Nazca, Peru

Another 2 hours down the road and you hit the town of Nazca. The reason we have stopped here is for the chance to take a plane over the Nazca lines. The lines are thought to date from 900AD and are of various images that can be seen from above. It's believed that they were formed after a particular dry spell and the locals want to send messages to the god for rain.

If you had asked me a year ago would I be flying over the Nazca lines I would have said a very confident 'yes'. Now we have arrived the appeal has gone. The area where the lines are is in in fact a rocky plain and not very interesting and the thought of paying over $100 to have a quick flight over them put me off. There is a 12m viewing platform on the edge of the Pan Americano highway where you can have a glimpse at the hands and a tree. It's wasn't massively impressive and I can't understand how after 3000 years the lines haven't been eroded or filled in by sediment making me wonder if they actually upkeep the lines. What I saw was great to see but just not worth spending the money on the flight.

We also visited Neocropolis Chauchilla which was really cool. Archaeologists had found a stack of mummies buried from about 1000 years ago. Instead of putting them in a aircon museum they created pits to display them in outside. I don't know anything about them, whether they were male, female, or important in society but they were well preserved and appeared to have very long dreadlocks. Definitely worth the visit!