I woke up early in Huacachina with hopes of capturing a photo of the Oasis - just like the one depicted on the 50-sol note. I’ve always enjoyed visiting the sites highlighted on a nation’s currency, and I think this is a great tourism campaign strategy. Sadly, I don’t think the US has really caught on to the concept, since our currency tour could be completed with a visit to Washington DC, and a quick trip to Philadelphia if you want to see Independence Hall, which is featured on the 100 dollar bill.
I suspect most readers don’t read my blog for political ravings, but if I was President, I’d recommend we represent more national sights on our currency than just government buildings in DC. At least our quarters are catering to tourism with the states and parks series. Even if they don’t cater to the tourist, who have to figure out how much are coins are worth, since none of them have their numeric value specified. I can imagine a tourist struggling to understand English, who now has to figure out how much a dime is worth, and why this small coin is actually worth more than the larger nickel and penny.
But I digress, back in Huacachina I awoke to fog! I should have suspected it, since fog is a daily occurrence of winter days on the Peruvian coast, but I was moving inland, and I’d had such good luck avoiding it on my trip. Unfortunately, this time it kept me from my goal of capturing a shot of the Oasis, so you’ll just have to Google ‘Huacachina’ to see photos that mimic the view depicted on the 50-sol note.
As the city slept, I took a quiet stroll around the Oasis shrouded in fog, and then caught a cab into Ica. Unlike Huacachina, Ica was awake with morning commuters, and the coughing, sputtering exhaust of diesel commerce. The bus terminal was just off a main road and vacant, except for two other groups of travelers. One was a group of four guys representing the classic ‘ugly Americans’ as they loudly recapped clouded memories of drunken brawls and struggles to get back into their hostels after hours. The one that had started the fights had a nice shiner developing, and proudly noted that he couldn’t remember any of the details. The other travelers were a quiet pair of young ladies that looked like a gap year duo doing some back-packing before they entered the 9 to 5 life. We’d all just came from Huacachina, but the groups kept to themselves, and then loaded the same bus for Nazca.
Our bus took us south and higher into the rolling foothills below the high plains of the Andes. We broke out of the coastal fog, as it was being burned away by the rising sun. Also left behind was the sand; the rolling hills were now covered with more iron-rich red gravel. The hills were barren of vegetation and any other signs of life, but, when we descended into the valleys, they were alive with agriculture and villages.
I had read up on the Nazca lines before departing, so I knew we would drive across the Pampa Colorado (Red Plain) where most of the geoglyphs were located, and I wanted to take note of what it looked like at ground level so I’d have a reference from the airplane during my fly over. The geoglyphs are large drawings that stretch over the 500 square kilometer plain. They were made between 900 BC and 600 AD. The most shocking thing to me was that that the drawings are still visible and undamaged by weathering , which means the plain has changed very little in the last 2000 plus years. To create the lines and drawings, the Paracas and Nazca people simply moved the surface rocks to the sides, exposing the lighter gypsum-rich soil below. At ground level, the minute change is hardly noticeable, and the plain and natural gravel are so consistent and level that it looks almost like it was man-made, as if someone had leveled a construction site and put down gravel for a mega-mall parking lot. Rain has broken up small sections with some drainage gullies, and a few small outcroppings of hills break up the plain, but it still doesn’t look natural.
From the sky, the full scale and design of the man-made artwork can be seen. And, with the modern conveniences of satellite photography and online mapping sites, you can actually the geoglyphs from right where you’re sitting. I did just that before my trip, and to be honest, I probably could have called it good with that online tour alone, but thought it would be a shame to have driven past and not checked it off my life’s to-do list.
There are many theories on why the geoglyphs were created, but the most commonly accepted is that they were religious symbols and part of a large open ‘temple’ covering the entire plain. The Nazca culture and religion was fittingly focused on water, as the desert society would quickly perish without it. Evidence of offerings have been found at small altars across the plain where the geoglyphs are found. Also, most of the drawings are of animals, since nature-worship is common throughout Peruvian cultures. Typically, each animal represents a particular element in nature (i.e. snake or fish for the sea, cougar for the land and condor for the air). Conspiracy theorists like to tie the geoglyphs with attempts to communicate with extraterrestrial visitors; other theories have tied them to astronomy, but most of these theories have been discounted.
