Dusty, Lusty, and Musty

When we last left our intrepid explorador, he was heading out in search of some Lima nightlife. Multiple pickpocketing warnings, a tour guide´s poor recommendation, and the fact that it was a Tuesday, all conspired against me getting into anything too exciting that night. Plus, I had to get up at the crack of dawn for an eight hour bus ride across the Peruvian desert to the dusty little town of Nasca.

What can one say about spending that much time on a bus? Sure, the scenery was breathtaking, but after several hours the majesty started to wear off, as did the charm of the group of pale Brits sitting behind me. Now normally, I find English people delightful. Really, I do. Their cute little accents, their cunning turns of phrase, their shameless alcoholism, it´s all good. But these six in particular...ugh. They were so snarky and dismissive of everything. It was like sitting in front of a bunch of Sarah Palins. Only less attractive. If nothing is as good as it is at home, then why bother traveling? But enough about them. I can´t stand complaining, so I won´t do it here.

Here in Nasca, I´m staying in a budget hostal [sic] called the Maisson [sic]Suisse. It´s clean, comfortable, they have a pool, and the staff is cordial, if not all that friendly. Of course, I´m enjoying the privacy after Lima. When I didn´t check in with Eloiza before going out Tuesday night, she was worried that the perperas she had warned me about had got me. What are perperas, you ask? Near as I could tell, she was describing some sort of dangerous sluts that lure unsuspecting young naifs like me away from their money. I should have been so lucky.

Anyways, Nasca! Well, the story goes that when commercial aircraft first started flying over this part of Peru, they noticed giant designs etched in the desert landscape.




They´re practically invisible from the ground, so you get into a tiny C-130 and swoop and swerve around in the air, trying not to vomit while taking the best pictures you can.



The lines were formed by moving the darker sand on the surface to the side, exposing lighter sand underneath. Because it never rains here, the lines have survived for thousands of years. What they don´t know is why they´re there in the first place, especially since without the ability to fly, the artists wouldn´t have been able to see their work. Theories range from extraterrestrial runways to charts of subterranean water sources, from astronomical calendar to seismic map. The most commonly accepted are that they were ceremonial sites of the Nasca people. This is borne out by similar designs found on Nasca pottery.

These pictures don´t really give you a sense of how big they are, so I´ve included this one for scale.


That´s a double-decker, four-axle bus. Some of the designs are hundreds of feet long, and there are over seventy different geoglyphs; lines, triangles, trapezoids, animals and plants.

The discovery of the lines prompted a surge in archaeology in the area, and they have since learned a lot about the Nasca people (300BCE-700CE). I went to a museum in town to learn more about human head trophies, pre-Incan aqueducts, intentional cranial deformation and the like, but when I heard a couple of the curators practicing their English ("Ay ahm go-eeng choppeeng guit maye mahm aht de mole.") I decided to take the opportunity to practice my Spanish.


Carolina, Cathy, and I talked for hours about all sorts of things, and I probably would have spent the day there, but I had booked a private tour of the Chauchilla Cemetery.


Dozens of tombs, filled with mummies of all shapes and sizes, it was a pretty fascinating look into the lives of these people.


Check out the dreads on this guy:


And for the ladies, here´s a baby mummy.


Awwwwwww....

Remember that cranial deformation I mentioned earlier? Seems a long, narrow head was a mark of beauty among the Nasca, so when they were first born, and their skullbones hadn´t fused together yet, Nasca babies had blocks of wood attached to the sides of their heads with cloth. I´m not sure if you can see it here , but look how the forehead is so much wider than the rest of the skull.


Freaky, right?

So that´s Nasca. This afternoon, I have another incredibly long bus ride to Arequipa, which is supposed to be beautiful. Last night I was thinking how grimy and dusty this blog has been so far, and how some of you might have lost interest. "Is it gonna be all cracked pottery and moldy bones, Max?" So I took another look at the itinerary, and realized it just keeps getting better. After the desert comes the canyons, then the mountains, and finally the jungle. So stay tuned, blogeros, more adventure to come!