Diary of An Ordinary Traveller: Look...It's a Monkey or Seeing the Nazca Lines!

Getting ready for takeoff!

We negotiated a ride from Huacachina to Paracas with a stop along the way to fly over the Nazca Lines. The only way to see these ancient mysterious phenomenon is by plane really and it was a bit of a pricey excursion at about $200 US per person (from Ica but cheaper if you make your way to Nazca) but I had come all the way to Peru so I decided I might as well visit another UNESCO World Heritage site.

The Nazca Lines are a series of ancient geoglyphs which were created about 2000 years ago by digging narrow trenches in the desert. You can definitely tell these people didn't have Netflix or Facebook to distract them because this must have taken some serious work. The figures consist of various animals, geometric shapes and odd creatures that span across an area of about 450 square kilometres. There are hundreds of figures and some reach almost 300 metres. The reason for the creation of the lines remains a mystery (other than my theory that they were somewhat bored and needed a project) but many scholars ascribe a religious significance.

We took a little 12 seater airplane that was actually

Shelby looking a bit rough after our ride.

quite roomy and I didn't understand why other travellers had suggested gravol before the excursion. We quickly figured out why once we reached the lines and the pilots started having a grand old time tilting back and forth so that everyone had a chance for some pictures. I was grateful for that but poor Shelby was looking pretty green after a few minutes and I think she was actually close to passing out!

The experience was great but I found that we flew a bit high for my liking...something to do with my declining eye-site probably. We still managed to get some awesome shots of these bad boys!