We arrived at the Nazca bus terminal and, since I had booked my tour in advance, a company representative met me as I got off the bus. We hiked down the road, and I waited in his office a few minutes before catching a ride to the airport. The airport was tiny, but you could tell that tourism was bringing in a lot of money because the airport was very nice and filled with foreigners. Their system of moving tourists through started with paying a ‘departure’ tax, even though we all come right back. From there, we moved to the first waiting area where a NatGeo special about the lines played on a loop. After seeing the video at least twice, we were ushered through airport security and into the final waiting area.
I was flying in a single-prop, four-seat bird with a woman from Germany. She spoke impeccable English, with a slight Californian accent (Valley girl, not Schwarzenegger), and had been in Peru teaching English, but was about to head home. After our pilots gave us a small graphic map of the geoglyphs we would fly over and briefed the route and plan, we boarded and quickly departed. We flew over the majority of the plain and did a figure eight over ten of the animal geoglyphs so we could take pictures and view them from each side of the aircraft. Fortunately, neither of us was prone to airsickness.
After our return to the ground, I had lunch and then met up with a new guide and two other tourists to head out to the ancient Nazca cemetery. The Chauchilla Cemetery was in use from around 200 AD to 1000 AD and then largely ransacked by looters over the years; the site is still littered with bones, shards of pottery, and fragments of other burial trinkets. It was ‘rediscovered’ in 1920, and further excavated in the 1980’s to illustrate their original burial layouts. The site has a series of burial sites with mummies, skulls and trinkets set up in each grave. Each mummy is wrapped in a seated fetal position, arms crossed over their knees, facing east to the rising sun. Beside them are family members and/or possessions, offerings and provisions for the afterlife. Plus, any extra bones and trinkets that were found on the cemetery grounds and were in good shape, but weren’t part of a ‘display’ grave.
What is most impressive about the cemetery is the fact that the graves and mummies have been on display in the open air ‘display’ with nothing more than over-head cover for fifteen years without rapidly decomposing. Apparently the desert air is so consistently dry that they aren’t decomposing any faster due to the exposure as they would in a climate controlled display case in museum. As the Lonely Planet says, this site “will satisfy any urges you have to see ancient bones, skulls and mummies” so, after visiting half of the tombs, I was ready to go. Interestingly, since Peruvians have a history of ancestor worship, each city actually has a ‘mascot’ mummy. These mummies are brought out and paraded around town on special occasions, and some people believe the remains of the first Inca were moved from Cusco to Machu Picchu for religious ceremonies. I would be visiting Machu Picchu in a few days, but at my next stop, Arequipa, the local mummy - Juanita, the ice princess - is the highlight of the local museum.
However, before I headed out on my overnight bus, my tour made a few more stops at local back alley shops/museums. This part of the tour reminded me a bit of tours in India, where you often get dragged to shops, where the tour operators get kickbacks for bringing in tourists. The first shop was a pottery maker, who uses all the original methods and natural dyes, paints and polishing methods that the Nazca use. The family has been recognized by the Peruvian government for their efforts to identify and preserve the ancient traditions and techniques, and tourist can buy the work in the neighboring store.
Tourism is Peru’s third largest industry, after fishing and mining, and in Nazca it is the economy. This was made very apparent as I wondered around town before grabbing dinner and returning to the bus terminal. The central plaza pays homage to the Nazca Lines, another small plaza near the bus terminal has a long mural highlighting all the tourist sites that surround the city, and each bus stop on the main drag has one of the geoglyphs carved in the walls. The only other industry in the valley is farming and even the ancient karez network (underground canal system), which still supports irrigation today, is a tourist attraction. The pervasive advertising had me convinced I should have stayed longer, but I had a bus to catch.
When I returned to the bus stop I ran into the same two groups of tourists that had left Ica with me in the morning. Buses are dependably late in Peru, so as we all waited for our bus to Arequipa, I chatted with the two girls and learned they were from Canada. We compared travel notes and besides their start on Easter Island, before arriving in Lima, our itineraries were pretty close to identical. Our route is so popular in fact, that it is often referred to as the ‘Gringo Trail.’ I was scheduled for a bus departing two hours earlier than theirs, and I was mocking them for their long wait; until their bus arrived before mine. Then, I was apologetically asking if they could use their Spanish skills to find out if my bus was coming at all. Fortunately, it arrived shortly thereafter, and we were all off for the next stop on the Gringo Trail.
