To the Lines and the Cemetery

15 MAY –NAZCA
Nelita assured us everything would be OK. She was kind enough to escort us to the Panamericana at the crack of dawn this morning to catch our bus to Ica, from where we would catch another bus to Nazca. It seems a little odd to be sitting on the edge of a four lane highway and wait for a bus to come along. The Lonely Planet guide warned us about some of the busses so I hoped for one that at least looked like a real bus, and not a rickety jalopy that tends to ply the highways in Peru. Sure enough, a real bus came along, with a guy leaning out the door yelling “ICAICAICAICAAAAA” Everyone sitting or standing on the concrete barricades by the side of the highway stood up and trundled aboard.

The bus ride was pleasant enough, and it cost us about $8 for the five hour journey along the coastal desert to Ica. We were treated to Escape from Alcatraz, dubbed in Spanish. At various locations along the way, merchants would board and walk the aisles, hawking food. I treated myself to a yummy confection that tasted like pineapple upside-down cake (they love their sweets!) and left a sticky residue on my fingers that was nearly impossible to get off. We also brought with us some bread, cheese, and cactus fruit yogurt. The ride was pretty – the desert and coast is spectacular.

Ica is a crazy city of adobe buildings and dusty streets, and three-wheeled Honda taxicabs. With huge sand dunes looming over the city, it looks like something out of an Indiana Jones movie. I asked for the location of the bus station to Nazca, and I was pointed down the street and around the block. Indeed, all I needed to do was to listen for the “NAZCANAZCANAZCANAZCAAAAA.” I heard it, and we boarded that bus. The Nazca ride was another two hours, on an older bus. We were held hostage by two preachers, one Christian and one new age, bellowing their babble as we lumbered through the desert. As we went further south, I noticed the towns getting poorer and more hard-scrabble. The desert grew more severe and hotter. This bus driver was a little more reckless, but fortunately there was a Madonna hanging in the back of the bus to protect us all from a rollover.

Nazca was another rough-and-tumble, dusty city, with even more impressive sand dunes. Topographically, it reminded me of Las Vegas. The moment we left the bus station, we were pestered by a man who was trying to sell us a hotel room, and our guide told us under no circumstances were we to buy a hotel room from a street vendor. We kept saying no, but he was insistent. Finally we ignored him and he sulked away. We elected to stay at the Hotel Alegría, which was in plain sight of the train station on the main drag. For $27 a night, we had a beautiful room and, for the second time on our trip, a decent shower! We made sure to take long, comfortable showers. We had lunch at Patrón, seemingly the only decent restaurant in Nazca. The food was spectacular, as we’ve come to expect on this trip. I had a Peruvian paella, with mussels and calamari, and Cathy had ceviche. We saw the most beautiful cat, obviously well-fed because of her shiny black coat. She owned the place, strutting from table to table exacting tribute from the restaurant guests. We believed she was the proprietress of the restaurant.

After lunch, we arranged our tickets to fly over the lines of Nazca. The tickets were incredibly cheap – only $50 per person including all taxes and an airport transfer for a 30 minute flight over the lines. We met a lovely German woman named Juliana who would be flying with us tomorrow. We got our tickets on AeroCondor, a reputable airline whose offices were across from the hotel. We then walked around Nazca, observing the town. The attitude of the people here is much different than in Cusco and Lima. Life is harder here; I could sense it, and the people were much less solicitous. I asked a man who was sitting on the sidewalk in the shade how he was doing and he smiled at me and said. “Mal. Muy maaaal!”

We visited the Museo Antognini on the outskirts of Nazca, a place devoted to the Nazca culture. We were tired and worn out from the oppressive dry heat, but the museum was a beautiful, if small, place. It included a garden with a replica of the Naca peoples’ ingenious aqueduct systems, which are still in use today.

That night, we attended a show at the Marie Reiche Planetarium in the Nazca Lines Hotel. The Nazca lines are fascinating formations on a desert plain just outside of town. Amazingly, they have remained undisturbed for around 1,400 years. There are various animal forms, lines, and radials drawn into the desert sand by carefully moving dark rocks away from the light colored sand underneath. Much mystery and speculation surrounds the formation of the lines, but the conventional wisdom is that they were designed as sites of religious significance, to appease the gods that observed the formations from above. In fact, the guides tended to bristle at the suggestion that some sort of paranormal or extraterrestrial activity was involved; it was the ingenuity of the Nazca people that made the lines possible.

16 MAY – NAZCA
Today we had breakfast at the Nazca Lines Hotel – a beautiful buffet – before hopping in a rickety Toyota van for the short drive to the airport. We met a cute English couple, Andrew and Catherine, and reconnected with Juliana. The plane left with just the five of us aboard for the short flight over the lines. The pilot was a virtuoso. He deftly maneuvered the airplane so that passengers on both sides had time to take pictures. Still – there was no use focusing the camera. I just pointed the camera and took as many pictures of the lines as I could. Halfway through the flight, Juliana got sick, so I made sure to take the pictures for her as well. After the plane landed, Andrew, Catherine, Cathy and I remained to make sure Juliana was well and eventually we escorted Juliana back into town. We had some time to kill before catching the bus back to Lima, so we arranged another tour – to an ancient cemetery.

The cemetery tour was among the strangest things I’d ever seen. For only $10 a person, we were driven out there by our guide Hilda. She showed us around a desert plain that was littered with bleached human bones – the remains of ancient Nazca people unearthed and stripped by grave robbers. A handful of gravesites remained, and were delicately unearthed by archaeologists. On our drive back to the hotel, Hilda pointed out a new village built of reed and adobe by the side of the road. The previous one had been destroyed by earthquake.

Our tour included stops at a ceramic shop and a metallurgist to observe indigenous techniques in pottery and mining. Both the potter and the metallurgist hammed it up for my camera.

We caught another bus home, operated by another company. This bus rolled down the main drag, and a man was perched outside the door, bellowing “ICAICAICAICAAAAA” so we knew that was the right one to take. This bus company, though they charged the same rate as Flores, wasn’t nearly as good. On the ride to Lima, I saw two things that stood out. One was a campaign sign for Alan García, which simply said: “Agua Para Todos!” Water for all. It’s amazing to me that, in a valley that is only 60 miles from the glacial peaks of the Andes, these people struggle without running water. To accentuate this point, I saw an elderly couple, naked, sitting in a tub outside their home, bathing each other.

We decided to find the Flores bus to Lima when we arrived in Ica. Our bus ride to Lima was slow and uneventful – if anything it seemed a lot longer than the right down. Instead of a film, we were regaled with an 80’s best hits album. We were grateful to find Nelita waiting for us when we arrived at the side of the road in Surco. Bless her, she did all our laundry while we were away.