We got another Cruz del Sur bus from Ica to Nasca and it was only around 2 hours. We had previously booked a night bus to Cusco for the same evening, as we arrive at Nasca in the afternoon. We figured this would give us enough time to go to the viewing tower- the mirador at the Nasca lines. We didn't want to spend money flying over the lines, which is advised if you want to see all the lines clearly. We are happy enough to go to the tower and look at them from there. When we arrived at the Cruz del Sur terminal, we had our big rucksacks with us, so as we're flying with them to Cusco tonight, we asked if we could check our packs in. They agreed, so this was handy, as it meant we didn't have to lug them to the mirador.

Once we'd dropped off our bags we started to wander around Nasca and find out how we could do the lines independently . We saw loads of agencies offering flights over the lines, but not much information about doing them independently. We eventually came across a tourist information place and asked them. They confirmed that we could take a local bus to the mirador and we went off to find the office. We actually ended up back where we started as the office was 2 doors down from the Cruz del Sur office. I can't remember the name of the company, but the charge was only $3 soles each to get to the mirador and there was a bus leaving in around 15 minutes. We waited for the bus and got on it, we found out that they also did a bus from Ica, which would have been much cheaper than Cruz del Sur, however they weren't as nice.

We were on the bus for around 40 minutes and we drove back the way we came through the barren desert landscape. We didn't know where to get off as it looked like it was in the middle of nowhere, but it was the first stop, so a few tourists and us got off the bus at the mirador. It was such a long stretch of straight road, it seemed to go on forever . Once we got out at the mirador, we could see the tower, there was a queue of a few people. We crossed the road to join the queue and had to purchase a ticket to go up the mirador. The price was all of $2 soles each, so it was dirt cheap. They allow 10 people to go up the tower at any one time, so we had to end up going up with a group of French people and their tour guide. We chose not to have a tour guide as it was pretty self explanatory looking at the lines!

We walked up the tower and I felt like we were going up the Eiffel Tower, but only less of an iconic tower. We climbed a fair few flights of stairs and reached the top of the viewing platform. There are only two of the symbols that you can see from the mirador and one is the 'El Mano' the hand, and the other is 'el arbol', the tree. We looked out to the left and saw the hand and this symbol you could actually make out clearly. The lines are not etched that deeply into the ground, which we thought they would be. Then we looked to the right and tried to look at the tree . I don't know if it was just me, but I couldn't clearly work out that it was actually a tree, it just looked like squiggly lines to me. John agreed with me and we weren't really that impressed by the lines. Perhaps if we'd have taken a flight over the lines, we'd have felt differently about them. We stayed up the tower for about 10 minutes trying to figure out the tree and took a few pictures, however even in the pictures you couldn't really work out that it was a tree. There are around 12 Nasca lines including a humming bird, monkey, spider, so I think they the ones you can see from the mirador are not that impressive compared to say the humming bird. So I'd say if you're going to do the Nasca lines, the best way to see them is to take the flight. That's my personal opinion, but at least I can say we've been to the Nasca lines.

After we'd seen enough, we came back down the tower and looked at the stalls. They were selling pebbles and stones of all the Nasca lines and other tacky tourist stuff . We didn't buy anything and promptly left. As we're in the middle of nowhere, we did wonder how we were going to get back to Nasca as there weren't any local busses passing. There were many lorries passing us by, and lots of cars. At one point, I did think about hitch hiking back to Nasca, but luckily after about half an hour, there was a local bus that was coming. John flagged it down, and it did stop, much to our relief. We hopped on the bus and went back to Nasca. We still had time to kill before our night bus, so we decided to find somewhere to eat. While walking around the streets, we came across a few carnival floats of children all parading around, so we stopped to watch and admire the clothes they were dressed in. We then found a restaurant and dragged it out for as long as we could there. Afterwards, we went back to wait at the Cruz del Sur office for our bus to Cusco.