Ariquipa to Huaraz

Now the high season (July/August) is fully in swing, all the hostels, buses and tours get booked up fast, and is also pushing the prices up. As a consequence we had to hang around in Nazca for longer than we would have liked, but we had a very comfortable hostel, which had Cable TV and so we spent much of our time watch straight to video films and changing rooms.

The wait was worth it though, bouncing around in the light aircraft over the Nazca lines was an amazing experience. These Nazca´s fellows were a busy bunch, we had been to a number of museums and a planetarium covering all kinds of theories and explaining their sizes etc, but until you actually get an eye full its hard to appreciate had much effort went into them. In my view the reasoning behind the lines is a mixture of all the theories...with more emphasis on hallucinogenic filled spiritual ceremonies.

Sadly the pics didn´t come out amazingly but here is a selection (if you click on them they will expand and you may have a better chance of actually seeing anything).

Whale

Spaceman

Monkey

Spider, the black smuge is the plane´s shadow

Hummingbird

The right hand shot shows a plane at a lower altitude than us, their are usually three planes in the air at the same time at three different altitudes, we were in the middle.

Following Nazca we spent the day in Lima and our first view of the Pacific, arriving at 6am and leaving at 10pm. Which bring us to Huaraz where we are now acclimatising at 3100m in preparation for a 5 day hike, surrounded by snow capped peaks .