Nasca

74°56'59"W
14°50'55"S
WhereBlogger!

Our visit to Nasca was very efficient. Within two hours of getting off our bus from Ica, we were climbing onboard a little 6-seat plane to fly over the Nasca lines.

We paid 45USD each for the flight, which was a bit lower than we had been prepared for. So all good. Included in that price was transport to and from the airport, in addition to the flight itself. We chatted with some other tourists about prices and things, they had been sold a slightly more expensive flight with the promise that the pilot would fly at least twice over each major geoglyph, so people on both sides could see.

As we've begun to notice, Peruvians are friendly, helpful and quite dishonest when it comes to sales. They will say anything to make a sale. The pitch made to those other tourists was one example: we got the same treatment, without paying extra. Another example from Nasca appeared that evening as we looked for dinner: a man on the street enticed us into a pizzeria with promises of free pisco sour, but when it came time to order, we were told that he didn't even work there. No free drinks. A few minutes later we saw him ushering tourists to a neighboring table.

The flight itself, over the Nasca Lines, was great. Our plane was a 6-seater, carrying 5 tourists and a pilot. We flew over many famous figures, doing both clockwise and counterclockwise spirals over each so everyone would have a good view. I loved it; Ewelina joked that the lines were all a big con. We keep forgetting to look up how the age of the lines was determined, so for all I know, she could be right. I'm pretty sure this glyph at least, is more recent.

After roughly 30 minutes in the air, we landed and waited for our promised taxi back to town. The wait lasted about as long as the flight itself, but eventually the same little boy-racer car pulled up and a woman and two children got out. The woman and one of the children squeezed into the front passenger seat, we got in the back and the second child joined us - along with his mother, who had been our contact at the airport. Once the little car, carrying all seven of us, got moving, the woman sitting next to me undid her top and proceeded to feed her baby. Truly a Peruvian taxi ride!

After fetching our packs from the travel agency, we decided not to stay the night in Nasca, but went to the expensive Cruz Del Sur bus terminal and bought tickets on a night bus to Arequipa.

Then we just wandered around town, visiting the town square, bars, the dishonest pizzeria, a shop selling Pisco, and a bar which had no internet for guests, but music videos on their big screen were played off Youtube...

Around ten we piled into our fancy bus and headed onwards.