ET or The Incas?... Nazca, Peru

Hotel Nazca 25 soles for a double, Av. Lima (it´s such a small town, all taxistas know where it is)

After leaving Lima we headed South to Nazca, Peru which is a hole in the wall town. We spent some funny 28 hours here. We discovered Slovenia, a country we didn´t know existed until we met Ivan, our new Slovenian friend ("I don´t know all the 50 states, you don´t have to know all the countries in Europe"). We knew we´d be friends right off the bat when we took a picture together (after meeting for 2 minutes) and he proclaimed "It´s like we´ve been friends for months!"

We visited the famous Nazca Lines which are mysterious geoglyphs (straight lines and geometric images) in the desert sand. How they were created, no one actually knows. But theories say that maybe aliens created these lines, maybe early Incas. Who knows? But what we do know is that up above, in a 4 seater plane, is the only way you can see these lines. A 4 seater plane in Peru... does this make anyone else nervous? Yeah... we know what you mean.

We quickly bonded with Ivan, while we all bravely fought bouts of nausea from our flipping stomachs. The pilot told us, as he made three stomach jumping rotations around an imagine, "The tip of the plane wing is pointing at the humming bird (as we feverishly looked at our pamphlet and then the desert sand, searching for similarities)" I´m thinking, Should the wing of our plane be perpendicular to the ground? I´m sure Jay (my cousin) does this every time he flies... if he can do it, our nice Peruvian Pilot surely can (As he tells us to "Get right up close to the window ladies!" Lori and I have already fogged it up with our nose prints.)

All in all, the impressive desert lines made our jaws drop. "Magical" as our Israeli friend described them. Be it that they were created by ET, the Incas (in approximately years 200 BC - 600 AD) or the government (to up tourism, Lori´s theory), they are mind-boggling. More or less 300 hundred figures cover about 400 square miles of the Peruvian desert. $50 will get you in a tiny, bouncy plane to see about 20 of them. That was all our stomachs could handle. It was pretty amazing.

Some other funny things happened during our 28 hours in Nazca with our Slovenian friend. (Remember... simple minds, simple pleasures.) We were looking at some postcards of the Nazca Lines in a souvenir shop and one was terrible quality. (I can see Jeffy P saying "You have to take this minuscule image and sttttrrrrreeeettttcccchhhh it.") I´m ranting and raving, "Look at this garbage! This is terrible quality! Does anyone even know what this is? I mean, it´s all pixilated and everything. You can hardly make out what it is! It looks two llamas or something... they expect to sell this junk?" We turn over the postcard and the caption says "Two Llamas Nazca Lines, Peru"

We were figuring out which bus company to take to Arequipa, Peru (our next destination). Ivan showed us a brochure from Cruz del Sur, a fancy bus company that we´ve never traveled in but heard alot about. I´m looking at the brochure and read one of the perks, BINGO. "Ivan, this bus company is the best! You guys even play BINGO!" We definitely have never played BINGO on the buses we take. We´re just lucky no one steals our stuff. BINGO... hmmm... definitely a selling point.

Then I read another perk, Musical Instruments. What the?!? "And they give you musical instruments?" I ask Ivan. He replies "What are you talking about?" Lori says "Gimme that thing... let me see..." Ah yes, minor error... Instrumental music. Now that makes more sense. We laughed and joked for the next 5 hours about musical instruments on the bus. Imagine, bus attendants handing out musical instruments to passengers... one gets an accordion, another maybe a trombone (and he´s hitting the guy in front of him in the head), a flute, cymbals... the whole marching band. We were laughing soooo hard, we were crying. Just thinking of a bus full of rich tourists with their instruments all playing them terribly and loudly at the same time. Someone with a harp, another with the pan flute, the trumpet, drums... think about it.

10pm, please return your instruments to the nearest bus attendant. Music time is over, lights out, time to sleep.

Off to Arequipa :)