Nazca

After having seen the Islas Ballestas, the desert, Pisco, the pelicans and so on I took the bus to Ica, from where I would go on to Nazca. What did sound like a simple plan - and as we all know these are said to be the best - turned out to become quite difficult. To start with, the bus from Pisco did not leave on time, what would make it more dificult to reach the last bus in Ica to go to Nazca. Well, the main reason for this became clear to me when I saw a mechanic climbing under the bus swearing heavily and complaining loudly about the driver. The driver on the other hand was complaining about the bus’ clutch that did not seem to work properly. Well, finally they agreed on something (just to try it how it is, I guess) and we left for Ica. At least we tried to leave - we got as far as 15min from the bus depot when we got stuck in the middle of a crossing. Yep, and there we stood, waiting for another bus to come and pick us up. Actually it was not that boring waiting for almost one hour because we had some kind of street preacher on board who kept on tortouring (or entertaining?) us with stories about his god-forsaken life and Jesus and so on... Oh my god, it can be very hard to stay patient sometimes and I didn´t buy anything from the stuff he wanted to sell afterwards...

When we finally went on in a new (?) bus I noticed a funny thing: All busses here are imported from Asia, quite old and normally in a miserable condition (see above). But this paticular one seemed to be imported that hastily that they didn´t even bother to remove the city-bus map from Tokyo or whatever it was...

- Next stop: Tokyo Central Station! -

When we finally arrived in Ica (two hours late) I had to find the bus to Nazca. Well, it turned out not to be exactly a bus what I had to take - it was a so called “Colectivo” - a normal car, just like a taxi that goes between cities, in that case 250km. The special thing is, that these cars aren´t normal cars - they’re huuuuuge American ones, Buicks, Chevrolets, whatever and they fit in 8 persons! Err, yes, they have to fit in 8 persons - at least they almost did and I even almost managed to sleep between the 3 other passengers on the rear bank... And even the small fight between the driver and another passenger turned out agreeable when (after some insults) they found out that they actually were cousins and kept on chatting for the rest of the 3 hours about their relatives...

In the end we made it to Nazca. Luckily. I had the best Pizza I´ve had for years and went straight to bed. The next morning I witnessed Senegals glourious victory over France in the World Cup (they show it here between 3am and 6.30am - depending on the game!) and finally set off for seeing the Nazca Lines. These are strange “drawings” in the desert plains near Nazca - huge pictures of geometric figures and animals, hundreds or thousands of years old and highly misterious. Nobody actually knows what they are or who made them but they´re quite spectacular - some are up to a 300m long! To see them (or actually notice that they are drawings) you have to over-fly them in a plane and so would I. It´s funny, because there are so many theories on what they might be, my favourite one is Erich von Daenikens idea about a landing space for extra-terrestrian spaceships. A more likeable one is Maria Reiches theory about being a giant astronomic calender. Whatever, maybe some ancient people just had a few too much and a good time out in the desert afterwards, who knows? Make up your own ideas - here are the pics...

- That´s supposed to be a bird... -

- That´s spider, a dog and humming bird (185m long!). -

- This “tree” is a small one - but you get an idea how big these drawings really are... -

- The plane. And we didn´t even need that fire-extinguisher in the foreground... -

After having seen the lines, we went on to a huge cemetery in the desert (well, where else?). It was really amazingly huge - about 3000 mummies have been found there over the years and it comprises an area of 4km². What you can see there today isn´t much - tomb raiders have stolen anything that might be of interest at the beginning of the century, but still there are heaps of mummies and human bones lying arround in the burning sun - just as they were left by the plunderers. Some typical tumbs have been restored and can be visited today.