Day 4 - The mystical ancient desert shapes of the Nazca Lines!
 
The next day we headed towards the town of Nazca where the infamous Nazca lines exist, strange etched mystical shapes of spiders, monkeys, spacemen etc .. in the desert floor from over 2000 years ago. On route to the town we passed many old cars, battered & very overloaded trucks and the typical minute yellow taxi's, following the highway it was like we were on a road within an endless desert, it just seemed to go for miles and in many ways reminded us of our route through Death Valley! After some time the somewhat flat desert landscape heightened and soon we were cruising through rocky mountain gorges with the highway literally cut within the rocks. We stopped to view one which had the shape of a face which was pretty incredible and then on travelling further towards Nazca, the highest sand dune in the world, 'Cerro Blanco' at an incredible 2,078 metres was in front of us! Wow what a sand board that would be but no, we didn't want to climb to the top thank you!
 
That afternoon many of the group were set to do the flight over the Nazca lines. Unfortunately the price and also the 4 seater plane that took you over them meant that we declined this optional excursion! On route though we stopped at the platform built by the famous German lady Dr Maria Reiche whom, on a step ladder for most of her life spent 40 years studying these bizarre designs . We couldn't really see much, a sort of tree and a weird face type shape but the lines were so thin within the desert it didn't really do justice to what the rest of the group would see later from the air. I still couldn't really get my heard round these lines, many theories have been passed as to what they mean/how they came to materialise from the ancient Nazca civilisation, one theory is that they are some sort of vast astronomical pre-Inca calendar, another that they are lines of running contests..... all abit strange to say the least!
 
After paying our 1 sole for the experience we then headed to the town of Nazca and sat having lunch by the pool while the rest of the group got hurled about in the air over the Nazca's. I (mum also )would have loved to have done it if I could, not sure if Ads and Ian were that fussed but the group said it was fab and the views across the mountain desert were incredible also. Not an excursion for a claustrophobic though!
 
Later that day we went on a tour to the most bizarre cemetery of 'Chauchilla .' An interesting but eerie experience, here in the desert grave robbing huaqueros found and ransacked tombs they discovered of an ancient civilisation within the arid desert and what is left are the remains of many skulls, bones and actual mummies themselves. It was incredible to see, in these tombs our guide explained how the bodies would have been wrapped in the foetal position and mummified in cotton material covered in herbs/other substances to preserve the bodies, then placed so that they sat facing sunrise. Sitting in front of us were part mummified bodies, some even had the long hair the men of the village possessed still in almost perfect condition on their skulls, some still plaited, it was just bizarre. Seeing the children and infant bodies was quite hard to take in, we also learned that just 8 days previously archaeologists had found a new tomb and in front of us we could still see the ears, feet and skin of this ancient civilisation, no glass case or special vault existed to preserve this discovery, basically the tombs were exposed in the desert with a small weaved roof to protect them and that was it . Our guide explained that she had worked at the cemetery for 11 years and that what we saw now was a different story to what she saw then in that the exposed skin had now literally fallen off and without proper preservation the new mummies they had found would soon do the same. At this point, Barrys joke about what type of bad sunscreen they must have used was too much take in! We were so lucky though to have seen the latest find and it was bizarre to think that we were not in the deserts of Egypt at this point but overall I still found the whole thing quite a disturbing but intriguing experience to say the least.
 
In addition our guide explained more to us of the land too, incredibly in this harsh climate we passed small desert holes with owls in and saw how fertile the harsh landscape was, in that with just a little bit of water the land became incredibly green and was great for growth of many crops, mainly potatoes in the region. On seeing many skulls, bones and graves we then were taken to a local ceramic factory . Visions of the lacquer factory tours came rushing back from Vietnam and we were some what dreading it but actually it was really interesting and incredible to see the primitive way in which the pottery is made, they even finish it with the shine by using the oil on their faces rubbed on an obsidian stone!! Finally it was then to a gold factory where a really funny retired local miner showed us again, in the most primitive of ways, how they extract gold here. I am not sure if the 5-6 hours of rocking on a plank over a large well type pit just to form the powder for gold extraction was something I could see happening in the western world!
 
After a cheap local chicken and chips and big piece of chocolate cake(thanks again Tom!) we were then all packed for the dreaded night bus to Arequipa. High in the mountains near the Bolivian border but 9 hours away this meant that an overnight ride was needed.....