Back to the middle of the desert for us, after the wet-dry seasons of the Sacred Valley, here it is just… dry. Endless red-brown sand and hot, and dry. The road cuts through hills and where there is water there is a strip of green or two to break up the ongoing dust. Eventually we leave the coastal raod and head inland to Nasca, a small town now deluged with tourists coming (us included)to see the famous Nasca Lines.
The best way to see them is from the air, which is a mystery in itself because the lines were created by a people 1500 years ago, and there is no way they could have seen them from above (assuming you discount the theory that they knew how to make hot air balloons.)
So into the air we went, in a 5-seater Cessna which banked left and right to give everyone a great view… if you were looking, that is. Poor Chris was counting the seconds til we got down, and clutching his sick bag tightly eek!
The lines are made by taking the top layer of stones and piling them up at the side, to leave a lighter colour underneath. Simple. The mystery is why they are there, why a culture spent so much time making elaborate shapes that they couldn´t see. Water ways is one theory, astronomy is another, religion is the most plausible, alien encounters the most unlikely. But no-one knows, which means you can look and look and then just enjoy them for the patterns and designs that they are. Turbulence aside!
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