After re-visiting La Paz, Copacabana and Arequipa, our journey continued on to Nazca in the South of Peru. Our bus was late arriving into Arequipa, as there was a major snowstorm in the highlands of Peru which delays all traffic into Arequipa by at least 12 hours. Peru sits in the tropics and despite this it experiences genuine winter months from June to September where the temperatures fall and it is quite cold, and not just from altitude.
The town of Nazca feels like a proper working Peruvian town and is quite a contrast to both Arequipa and Cusco where both city centres seem to have been taken over by the tourist industry and locals live and work outside the city centres. Nazca retains a limited amount of its old colonial buildings, but is largely a city of low rise buildings, most not finished as in the traditional Peruvian style loose iron rods protrude out of the wall and onto to the roofs, in the pretence that additional floors are going to be built. There are some tax advantages in this pretence of incomplete buildings.
The big draw in Nazca is of course the Nazca lines. There is a small airport in Nazca with many companies offering flights over the Nazca Lines for USD50 for a short one hour flight. Realistically flying over the lines is the only way to appreciate their scale and to see many of the hieroglyphs and other lines. Often there are straight lines that overlap and cross many of the more traditional hieroglyphs. It is unclear what the lines represent, but many of them have been there for nearly 2,000 years. Some theories state that they are astronomical symbols used to communicate with other worlds. The greatest authority on the Nazca civilisation was the German Maria Rieche, other commentators include the populist writer, Erich von Däniken, who thought they were for runways for alien spaceships. Whatever their purpose, the Nazca Lines are unique, and when one looks at the closely from the Pan American Highway, which crosses the desert, they are very shallow indentations of only a few centimetres in the desert sand, that have remarkably remained intact for nearly 2,000 years.
The hieroglyphs have become classic designs, with for example the monkey’s tail, which is a spiral has become one of the iconic symbols of Peru, used in much of the country’s marketing. Other classic designs include the hummingbird and condor which you see everywhere across Peru in jewellery and other tourist artefacts.
Nearby the Nazca Lines is the temple complex of Cahuachi, a religious complex used by the Nazca Civilisation. The complex is a series of adobe temples in the desert, similar in some ways to the later Chan Chan in Northern Peru. Today the site is only beginning to be excavated and restored as the desert sand buried much of the buildings. Today some four pyramids have been partially uncovered, and there are still many others to be re-discovered. The site is pretty remote and requires your own personal guide and transport to visit.
In the town of Nazca there is small museum containing some of the pottery and textiles of the Nazca Civilisation. While the museum is dusty and somewhat old fashioned, some of the exhibits clearly demonstrate that the Nazca civilisation was pretty advanced for its time, before it was overwhelmed by the surrounding civilisations and then eventually the Incas.
Further up the coast is the backpacker resort of Huacachina a small oasis near the town of Ica. Huacachina has a small lake in amongst some enormous sand dunes. Over recent years the town has developed into an adventure centre where the main excitement is riding on the sand dunes in dune buggies, where the drivers compete to drive on an adrenalin fuelled race up and down the sand dunes. Some of the driving is questionable to say the least, but the experience up and down the sand dunes is pretty awesome. The other big adventure experience is sand boarding down the sand dunes. Most first timers will effectively body surf down the sand dunes face first, while some will attempt to stand.. The sand is fairly course so it is hard to get up much speed down hill on the boards.
The town of Ica is one of the homes to Peru’s pisco and wine industry. Pisco is Peru’s national drink and is made from sweet grapes. The local wines are very sweet. There are a number of bodegas that offer tours, including tastings of pisco and the local wines.
The final classic destination in this stretch of Peru’s Southern Coastal Region is Paracas near the town of Pisco. Paracas principal drawing point is the Ballestas Islands, a group of islands that have become a major sanctuary for sea birds and marine life. The number of birds nesting on the islands is monumental and the smell of guano equally so. In some ways the islands are called the mini Galapagos and certainly as a wildlife sanctuary, the description has some merit.
In amongst all the sea birds like the Peruvian Boobies, cormorants, terns and skuas, the most charismatic birds are the Humbolt Penguins with their distinctive gait and waddle.
In addition to all the birds, the islands are also home to a colony of sea lions, which can be seen bobbing up and down in the surrounding sea or simply lounging on the rocks. There are other sea mammals too and we saw a pod of several dolphins swimming just at the edge of Paracas harbour.
On the shore above the cliffs of the peninsular is an ancient pre-Inca carving of a candelabra on the rock face. Unlike the Nazca lines this is carved into the rock so is physically more stable. The candelabra acts as a key marker on the coastline for the harbour in Paracas bay. The surrounding countryside is a very dry desert, with many different coloured sands – originally it was under the sea so has many different sediments giving the varied colours.
Date: 22/07/2018 to 26/07/2018