Tuesday, September 15, 1998
The bus ride from Ica to Pisco took only a few hours. I sat next to Annette who has the unique ability to sleep at every single opportunity. She sleeps so soundly that she didn't even wake up when the bus broke down about half way to Nasca... It wasn't a long delay, thankfully, and we arrived in Nasca at around 3PM.
When we exited the bus, we really had no idea where we would stay -- normal. No matter, seems that the hotel desk clerk looked on our registration card and saw that we were heading to Nasca. His friend (and partner?) met us at the bus station and quickly arranged everything we needed -- transport, a nice clean hostal, tickets to the airplane trip for the Nasca Lines, and even breakfast in the morning. At first we were hesitant to go with him, but then he showed us the piece of paper with all of our names neatly printed on it -- that seemed to make everything OK.
We got to the Hotel De Sol and quickly lost all bargaining power by depositing our things in the room. No matter, our Chief Bargainer, Magnus, stepped up to the plate and quickly cut 25% off the entire package. We were all happy with the deal.
Lunch proved to be quite humorous... We found a little Chinese food place, Fong Nam, near the main square. So, we go on in and take a seat. A few minutes later, and we realize that we're listening to a Spanish Language teaching tape -- in Chinese! Not only that, but it was almost exclusively for the restaurant domain. The owner and his kids couldn't speak a word of English or Spanish for that matter, which made ordering anything quite a challenge. Eventually, we got our food -- quite delicious -- and managed to pick up a little Chinese in the process. Question: How in the world does a Chinese family end up in Nasca, Peru? I wish I knew enough Chinese to find out...
After lunch, we went back to the hotel for a nap. There's not a lot going on in Nasca.
After a light dinner of Pizza and a few beers, we turned in for the night. After all the excitement of the previous week, I almost felt as if I needed to get up and make something happen. But, there are ups and downs to every adventure. Today was good, but definitely a down day.
Wednesday, September 16, 1998
Breakfast in the morning was great -- eggs, toast, tea, and fresh orange juice. After packing up, we headed out to get our plane ride to see the famous Nasca lines. The airport, a good 10 minutes outside of town, is basically a small airstrip that services the ten or so planes that take tours to see the lines.
Oh yeah, I guess I should tell you a little about the lines and what they are. Basically, they are huge geometric patterns carved into the desert floor and they are only visible from the air. Supposedly they are attributed to the Nasca and Paracas cultures between 900 BC and 600 AD. Current theory holds they are some sort of astronomical calendar, but other theories are interesting as well -- especially the one that holds that the long "runway" lines are exactly that, runways for space ships. Most of the the lines depict animals, but there is a curious "astronaut" looking one as well that I found quite interesting.
So,
we arrived at the airport and we were quickly shuttled into a
small Cessna. Of course, I sat in the copilot seat -- a few years
ago I got my pilot's license. I mentioned this to our pilot, and
he was more than pleased to let me fly the majority of the time.
Our 40 minute flight was fascinating. It's almost impossible to describe these things, and unfortunately my pictures didn't turn out so well... But, a few are visible in the photos -- remember, these figures are 180 meters long -- and the straight "runways" can reach lengths of over 4 miles!
So, after the flight our "English speaking" guide took us out to the Cementerio de Chauchilla, an ancient Nasca burial ground that has been more or less totally scavenged in the last 50 years. He took us in an early 70's Dodge Coronet reminiscent of Starsky and Hutch. Green carpet, the works!
One of the most interesting aspects of this culture was a practice known as trepination. Basically they would drill a quite large hole in the scalp and remove the bone -- then, they'd fill the hole with a squash like vegetable so that the bone wouldn't grow back. Strange. Some of the skulls we found had these markings. Another curious process was the skull disfigurement. Rich people would tie a cord around their babies heads for the first three years of life. This leads to a skull that looks like the coneheads from Saturday Night Live. The really interesting skulls are trepinated AND disfigured. It's believed that trepination aided in relieving some of the pressures built in the brain by disfigurement. Go tell.
Anyway, our guide turned said "Hello" and then proceeded to give the entire tour in Spanish. So much for English speaking... Luckily, a French Professional Karaoke singer practicing in Singapore helped us out with the translation -- thanks Frank!
So, after the cemetary, Magnus and I suddenly felt VERY ill. I ran a fever, runny poo, nausea, you name it. I spent the next seven hours in bed sweating it out. Luckily, I somewhat recovered and was able to make it to the overnight bus to Aeroquipa. We figured out that it was probably the eggs from the morning breakfast -- Annette didn't eat them and didn't feel at all sick. She was a saint in taking care of us -- she brought us drinks, checked on us regularly, and showed excellent motherly instincts.