I suspect most readers don’t read my blog for political ravings, but if I was President, I’d recommend we represent more national sights on our currency than just government buildings in DC. At least our quarters are catering to tourism with the states and parks series. Even if they don’t cater to the tourist, who have to figure out how much are coins are worth, since none of them have their numeric value specified. I can imagine a tourist struggling to understand English, who now has to figure out how much a dime is worth, and why this small coin is actually worth more than the larger nickel and penny.
But I digress, back in Huacachina I awoke to fog! I should have suspected it, since fog is a daily occurrence of winter days on the Peruvian coast, but I was moving inland, and I’d had such good luck avoiding it on my trip. Unfortunately, this time it kept me from my goal of capturing a shot of the Oasis, so you’ll just have to Google ‘Huacachina’ to see photos that mimic the view depicted on the 50-sol note.
As the city slept, I took a quiet stroll around the Oasis shrouded in fog, and then caught a cab into Ica. Unlike Huacachina, Ica was awake with morning commuters, and the coughing, sputtering exhaust of diesel commerce. The bus terminal was just off a main road and vacant, except for two other groups of travelers. One was a group of four guys representing the classic ‘ugly Americans’ as they loudly recapped clouded memories of drunken brawls and struggles to get back into their hostels after hours. The one that had started the fights had a nice shiner developing, and proudly noted that he couldn’t remember any of the details. The other travelers were a quiet pair of young ladies that looked like a gap year duo doing some back-packing before they entered the 9 to 5 life. We’d all just came from Huacachina, but the groups kept to themselves, and then loaded the same bus for Nazca.
Our bus took us south and higher into the rolling foothills below the high plains of the Andes. We broke out of the coastal fog, as it was being burned away by the rising sun. Also left behind was the sand; the rolling hills were now covered with more iron-rich red gravel. The hills were barren of vegetation and any other signs of life, but, when we descended into the valleys, they were alive with agriculture and villages.
I had read up on the Nazca lines before departing, so I knew we would drive across the Pampa Colorado (Red Plain) where most of the geoglyphs were located, and I wanted to take note of what it looked like at ground level so I’d have a reference from the airplane during my fly over. The geoglyphs are large drawings that stretch over the 500 square kilometer plain. They were made between 900 BC and 600 AD. The most shocking thing to me was that that the drawings are still visible and undamaged by weathering , which means the plain has changed very little in the last 2000 plus years. To create the lines and drawings, the Paracas and Nazca people simply moved the surface rocks to the sides, exposing the lighter gypsum-rich soil below. At ground level, the minute change is hardly noticeable, and the plain and natural gravel are so consistent and level that it looks almost like it was man-made, as if someone had leveled a construction site and put down gravel for a mega-mall parking lot. Rain has broken up small sections with some drainage gullies, and a few small outcroppings of hills break up the plain, but it still doesn’t look natural.
From the sky, the full scale and design of the man-made artwork can be seen. And, with the modern conveniences of satellite photography and online mapping sites, you can actually the geoglyphs from right where you’re sitting. I did just that before my trip, and to be honest, I probably could have called it good with that online tour alone, but thought it would be a shame to have driven past and not checked it off my life’s to-do list.
There are many theories on why the geoglyphs were created, but the most commonly accepted is that they were religious symbols and part of a large open ‘temple’ covering the entire plain. The Nazca culture and religion was fittingly focused on water, as the desert society would quickly perish without it. Evidence of offerings have been found at small altars across the plain where the geoglyphs are found. Also, most of the drawings are of animals, since nature-worship is common throughout Peruvian cultures. Typically, each animal represents a particular element in nature (i.e. snake or fish for the sea, cougar for the land and condor for the air). Conspiracy theorists like to tie the geoglyphs with attempts to communicate with extraterrestrial visitors; other theories have tied them to astronomy, but most of these theories have been discounted.
