Nazca Peru and Flying Nazca Lines

Sat 22 July 2006

The Hotel Alegria courtyard is even more beautiful in the daytime! It’s like a geode stone, hard and repellent from the outside, but gorgeous inside! There is a downside however. If you walk to the upper most balcony and look out over those very tall, razor wire covered wall, you are jolted by the level of poverty kept just out of sight from the visitors.

The majority of the city has a hive like structure to it. A family might build a wall of mud bricks and hang a blanket as a lean to type roof from this. As children grow up, they might add another wall to their parent’s and so forth. The majority of the homes having only one or two walls, with handmade blankets providing privacy from neighbors and offering a simple form of family boundaries.

Stray dogs wander through the dusty alleys in packs, their bones showing through mangy skins, and dangerous if you are foolish enough to make eye contact with them. Most of them were limping from being struck by cars or attacks from other dogs.

Children play in rubble heaps, their clothing dirty and ragged.

It’s shocking to look from the lush courtyard of the hotel to the extreme poverty only a few yards away, but it really made me appreciate how much I take for granted in my own life.We had breakfast right there in the beautiful courtyard, before heading down the street to register for our flight over the Nazca lines.

We got on a bus to the airport with two other couples, and as we reached our destination we discovered a surprising number of tourists waiting in the souvenir shop.The tour company played a video about the Nazca lines, telling theories on their meanings, and of their discovery. We sat and watched it twice before stepping outside to see how much longer our wait might be.

They could only fit six people to a plane, so getting there early was apparently an important factor in how long you had to wait. At last we were loaded in and eagerly taking flight to view these fantastic ruins visible only from the sky!

Jason felt a little sick from the abrupt turns the plane had to make to best frame the image from each side of the plane and make sure that each passenger was able to get a view of them. I kind of felt like I was on a rollercoaster, and a couple of times I wanted to throw my hands up and squeal in glee! Thankfully I restrained myself!


Back to the hotel to schedule our bus tickets for Arequipa. It’s going to be a long bus ride, and after the ride from Lima to Nazca I’m not exactly thrilled with the prospect. *sigh*

We had dinner that night at the Rico Pollo, a meal that would haunt Jason for months afterwards. The food was delicious and the homemade Sangria outstanding. However, Jason decided to be a little too brave and ate some of the avocado off the salad. Up to this point we had all been very careful not to eat anything that might have been washed in water, but he figured since it was peeled it couldn’t be too bad. Oh did he rue that poor judgment later!

We walked around town and eventually made our way back to the hotel for a break from the sun. We made reservations for a hotel in Arequipa and checked out of the Hotel Allegria, wandering down to the Kanada Bar for a few games of pool and cold drinks while we waited for our bus.The bus ended up being very late. We waited at the bus station past midnight, but we were happy to find ourselves waiting with another group of Americans, so we had good company.

At last loaded onto the big double decker bus we eagerly tilted our chairs back and tried to catch up on some sleep! We were awakened a few brief hours later by passengers opening up their curtains to an early sunrise. Ugh!

Next: Our Arrival in Arequipa >>