Nasca, Peru

At Nasca we stayed at Hotel Majoro. This is a nice hotel, 3 or 4 kms out of town, down a long dirt road (but hey this is Peru, not Manhattan). It has spacious grounds and a big pool. They have their own aircraft if you want to use them for the Nasca lines flight - we did. We only stayed one night, but one night is certainly sufficient to see the delights of Nasca - the Lines and the Necropolis. So this was a really nice place to stay. We arrived late (9 pm on the bus - and did have a little problem getting a reasonably priced taxi to take us there)

The hotel is an old hacienda, and not a modern tower block - so the rooms are set out as in the original house - built for coolness, and hence the complaints from some reviewers on privacy. I had no problem, nor do I think the average European would.. We did meet the owner, Jaime, while we were there, and he was a very hospitable man - do be sure to make his acquaintance if you stay. The hotel sorted our Nasca flight bookings and a taxi to the Necropolis (taxi is much cheaper than a guided tour, and just as good)

The Nasca Lines are what are called technically geoglyphs in the Nasca Desert. They were designated a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1994. The high, arid plateau gets virtually no rain, and so the dry, windless and stable climate of the plateau and its isolation from the outside world has led to the lines surviving in a well preserved state today.

It was only when people travelled over the area by plane in the 1930s and saw the Nasca Lines from the air that they could actually see the lines and animals. From ground level you cannot see any of them. A small platform on the road tries to give people an idea, but you can see very little.

Scholars believe the Lines were created by the Nasca indians between 400 and 650 AD. The individual figures range in complexity from just lines to a menagerie of stylised animals like hummingbirds, spiders, monkeys, fish, sharks, orcas, llamas, and lizards. The lines are shallow, about 6 inches deep, and made in the ground by removing the crust of reddish pebbles to uncover the whitish ground beneath. The largest figures are over 200 metres across.


The aircraft twists and turns round the geoglyphs	Satellite photo of the area & the extent of the lines

Our plane flight at $110 each, was in one of the hotels own aircraft. I cannot say I was impressed by the guide (the second pilot gives a running commentary on what you are looking at), but we did see the geoglyphs. Nasca airport is apparently the busiest in Peru for aircraft movements per day. Highjackings by drug smugglers, wanting the aircraft for their own purposes, has meant that security is tight. There are only 6 people per aircraft, but we had to show our passports, and go through the metal detectors before boarding the plane. Early morning visibility problems meant we had to loiter for a couple of hours, before taking off for our 30 minute flight.

The flight is a bit like the big dipper at the fun fair. The pilot climbs and swoops, banks and turns around the slalom course set out by the designs on the ground. Air traffic control dictates that planes all follow the same route, and there is a set interval between flights. Each geoglyph has to be seen by passengers on each side of the aircraft, so the plane does a tight circle round each figure. The "guide" tells you over your headphones what you are looking at, and with a bit of luck you can make out the figure and photograph it.

All photos you see, mine or anyone else's are "doctored" in order to notch up the contrast, so that the lines become clearer in the photo than they actually are on the ground. You could save yourself the considerable cost of the flight by just looking at the available photos, but you would not take my word for that, and would undoubtedly take a flight to discover the truth, or otherwise, in my remarks, for yourself.


Air Majoro flight taking off from Nasca Airport to look at the Nasca Lines from above. First one I made out was the Astronaut

Followed by the Monkey here	Then a vista of assorted Nasca	Lines, that may be figures or not	With the occasional green

Hummingbird	Condor	Spider	Parrot

Sea Birds	And finally Hands and Road

It is probably fair to say you will miss the first few, as you have no idea what you are meant to be looking for, but as the flight wears on, you get quite used to making out figures, then holding the camera in a way that you can get them, perhaps with a bit of zoom

Chauchilla is about 20 km down the Pan American Highway, and then onto 7 kilometres of dirt road to reach the archaeological ruins. We went with an Australian couple, Sue and Pat from Adelaide, whom we had met in the Majoro Hotel, and were later to meet again at the Colca Canyon.

Chauchilla was the site of a cemetery for members of the Nasca tribe. Because this tribe placed ceramics and gold jewels in the graves, Chauchilla became an attractive site for tomb robbers. These grave robbers stole all the valuable stuff, leaving only the mummified bodies. They did not actually intend to mummify the bodies, but the dry heat and lack of rain in the desert has resulted in mummification. Some of the graves have been restored with a mix of skulls, bones and entire mummified bodies, plus fragments of ceramics,& pieces of fabrics. Disconcertingly, human hair has been added as wigs to the bodies.


Up the dirt road to Chauchilla	Restored graves are shaded to	protect the mummies and bones	.. laid out as they were buried

One for the connoisseurs here. We came across a "cactus farm". Cochineal comes from cactus, which is farmed here specially to get the dye.

The cochineal (Dactylopius coccus) is a scale insect from which the crimson-coloured dye carmine is derived. The insect lives on a particular type of cacti, feeding on plant moisture and nutrients.The carmine dye was used in Central America in the 15th century for colouring fabrics and became an important export good during the colonial period.

The insect produces carminic acid, and this acid makes up about one quarter of the weight of the insects. The acid can be extracted and mixed with aluminium or calcium salts to make carmine dye (also known as cochineal). Carmine is mainly today used as a food colouring and for cosmetics.

The insects are collected when they are approximately ninety days old. Harvesting is labour-intensive, as they must be individually brushed or picked from the cacti and placed into bags. The insects are then sold them to local processors or exporters.

After dinner back at the hotel, we were on the move again to Nasca bus station to catch the overnight bus to Arequipa, leaving at 10pm and arriving in Arequipa around 8am the next morning.


Hotel Majoro, its pool and the resident alpaca