Nazca

At first impression Nazca is a dirty desert town with not much going on. We stayed about 10 minutes out of the city at a nice hotel with a pool – which was much needed in the heat that can only be described as suffocating. It was Easter weekend while we were here so there was a lot of
Peruvian tourists and families out enjoying the holidays. We took a tour of Cemetery of Chauchilla which is a pre Inca burial site where dried mummies are presented in tombs. The sand surrounding the paths that connect the tombs are littered with human bones. The tombs
themselves are protected with wind breaks and a sun shade – there is little else to protect or preserve these mummies and from a European perspective little respect for the dead. Due to the intense heat and lack of water after death the mummies were left out in the sun to be naturally dried, preserving the hair, nails and some skin.
Finally near the coast, at low altitude and in the heat we were treated with a delicious lunch of fish followed by a drive out to the view tower to see the mysterious Nazca Lines. These lines form a network of 800 lines, 300 geometric figures and 70 animal and plant drawings. Each figure is one continuous line and no one knows how they got there, by whom or why.