At 4am in the morning, we disembarked our double-decker bus at Nazca after a night of swerving close to the ridges of the Andes, and headed for the hostel.
Deciding not to waste any time on sleep (not that we have had much…), we headed out again at 7am to the local airport for our flight over the renowned Nazca lines. The little aircraft made a shaky take-off and soon, we got a bird’s eye view of the designs as the aeroplane dropped, banked left and then right, and circled low above the figures.
“Look! Look! The dog!”
“Hey, and there´s the monkey! Can you see it? There! There!”
“Oh my, the condor and hummingbird are amazing!”
After 30 minutes, we landed back at the airport; our stomachs in a flip from the exhilaration and inadvertent vertigo.
At noon, we walked the dusty graveyard of Chauchilla that hosted the remains of the Inca tombs, and where bits of bones are strewn and clearly in sight.
The tombs displayed Inca mummies that were left behind by the graverobbers who found no value in them. The graverobbers plundered this grave site for precious Inca treasures to be sold on the black market. Now, this site is protected although other grave sites exist and graverobbery still rife; only now, they loot everything as mummies are valuable artefacts.
Orlando, our collectivo driver cum tour guide, related Nazca tales in his choppy English…
“You see, the graverobbers knowing grave here because over there is valley, meaning people live here. If people live, then must be grave. And why on higher part? See? See?! We standing higher than green valley over there? It is because when rain and river, the graves won’t be washing away”
The Inca mummies had their tendons cut to enable their limbs to be set into a foetal position. They are then dried in the hot sun and wrapped with raw cotton. In the tombs, they are placed facing East; the direction of the rising sun, along with their belongings and valuables for the next life.
Several times during Orlando´s excited narration, a loud stomach rumble interrupted, so that soon, we were headed back into town along the dusty track. Halfway back in the scorching sun, smoke bellied out of the bonet and Orlando screeched his brakes.
“Oh no, think it´s overheated!”
Orlando jabbed and poked at the exhausted engine without much luck. After a few more unsuccessful attempts of cooling the engine with water while it spat smoke back at us, Orlando sighed, wiped his forehead (probably because this would mean missing the World Cup match which we was racing back for) and hailed a collective for us back to town. We wished him the best of luck and left him our bottle of water. We have not heard from Orlando since.
We spent the rest of the slow afternoon in the little desert town strolling the streets, while 3 little Peruvian girls took to us and followed us at our heels. Finally, we sat with them at the town square chatting and taking pictures.
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