The Nazca Lines and the Ride to Lima…

It was only by the clear light of the following day, that I was able to fully appreciate the hotel that I had chosen to stay in… I had been too tired to take much notice of it the previous evening…!!

View from the terrace outside my room... I never got to use any of the facilities, having made up my mind to ride to Lima later that day...!!

I had stopped in Nazca for one reason only, the same reason that thousands of tourists flocked here every year; to see the Nazca Lines…

I joined the long queue at the airport to buy my ticket and was eventually relieved of $100.00 for what was to be a 25 minute flight… I had to pay a higher than normal price, “because it was a public holiday”…!! Go figure…!!

Ready to get giddy...??

GB takes to the skies...!!

The geoglyphs can be seen from the surrounding hills, but that would encompass a very long hike in the heat of the day, and to get a proper perspective, would also entail hiring a guide…

A guide goes up in the small plane with you, and without him, we would have been hard-pressed to make out the fantastic designs that date back to between 400 and 650 A.D. …

There were four of us in the plane, and the pilot jinked from side to side so that the guys on the left could get as good a view as the guys on the right hand side of the plane… For some, this was probably the most exciting part of the flight…!!

There are many theories about why these lines were made in the first place… They range from the most accepted theory that they represented  various deities that the ancient Nazcan peoples worshipped, to the more bizarre, that they were made by celestial beings, who used the figures and diagonal lines as guides to land their space-craft safely…!!

Clearly some scientists are not averse to the odd sock-smoking session…!!

The Hummingbird... At 93 metres in length, is one of the largest geoglyphs at Nazca...

This one is an enigma... Some call it The Giant, others The Astronaut...!! It is unlike any other geoglyph and this had led to the "Alien Theory"... Could be E.T. ...!!

The lines are actually shallow trenches, made  by scooping away the red earth that coats the Nazca desert, to expose a lighter lime-coloured sand beneath it… The lines have been preserved because this part of Peru is not only very dry, but also relatively windless…

Although I was intrigued by the lines, I felt that we were flying too high to get a really good look at them…

The photos I managed to take were too indistinct to post here, except for two of them…

There are hundreds of geoglyphs, spread over almost 500 square kilometres and as recently as 2011, two new ones were discovered by Japanese scientists, who will begin a 15 year research program on the Nazca Lines later this year… Since 2006, over 100 new figures have been discovered… Clearly the scientific community is still seeking answers to the mysteries that lie out in this desert…!!

I was able to get an idea of the terrain I would be riding through over the next few hours, when I set out for Ica and Lima...

Our flight path over the Nazca Lines...

Back on terra firma, I met with another interesting character, dresses in an Inca outfit… At first I thought he was just another guy dresses in costume to get tourists to pay to take photos with him… I was dead wrong…!! He is a shaman or medicine man, who wanders the desert looking for artifacts to add to his impressive collection in the museum he has established close to the airport…

By the rather reverent manner in which the locals treated him when passing by, I could see that he was a well respected man… I sat chatting to him while I waited for a taxi… He told me that he was able to trace his lineage back to a few hundred years ago, and was descended from an Inca warrior…

He told me that he had recently discovered the skeleton of a whale out in the desert, and was in the process of bringing it back to Nazca, piece by piece… He showed me a few photographs of other fossils he had found, including a Macaw Parrot, lodged in solid rock…!!

He has been featured on National Geographic and has been the focus of a number of magazine articles… He invited me to visit his home which was a short distance away, but I regretfully declined his invitation, as I had already loaded the bike back at the hotel, and wanted to make a dash for Lima, which was more than 450 km away…

GB and the Inca of Nazca...

It was almost midday before I was able to leave the hotel and begin the ride to Lima... I was going to have to "shake a leg"...!!

He had traveled abroad and spoke English with a thick halting accent… As I was walking over to my taxi, he called out me…

“My friend…!! You have a long way to travel… Take care…!!”

I raised an eyebrow at him, wondering how he knew that I had a “long way to go”…!! I had not given him any details of where I had come from, or where I was going…!! I thanked him and waved him goodbye, as we headed back to the hotel…

We were out on the road barely 15 minutes later, and with AC/DC blasting though my ear-phones, we headed for Ica…

The Nazca desert is a rather forbidding place… It reminded me a bit of the Namib, except the terrain was rockier, but just as arid, dry and inhospitable…

Apart from a few twisty bits as it dipped down towards Ica, the road comprised of long straights where I was able to make good time at speeds that would not have pleased the traffic authorities…

Great roads to make up time on...!!

Inca Cola... If you have a sweet tooth, then this is the soda for you...!! It's sugar content puts Fanta and Coke in the shade...!!

There is not much to see on this portion of the Pan-American Highway… The only things of intrest were the huge tracts of orchards that had been planted along the Rio Ica, which the road followed all the way to the town that took it’s name from the river… Citrus trees, vineyards and many other crops seemed to to mock the desert sands in the background…

I wanted to take a quick look at the “Oasis” in or just outside Ica, but try as I might, I could not find the road that led there… I asked three different people where it might be, and got three completely different answers…!!

I eventually gave up the search, refueled, and headed for the Pacific Coast…

The Panamericana Sur is not all the major highway people think it to be… It is more often than not just a single lane road in each direction, and runs directly through small villages and towns, and becomes wider and better maintained when it gets close to major cities…

In one such town, Chincha, I ran into a tiny spot of bother, in the shape of one of those three-wheeler scooter taxis…

As I came alongside it, the driver heard someone off to my left call out to him, and without looking, turned in front of me… Luckily for both of us, I was only doing about 40 km/h, but this was enough to make a good size dent in his door…!!

He went clattering off the road, and I kept going, while trying to feel if there was any damage to my steering… Once I was sure everything was in order, I picked up speed and headed for the horizon…!!

Just south of San Vincente de Canete, the road widened into a great new motorway, and for the next 150 km, we cruised through the late afternoon sunlight and into the outskirts of Peru’s capital city…

Highway through the desert, sout of Lima... Conducive to high speed, as you can see...!!

I arrived in Lima on Good Friday, which was particularly Good in this case, because there was very little traffic about…!! I headed directly to Miraflores, and came along the seafront road before climbing the bluff into the area renowned for it’s restaurants and nightlife…

My first glimpse of Lima proper....!! The city is built on a high bluff that runs along the seafront...

The Casa San Martin is a great place to saty... It is just one street off the main road that runs through Miraflores....

Spooning Trees....!!

The first hotel I stopped at wanted $100 a night, which I baulked at… A short distance down the same road, I came across the Casa San Martin, and after a short round of negotiation, we agreed on a reasonable price, and I began offloading the bike…

Cynthia the receptionist was very helpful, and the two managers, Lidia Armas and Freddy del Pozo, ensured that my longer than expected stay in Lima was made as pleasant as possible…

I took a walk down to the clifftops overlooking the sea to watch the sun setting and joined a large crowd of locals, who seemed to make this a daily event…

Couples poses for photographs, while other like myself, stood watching the sun sink over the island out in the bay…

This is a very popular restaurant, built on the old breakwaters...

Lima Sunset.... Well worth the ten minute walk down to the edge of the bluff...

I was happy to be in a comfortable place, surrounded by friendly people, and within walking distance of just about everything I might need…

I was looking forward to a quiet Easter Weekend, but an email from my Colombian friend Adrian, who I met in Cusco, would have me spending a busy Saturday, in a city that was all but shut down for the weekend…!!

©GBWT 2012