Nasca Lines and Lima

We have now arrived in Peru´s hectic capital Lima with over 12 million people and it is a refreshing change to be in a big civilised city with shopping malls, huge supermarkets and lots and lots of international restaurants. As you can see... am getting a bit excited about food!! We had dinner in a Swiss restaurant tonight and I think the waitress felt really sorry for me seeing me so excited about Rosti! DELICIOUS! Anyway...

We took the bus from Cusco to the coast - a horrendous endless fourteen hrs ordeal. I felt a bit sick in the stomach anyway (a constant reminder of being in Peru it seems) and then the bus was winding its way down from over 3300m to sea level in an endless series of zigzags... And sitting on the top level of a fairly wonky bus - that can really get to you! Plus the heating was on full blast and I was sitting there sweating, trying not to be sick and not to melt. It was awful!!! We arrived in Nasca in the early morning and I could not wait to get on a little plane!! NOT!

But flying over the stony desert in the heat, observing the moon like landscape made me forget that I did not sleep all night and felt rather sick. It was amazing!

Unfortunately, even though we rushed to the little airport soon after we arrived to make sure we get into the air before the mist sets in, they made us wait for hours and we watched the visibility get worse by the minute. It was slightly misty by the time we set off. I am not sure if you can make out the lines in the pictures if you do not know what you are looking for.

The lines that are etched into the rock and form all sorts of geometrical shapes as well as animals are from 900 BC and were completed around 600 AD by the Nasca tribe. Their exact meaning is still unknown but it seems to be something like a giant astrological calendar.

Some of the animmals are over 100m long. They are really impressive and I cannot imagine how they were able to create those perfectly aligned shapes without every seeing them from above. Here are my favourites - the kolibri/hummingbird and the monkey:

As soon as we got off the plane we got on the bus again to continue the journey to Lima - fortunately the bus was then going in a very straight line up the Panamerican Highway, what a relief! Lima is everything we expected it to be and there is so much to do that we decided to just take it easy, eat well, drink lots and sleep lots and enjoy not being cold.

We are now planning our next trekking adventure in the Cordillera Blanca . We are thinking of walking a part of the Huayhuash Circuit, which is where "Touching the Void" happened. From Huaraz alone you can see 23 snow-capped peaks over 5,000m and the Cordillera Blanca contains the largest concentration of glaciers found in the world´s tropical zone which form lots and lots of emerald lakes. It is one of the top 10 trekking areas of the world! We cannot miss that obviously.