Nazca is a hole of a town. The smell coming from the river is rancid, worn tyres line the street, wild dogs wander the roads and litter is strewn across the town. In my books it rivals Alice Springs in Australia as the worst town I think I have ever visited. It is terrible. Fortunately we are only here for 24 hours to visit the world famous Nazca Lines.

We got off our very comfortable night bus (which severed hot food) this morning, checked into our hotel, which fortunatly is a few miles outside the centre and headed straight to the airport . We then took a small Cessna plane, which holds five people plus the pilot for 30 mins to see the various images from the air - the only way to see them properly. It was fantastic, the plane wobbled on take off but soon we were in clean air, there wasn't a cloud in the sky, which made visibility perfect. The only issue was motion sickness as the pilot swung and banked the plane around the various images in both directions, so photos could be taken from both sides of the plane. This led to a few people getting ill. Julie who gets motion sickness quite badly did really well, she held out until 5 minutes before we landed before a plastic bag was in need.

Some of the images weren't as big as I thought they might be, but fascinating to think that they were made between 900BC and AD600. No-one really knows what they were for, whether a message to the gods, an astronomical calendar, ritual walkways or an alien landing spot. We particularly liked the monkey image and the astronaut, who looks more like a gingerbread man . The area is a desert of sand, gravel and rocky mountains and we got a good view of about 20 animals and images. The heat was really picking up before by the time we landed and the air was ridicously dry but all well worth it at just 66USD each.

In the afternoon we took a trip to the Nazca cemetery at Chauchilla where pre-Nazca people buried their dead - we did question why it is called the Nazca cemetery. It is about 30km from Nazca out in the desert. On arrival it looks like the home of Luke Skywalker in Star Wars Episode III, I half expected to look up and see two moons. The wind howls all day long out here and the sun blisters. Hundreds if not thousands of human bones, accompanied by scraps of textiles and snatches of human hair, are haphazardly strewn about the desolate landscape. Looters over the years destroyed much of the tombs and took offerings that were in them until the site became protected. It is believed the site was used between AD1000 and AD1500.

What is left of about 10 tombs can be visited. These look like shallow graves with various bodies largely intact within with their slothes still on, many have hair that look like crude wigs. Some have babies, all the bones and particularly the the skulls bright white, all out in the open with their only protection being a wooden canvass overhead and a small wind breaker wall at one end. Julie described it as a 'freak show' and it is hard to argue. A very strange place.