02/11 - Nazca

Our bus (Cruz del Sur again) left Paracas at 7:15am. They played a Cirque du Soleil performance, but I slept through most of it. The inter-city buses there were great-- double-deckers with more foot-room and reclining-room than an international flight... blanket, pillow, movie... and they feed you, too! All for about $27.

We arrived at the Nazca station around 11:30am. We got lunch from a cart across the road. She heaped our plates high with fried rice, spaghetti, and chicken legs, all smothered with creamy, greenish sauce. The enormous meal cost s/.8 ($3.15).


We wandered into the tour company at Hotel Alegría, and booked a flight over the Nazca Lines. They were nice enough to store our baggage and  let us use their courtyard & pool area for the day. It was gorgeous there. The photos I took are gone, so I grabbed one from their website.

They provided a mini-bus to the airport, and we went up in an Alas Peruanas Cessna. We had a pilot, a guide, and a British couple for company. There was a great photo of me sitting in the back seat of the plane, wearing the headset, getting ready for takeoff... but it was lost. We flew around the most popular figures of the Nazca Lines (Whale, Triangles, Trapezoids, Owl Man, Dog, Monkey, Hummingbird, Spider, Condor, Flamingo, Parrot, Tree, Hands). They are pretty damned impressive, but it is definitely hard to get a good idea of their massive scale from the airplane.(The "Hummingbird" is pictured here.)

After the flight, we walked and shopped Nazca a bit (Plaza de Armas pictured.) Then we relaxed in and around the pool, then had dinner & drinks at a local pub. I got a "Cuba Libre," which is rum & Coke, and it was super-weak, so I got a free rum shot. Then we caught our 10pm Cruz del Sur to Arequipa.