A Day in Nasca

It´s been two days since I last blogged. From where I left off last time, we went to the airport for a 40-minute flight to view the Nasca Lines from above. The lines were thinner than I thought. It wasn´t as huge as I thought. I guess we did fly pretty high up. It was a smooth flight, but the pilot made a lot of hard turns both ways, so I got really nauseated towards the end and I hoped the flight would end soon. I was cold sweating all over.

Then we walked around town (which is really just around the plaza) and found a tour organizer with whom we would spent the rest of the day because we joined their three tour groups for the day. Since no one else was joining those tours, we had a private tour, which also meant we weren´t able to negotiate the price with them. The guide was pretty good. He was patient and detailed and told us stories as he saw things en route. His English was also quite good so we had no communication problem.

We went to the Chauchilla Cemetary (cemetary from a thousand years ago where bones were dug up by grave robbers and spread around), the Oconcaya Aqueduct (an underground canal with filtration system built 1500 years ago and still in use today), and Cahuachi (huge religious palace built 1500 years ago using mud and straw which is still pretty much intact today). Then we had a flat tire from driving on rocky and sandy terrain. It was a pretty bad time for a flat tire. We were in the middle of nowhere. It was very sunny with high UV and no shades in sight. The road wasn´t even a road. It was just sand. It took our guide close to an hour to change the tire and he was covered in dirt and sweat. We then rested for a bit and resumed our tour. We then went to the Cantolloc Aqueducts (the same 1500 year old underground canal upstream of the Oconcaya Aqueduct), the Geoglilo (similar to the Nasca Lines but it was done by removing rocks from the surface so the lines are not at all deep), and the Paradones (city ruins strategically built against the mountains 1500 years ago to oversee the village). Then we went to see the gold processing where Peruvians today still do to extract gold from other minerals by using mercury -- something I find very uncivlized in today´s society. Uncivilized because we all know the harms mercury causes and yet miners still use make close body contact with it. Then there was the pottery place where they demonstrated the use of minerals to paint the clay pottery which becomes very tough.

We went to a small restaurant for dinner. When asked by the waitress, "Dos menus?" I said "si", thinking she would bring us two menus so we could order food. Turned out she brought us two soups. It was then that we realized that dos menus really meant two set meals.

Then we headed down to the bus terminal and took our overnight bus. It was meant to depart at 9:30pm, but the schedule was delayed to 10pm. The bus didn´t arrive till 10:20pm. The Cruz del Sur was obviously a more upscale bus company because they searched our carry on luggage before letting us board (which I think was kind of useless because shortly after boarding the bus we had a 30 minute rest break where people were free to get on and off the bus). The Economico class was less comfortable than the Soyuz Bus we were used to taking. The seats were cloth seats and it was stuffy inside. Fortunately with this bus we could open the window. The view outside was not appealing so I managed to have a good sleep the entire night. We arrived in Arequipa at 8:40am, close to 2 hours later than the scheduled time.