'd have to wait two hours. Juan (our completely dodgy tour guide) suggested we pay him 40 soles each and he would quickly take us out to visit the Chauchilla cemetery, about 45 mins out of town. We figured we'd have about 10 mins to quickly walk around and decided against it. With the help of another tour leader who happened to overhear our conversation, we managed to suss out the same tour, with an English speaking tour guide and transport for 25 soles. So we gladly gave that bloody rip off the boot and booked a tour for after our flight.
We then jumped into the tiny 12 seater plane and took off. My knuckles went a bit white gripping onto the seat but it was fairly smooth sailing....until the pilot tilted the whole plane sideways to give us a good view of these incredible lines below. I sat opposite this jap who was vomming within the first 5 minutes of the flight, poor b*****. I certainly felt queasy, it was like going on a slow roller coaster.
The Nazca lines/geoglyphs were created by the ancient Nazca people over 1500 years ago. There are loads of theories as to why they created these lines, which stretch for over 80km. They are all sorts of different shapes - triangles, rhomboids, spirals etc, and also many different animals. One line in particular is really interesting. It stretches all the way to the horizon, and it marks the exact location where the sun rises at the summer solstice. There is another line marking out the winter solstice. Amongst that, there are also theoretical links to astronomy, where lines intersecting also mark out points on the horizon where the brightest stars are located. There are heaps of animals, including a squirrel, which is incredible for a civilisation who lived in the middle of the desert, it shows the Nazca people had interactions with people from the amazon and probably ate the squirrels. There is a spider, a monkey with a spiral tail (again, no monkeys in the desert!), a whale and heaps of sea birds amongst loads of others we didn't get to see on our half hour flight. Archaeologists have made a link between these specific animals and the Nazca people's need for water. It's thought that these animals (the monkey and squirrel coming from a place where water is in abundance) were thought to be sacred, and they drew these animals as an offering to their god in exchange for water. They were out of luck though, as Nazca is the second driest area in the world. One other drawing I found really interesting was that of an astronaut. It looked like a person but with really big eyes, I thought maybe an alien? Either way, it's pretty obvious these people were well ahead of their time and scientists are still baffled by these lines.
After we landed, we jumped straight into a van with our overly excited guide Hilda. She is a Nazca native and totally passionate about her culture and the history in this tiny desert town. She showed us a desert owl, that lives in burrows under the ground, and is do well camouflaged it really doesn't have any predators.
The Chanchilla cemetery was a complete eye opener, I have never seen anything like it and I doubt I ever will again! As we drove in, there were real human bones just scattered all over the desert - remnants of the grave robbers attack on this cemetery. Because it is so dry, these bones were perfectly preserved, but bleached by the sun. It was mental to be driving past femurs of actual humans just lying there untouched. As we pulled in, Hilda prepared us for what we were about to see, and I prayed my already upset stomach would hold out. We visited out first tomb - a shallow dug out grave with a Mummy inside. No glass between us and her, just a single rope. She still had all her hair and you could still see some skin - again, all perfectly preserved by the dryness, and the methods these people used to embalm the bodies. She was in a woven basket in the fetal position, as this culture believed you would be reborn again to the pachamama or mother earth. Sitting next to her were at least 15 femurs and 5 skulls. Last but not least, this grave also contained the remains of two babies, wrapped in cotton and also in a woven basket, but on of them you could see their tiny legs sticking out of the bottom. I've got goosebumps just thinking of it! We then made our way around 12 more similar tombs, each with almost perfect mummys, one of which still had his eye intact. You could even see his iris!! I think of all the crazy things I've seen in my life, this place comes pretty close to blowing them all out of the water.
Exhausted, we piled back into the car and headed back for Nazca. Funnily enough, none of us had much of an appetite! We had just enough time to pack up our bags and get onto our overnight bus to Arequipa - about 10 hour away!
- comments
cat OMG this post is insane! You are seeing so many things I can't even believe it. Those lines are insane, like how did they do them so perfectly such a long time ago! and the tombs!!!