Upon exiting the bus station, I was immediately inundated with offers to see the lines, rides to the airport, and so on. I jumped into what I was told was a taxi that would take me over to the airport. It turns out that the people who took me worked for one of the air-tour companies and they took me to their office near the airport. After a quick "disagreement" about what they told me and so on, I started to walk to the airport, which was about 15 minutes away. :-0 Fortunately a real taxi went by and I hoped in for a quick ride to the front of the airport.
Inside the airport are ~11 companies offering various tours on various types of aircraft. I priced out a few of the companies and settled on a 45 minute tour in a four-person Cessna-type plane. After watching a video for a few minutes, I was off to see the lines from the air.
The Nazca Lines are a series of massive drawings on the desert floor. They are believed to be between 2200 and 1400 years old. The odd thing is that they are best viewed from the air as, on the ground, they just look like wide stripes of white earth between the reddish rocks of the surrounding area. There are a variety of theories as to why they are there; everything from alien landing strips to religious symbols. For me, they are just another curiosity in our curious world.
I'll put up some of the best photos but, as you can guess, taking pictures of the desert floor in an airplane circling rapidly is difficult at best. Here's one of my favorites, the hummingbird (the nose is pointed up in this photo):
...the monkey:
...the spider:
...and of course, the world-famous spaceman/astronaut:
After the brief flight, I went back to the center of Nazca and ate at a really great rotisserie chicken place and got back on the bus for the six-plus-hour return back to Lima. Sadly, one day after my visit, one of the Nazca-air-tour planes crashed. Seven people died. My heart goes out to their families.
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