We arrived at the Nazca bus terminal and, since I had booked my tour in advance, a company representative met me as I got off the bus. We hiked down the road, and I waited in his office a few minutes before catching a ride to the airport. The airport was tiny, but you could tell that tourism was bringing in a lot of money because the airport was very nice and filled with foreigners. Their system of moving tourists through started with paying a ‘departure’ tax, even though we all come right back. From there, we moved to the first waiting area where a NatGeo special about the lines played on a loop. After seeing the video at least twice, we were ushered through airport security and into the final waiting area.
I was flying in a single-prop, four-seat bird with a woman from Germany. She spoke impeccable English, with a slight Californian accent (Valley girl, not Schwarzenegger), and had been in Peru teaching English, but was about to head home. After our pilots gave us a small graphic map of the geoglyphs we would fly over and briefed the route and plan, we boarded and quickly departed. We flew over the majority of the plain and did a figure eight over ten of the animal geoglyphs so we could take pictures and view them from each side of the aircraft. Fortunately, neither of us was prone to airsickness.
After our return to the ground, I had lunch and then met up with a new guide and two other tourists to head out to the ancient Nazca cemetery. The Chauchilla Cemetery was in use from around 200 AD to 1000 AD and then largely ransacked by looters over the years; the site is still littered with bones, shards of pottery, and fragments of other burial trinkets. It was ‘rediscovered’ in 1920, and further excavated in the 1980’s to illustrate their original burial layouts. The site has a series of burial sites with mummies, skulls and trinkets set up in each grave. Each mummy is wrapped in a seated fetal position, arms crossed over their knees, facing east to the rising sun. Beside them are family members and/or possessions, offerings and provisions for the afterlife. Plus, any extra bones and trinkets that were found on the cemetery grounds and were in good shape, but weren’t part of a ‘display’ grave.
What is most impressive about the cemetery is the fact that the graves and mummies have been on display in the open air ‘display’ with nothing more than over-head cover for fifteen years without rapidly decomposing. Apparently the desert air is so consistently dry that they aren’t decomposing any faster due to the exposure as they would in a climate controlled display case in museum. As the Lonely Planet says, this site “will satisfy any urges you have to see ancient bones, skulls and mummies” so, after visiting half of the tombs, I was ready to go. Interestingly, since Peruvians have a history of ancestor worship, each city actually has a ‘mascot’ mummy. These mummies are brought out and paraded around town on special occasions, and some people believe the remains of the first Inca were moved from Cusco to Machu Picchu for religious ceremonies. I would be visiting Machu Picchu in a few days, but at my next stop, Arequipa, the local mummy - Juanita, the ice princess - is the highlight of the local museum.
However, before I headed out on my overnight bus, my tour made a few more stops at local back alley shops/museums. This part of the tour reminded me a bit of tours in India, where you often get dragged to shops, where the tour operators get kickbacks for bringing in tourists. The first shop was a pottery maker, who uses all the original methods and natural dyes, paints and polishing methods that the Nazca use. The family has been recognized by the Peruvian government for their efforts to identify and preserve the ancient traditions and techniques, and tourist can buy the work in the neighboring store.
Tourism is Peru’s third largest industry, after fishing and mining, and in Nazca it is the economy. This was made very apparent as I wondered around town before grabbing dinner and returning to the bus terminal. The central plaza pays homage to the Nazca Lines, another small plaza near the bus terminal has a long mural highlighting all the tourist sites that surround the city, and each bus stop on the main drag has one of the geoglyphs carved in the walls. The only other industry in the valley is farming and even the ancient karez network (underground canal system), which still supports irrigation today, is a tourist attraction. The pervasive advertising had me convinced I should have stayed longer, but I had a bus to catch.
When I returned to the bus stop I ran into the same two groups of tourists that had left Ica with me in the morning. Buses are dependably late in Peru, so as we all waited for our bus to Arequipa, I chatted with the two girls and learned they were from Canada. We compared travel notes and besides their start on Easter Island, before arriving in Lima, our itineraries were pretty close to identical. Our route is so popular in fact, that it is often referred to as the ‘Gringo Trail.’ I was scheduled for a bus departing two hours earlier than theirs, and I was mocking them for their long wait; until their bus arrived before mine. Then, I was apologetically asking if they could use their Spanish skills to find out if my bus was coming at all. Fortunately, it arrived shortly thereafter, and we were all off for the next stop on the Gringo Trail.
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