Nazca

Not too far inland from Huachacina is Nazca, famous for its mysterious lines in the ground which can only be veiwable from a bird's eye perspective. Made over 2000 years ago by the Nazca civilisation, the drawings span out over extensive flat planes of hard rocky ground and range from a 9 fingered monkey and set of hands to sea creatures and what looks like an alien/astronaut with huge eyes and a round head. We can only speculate about the purpose of these lines and how they were made so perfectly without the aid of a higher perspective. German mathematician and archeologist Maria Reich extensively studied the lines on site for 50 years and came up with a conclusion that they were a calender marking the times of the year best for harvesting and sowing. She noticed that certain constellations lined up perfectly with some of the drawings at certain times and that the Sun of the summer and winter equinox rose and set perfectly on line with a line that stretched right across the Nazca planes. We like to believe it was to communicate with aliens, although locals thought we were crazy. We hired a local taxi driver to drive us out to see them from a tower, he was like a character from Goodfellas, proper wheeler n dealer. He also took us to the Maria Reich museum and proceeded to repeat her name over and over again for about an hour when his english had dried out. It was hilarious but overpriced. We stayed in a lovely cheap hotel owned by a man and his mother who we ended up cooking dinner for and trying to converse in what little Spanish we know, it was painful at times but we bonded in silence. On our bed they had arranged towels into kissing swans, too cute.