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We took the overnight bus to Nazca and, as it was a 10 hour journey, we decided to splash out on a 15 quid bus!!! It was worth every penny, the bus station had a suite for our bus service, then the bus had huge seats with a foot rest and all the other bells and whistles! This turned out to be good, as we hit a huge delay, we're not too sure why, but we were in a long queue of traffic!
We arrived in Nazca quite well rested and got stuck straight in. We took a tour to Chauchilla cemetery, which dates back to between 1000 and 1300AD. The graves were found first by grave robbers and so non of the valuables are remaining, but the bodies are still there. You can see bones scattered all around the area which have been bleached white by the sun! All the mummies were buried in the fetal position, facing East and many were buried with their whole family.
We then went to see the Cantallo Aqueduct, built by the Nazca's, which is still in working order and provides water to the near waters. The farmers clean the aqueducts annunally and the locals hold festivals celebrating the water. There were deep wells every 15m or so along the system which was used to check the water supply.
Afterwards here we visited Paredones ruins, which was built by the Inca's and is not very well preserved, but you can still see the outline of the large site which is strategically surrounded by mountains. That night we went to the Nazca Lines hotel to see a lecture about the Nazca Lines at their Maria Reiche Planetarium. Maria was a German mathematitian who dedicated 40 years of her life to studying the lines. Her theory was that the lines were markers for the constellations that marked an astronomical calendar for agriculural purposes and were made by the Paracas and Nazca cultures between 1900BC and 600AD. There are many many other theories though, including landing strips for aliens!
The next morning we took a flight over the lines themselves. We took a small plane with just 3 other people and saw The Whale, Bird, Astronaut, Dog, Monkey, Hands, Tree, Hummingbird, Condor, Spider and trapezoids on the desert floor (we didn't get clear photos of them all though). The lines are hundreds of metres long and were drawn by removing hard layers of earth, exposing the lighter coloured earth underneath. The lines are exactly straight and it is thought the Nazca's were excellent mathematicians. The flight was good, but we felt a little sick after as the pilot kept dropping the wings from left to right so everyone could see the lines.
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