Nazca & Huacachina

Day 150 – Possibly the most fun I’ve ever had.

Our night bus was more like a nightmare.  The road was windy the whole way and the driver seemed to think he was driving a go-cart instead of a road coach, a couple of times he cornered so hard we were thrown from our seats, no mean feat on a bus that size.  We arrived in Nazca tired and late despite the speed. 

Keen to make quick arrangements for a flight over the Nazca Lines we succumbed to the advances of a tout at the bus stop who promised we’d be on a plane within half an hour.  Two hours and a lot of stalling later, the three of us and three others finally boarded our tiny eight seater plane.  The front two seats were occupied by the pilot and co-pilot.  Up until a couple of months ago the co-pilot’s seat would have been occupied by a paying passenger, but the authorities changed the rules after a pilot had a heart attack in February and crashed killing himself and five unfortunate Chilean tourists (who were supposed to be doing the Inca Trail but had reorganised their plans after the landsides).

The Nazca Lines are a huge collection of lines and drawings strewn across the arid landscape around Nazca.  Archaeologists estimate that they were created over a period spanning from 900BC to 600AD, and the entire set includes over 800 lines, 300 geometric features and about 70 plant and animal drawings covering around 500 square kilometres of terrain.  Nobody can agree why the lines were created, theories speculate that they may be a giant astronomical calendar, special walking tracks associated with the religion of the day or extraterrestrial landing sites.  Whatever the reason they are quite incredible, not to mention mysterious, given they can only be properly appreciated from the air.  More information here.

Erin and Anna preparing for takeoff.

The rather unusual flight plan!

Trapezoids all supposedly pointing to some far-off water source.

‘The Astronaut’ – go figure.

The Monkey.

The Condor.

The Hummingbird.

 

After about thirty minutes we were back on the ground, me with vomit bag in hand!  Back in Nazca we quickly negotiated a ride to Huacachina in a classic old shared taxi.

Huacachina is a tiny little resort town set around a spring fed oasis amongst towering sand dunes.  The setting is something you’d imagine from 1001 Arabian Nights.  When we arrived one particularly aggressive tout scared us away from a hostel we probably would have otherwise stayed in.  Instead we ended up in a little family run place, the matriarch a young Peruvian woman who spoke excellent English and was married to an Englishman who she refused to leave Huacachina for – and why would you to go to England?!

Our principal objective in Huacachina was to go sandboarding, and with that lined up for later in the afternoon we headed down the street to share a delicious jug of frozen lemonade and splash around in the little pool.

The view from out the front of our hostel.

At 4:30pm our dune buggy rolled past the back door to pick us up.  After paying our ‘toll’ on the way out of town we rocketed up and over the first dune.  The ride was like being on a really noisy roller-coaster with no rails.  The driver shot over the top of dunes and we plummeted down the steep drop-offs, he floored it towards banked bends and slammed on the brakes moments before we shot off steep drops.

Huacachina sits on the edge of a vast expanse of dunes.

After a while whizzing around the dunes in the buggy our driver deposited us at the top of a huge dune and handed out our sandboards.  There was no real instruction, he just pointed down the hill and told us to go for it.  The snowboarders amongst us fared a little better, but apparently snowboarding skills were only of marginal assistance.  To get down you had two options, lie on the board, or stand on the board.  Erin stuck with lying down, I had a crack both ways.

 

 

Sunset over the dunes.

Back safe from the sandboarding and dune buggy ride we went for dinner with a few other backpackers at a restaurant on the lake.  Anna and I both had ceviche (fish ‘cooked’ in lemon, with red onion, chilli and coriander), it was delicious but left us both feeling a bit funny the next day.  After dinner we hit one of the local bars, but didn’t last very long after a terrible night’s sleep on the bus and a very eventful day.

What a bargain!