Landing safely in Nasca

Our little plane

On tuesday night we took our first overnight bus from Cusco to Nasca. We went with Cruz del Sur and it was pretty much like an international flight except the toilet was a bit grosser and the chairs reclined a lot more (although mine kept unreclining). We had spent the day just wasting time; doing washing, going on a fruitless search for a good ceviche place, going to a historical museum because it was included in the tourist ticket.
We also discovered that the fees for getting money out from the bank teller adds up to a lot more than ATM fees, so ATMs it is from now on.

The view from the plane made it obvious where farm land was and desert.

So we got to Nasca at about 7 and went to our hostel to check in. She asked if we had a flight booked over the lines and when we said no she made a phone call. 20mins later we were in a minivan on our way to the airport! We did have to sit at the airport for ages, and ages. But that's pretty normal. We were also starving since we hadn't eaten since dinner the night before. The plane was an 8 seater, including the pilot and copilot, and I really thought I was going to freak out a lot more but it was a really smooth line. It was really, really fantastic I have to say. I loved it. Nasca is partof the Atacama desert and the only fertile land is small areas that are irrigated by aqueducts apparently built by the Nasca people (I say apparently because all the information is soley based on carbon dating and the fact there are a lot of skeletons belonging to the Nasca found here - the people themselves were long gone before any modern person stepped foot here, so they are also working a bit on assumption that the lines were built by them too). The landscape is really interesting because of the difference between harsh desert and farm land, and on top of that you have all these weird geometric shapes and animal pictures in the sand. They were not as big as we were expecting but they were very easy to see. Each time we got to a picture,  the pilot would do a tight circle above it on one side and then the other. That was pretty weird with my internal ears, I got a little dizzy from it.

The criss-crossing lines. The pictures are a bit hard to see in the photos

After the flight we went back to our hostel and they showed us their range of tours. Being lazy, we just picked a tour that included the cemetery but also pottery and gold mining. We later found out for just a little more we could have seen and done everything; sandboarding, the cemetery,  the mud brick pyramid, and the aqueducts. So don't be lazy like us, walk into town and book there rather than at your hotel. The cemetery was kind of cool, except that all the bones there were found somewhere else and repositioned in the grave holes (they dug pits and made mud bicks to enclose the dead mummies), and it also appeared their hair was glued on since they were only skeletons there isn't away hair could still be attached. There were two mummies in a special room because they were in a vood condition. I didn't realise the others were onky skeletons so I didnt take pictures of one of the mummies. The people would put their dead in the desert for some time after embalming them, and this would mumify them, then they burried them. The grave yard is a mess though, because grave robbers had been through. Hence, the bodies were found outside the graves and just put back for tourists. So that's a little disappointing. The pottery thing we did was a waste of time. The guy spoke really quickly in what seemed like Spanglish and didn't really seem to care. It wasn't really a demonstration, it was like here's the clay I use, here's the pot I make, here's the brush I use (baby hair), and here is the paint I use. The guy at the gold place was much more enthusiastic, but still, it was... not worth going to. "Yes and we put the gold in here, yes yes yes and then we put the fire wooooooosh! Yes yes yes, the fire, woooosh!". That is literally what he was like. I was thinking the heavy metals he uses might have been affecting his brain just a little.
We thought about booking sandboarding for the morning after but decided against it and slept in instead.

Some skulls on sacks?

A toddler-mummy: notice the creepy toenails

We had some pretty good ceviche before getting on our 2pm bus to Arequipa. It was meant to be an 8-10 hour trip. It took 11. So we got in at 1am. The trip itself was alright, I watched a few movies, some In Spanish some in English and we passed a burning truck or something. The only problem was we got fed at 3pm. It seems they heat up the food before the trip so they need to give it to you pretty quick. It was luke warm chicken and we were still full from luch, but we ate as much as we could.
We really should have booked a hostel transfer or something for when we got to Arequipa because Lonely Planet has these vague details about certain taxis that take tourists to the middle of nowhere and rob them. Anyway, after a slightly stressful taxi ride we arrived safely! And here we are in Arequipa, gateway to Colca Canyon.