Nazca Lines

A desert city, Nasca sits in a green valley surrounded by barren mountains. It is dusty, busy and we quickly lamented the beautiful green mountain scenery and culture that we had left behind.

We were here to visit the Nazca lines, but the area around Nasca has a variety of other ruins from different civilisations including an enormous Inca administration centre.

We thought we’d spare our faithful readers the photos of yet more ruins just now, so are sharing some photographs of the scenic flight that Stewart, Tom and Jeanette enjoyed/endured.

A 35 minute scenic flight was the best way to see the amazing and mysterious Nazca lines but is not for anyone who has even thought that they might suffer from motion sickness. To ensure passengers on both sides of the plane have the best views of the geoglyphs the plane continuously banks from side to side like a never ending rollercoaster.

Scientists are still undecided about how or why these geoglyphs exist, when they originated and indeed who made them. We do know that the shapes were formed by moving the dark rocks on the surface to reveal the lighter soil beneath. But the huge number of figures (300 or so) the size of them and the area they cover (about 1000 sq km’s) is truly amazing!

Thanks to Stewart, we can share these photos from the flight! Ailsa was happy to look at the photos and climb a tower along the Pan-America highway to see some from a moderate height!