Please stop circling the monkey!

We finally escaped the Vortex yesterday and found a bitchin' 1974 Dodge Coronet collectivo taxi headed to Nazca with a load of cargo and a local couple. After 2 hours of bleak desert nothing, we came across a stretch of bleak desert nothing with a bunch of parked tour buses and a bunch of people clamboring up a set of spiral stairs to nowhere.

This was the place!

Nazca is the single least impressive archaelogical site in the world to visit on the ground. There's simply nothing there. It's not in the least bit surprising that then never found it (and even went so far as to build a highway through it) before 1939. It only works from the air.

Steep enough for ya?

So to the air we went. $50 will get you a seat on a Cessna 172 for half an hour flying over the lines, which I have to say are pretty freakin' sweet. The pilots they have are awesome, and they spend most of their time in a 45 degree banked turn circling a few hundred feet above one pictograph or another.

After about 10 minutes of this treatment, you're pretty much Nazca'd out. OK, I get it. It looks like a bird. You've circled it seven times now and I'm about to vomit. No, please, I beg you, there's no need to circle it in the other direction... ow... look at the horizon... breathe... It'll be over soon.

So yeah, it's good value. Now we're back at the hostal, dipping in the queen-sized pool and waiting for the quease to subside before the big Night Bus to Arequipa.

written by

Jason Kester on October 8, 2009 from Nazca, Peru

from the travel blog: South!

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Enjoying your blog. We are on a motor home trip to Montana, Idaho and Washington - not quite as exotic as yours! Like your llama! We have a mascot for the motor home that is a plush puppy, Starbuck. The grandkids like to play with him when they visit. Cheers, Linda Crothers

written by Linda Crothers on October 13, 2009

JASON. So you are in Peru?

No mexico in the schedual?

Cheers m4te.

ps: i do come areound once in some time to BLOGABOND!

written by Pablo on October 16, 2009

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