We woke up, shockingly with no headache for neither me nor Oma. Our breakfast was up on the terrace, so we packed and headed up.
Oma raved about it the rest of the day. We got freshly pressed (and blended) juice - she got a frothy, thick papaya one and I got a delicious pineapple. The coffee was espresso again, so she watered it down. We each got a fried egg, fresh bread, soft butter, and a gentle, warm breeze to wake us up.
We spent maybe a bit too much time relaxing over breakfast, but checkout thankfully went smoothly, and we were at the meeting point at 8:20. Now Amos - he was not.
Lelvin, our guide, found his room and woke him up. He was ready in a miraculous amount of time, and we jumped in the car taking us to the Nazca airport.
Oma and Amos chatted about places in Germany, and I scoured the countryside for signs of the lines. We found the tower (about and hour and a half into the drive) where the rest of the group was going to stop and look at them. We would get the bird's eye view!
The Nazca Lines are "geoglyphs" - animals, geometric shapes, and lines "carved" into the harsh ground by removing the top layer so the darker under layer is exposed. For scale, one of the lines is the width of a car, so if you're drawing, say, the spiral tail of a monkey, it's going to take at least an eighth of a mile squared.
The reasons for the lines are still a mystery. The first (European) scientist to study them thought they were part of an astronomical calendar. Her theory was mostly proved false when the measurements didn't line up with anything astronomical. Others have come through with theories from race tracks to aliens (which is helped by the fact that that Nazca culture trained their children's skulls to be oblong as a sign of beauty); the standing theory is that it was part of water worship. In a desert like this, it makes total sense. (Ironic, then, that the excavations of their dwellings show signs of massive floods that drove them from their homes.)
We arrived and were put on a scale by the desk. They needed to balance the place, so our seats were assigned. Just like a "real" airport, there were security and gates. The security just didn't care if you set off the buzzer, and the gates were two sets of double doors with the words "Gate 1" and "Gate 2" above them. We went through Gate 2.
Walking up to the plane, it was the three of us and a Spanish-speaking couple, so the co-captain repeated everything in both languages. First it was a map of the 13 or so lines we would see. Next, he gave us our seat assignments - Amos in the front with the other gentleman, me in the middle with the other woman, and featherweight Oma in the back by herself. We got our headsets on and took off.
The airflow was a bit low, but I spent the first ten minutes of the thirty-minute flight looking down, up, everywhere. At maybe minute 10, I decided I was going to do more looking at the horizon and deep breathing. Oma tapped my shoulder a few times to make sure I was seeing the figures as we passed over them, but the guide did a good job saying when it was right underneath the wing on my side (then we passed it, banked, and Oma saw it on the other side, or vice versa).
Amos and Oma said they never get motion sick, but I thought I had a pretty normal tolerance - you ride a coaster, get off a bit queasy, but are settled in time for the next one. Not Oma - she was in the Civil Air Patrol in her last two years of high school, meaning that she trained with local, non-military pilots in their open-air, two-seater biplanes! She told us in the car ride she had them do a loop-de-loop and spirals, so clearly not a hint of air sickness.
I don't know what got to me - it wasn't like it was a lot of jolts. Our stomaches dropped only a few times, and the rumble of the engine was constant, but not terrible. The swooping path wasn't bad either, but I guess you add all those things up, and a sweating Corinne, with a few tears of post-nausea after a burp that could have been worse, was making sure the plastic bag was easily accessible. (It didn't help that the woman next to me had hers at her mouth when I looked over. Thankfully, the headsets prevented any noise from coming in.)
The last ten minutes of the flight, now that the sweat and tears had cooled me off, were just continuing the horizon view, with glances down to the lines when a significant one came up. When we landed, and the pilots opened up the side windows to let the air come gusting in, I was thankful. Oma and hungover Amos danced back to the terminal as I de-clinged my tank top from my moist back.
Our guide had said the company would shuttle us to Mom's Cafe (which Oma kept calling "momma's") in the middle of Nazca, and so we got dropped off there. After using their restrooms (and me thinking something might help settle my stomach), Oma and I got juice while Amos had ice cream. We had been asked by someone in Spanish on the way in about going back to Ica, which Amos did want to do, but he was told to look for someone at 2:45, and it was maybe 12:30. We took our time, I helped charge his phone, and we decided on a place for lunch. Walking out at least 45 minutes later, the same guy asked again about Ica. After gesturing to the bracelet and saying Lelvin's name, we weren't getting anywhere, so a guy on the street who know both our languages translated. This was the driver from PeruHop and it was hot, so he wanted to get started earlier. Amos was copacetic, so off they went.
We got a block further down the street and Oma sighed, "We'll miss his company." Since I'm not single, Oma has to pick up all the gents!
We made it in the vicious heat (ok, 85 and sunny isn't terrible, but not what we were expecting) a few blocks to a bank, then to our chosen restaurant. The food was great - a well presented chicken and avocado salad for me and an avocado sandwich for Oma (which had too much avocado and not enough tomato according to her, but our tastes are very different when it comes to that green fruit). I decided that I'd order their veggie lasagna to pick up before our overnight bus to Arequipa that night, so I typed out my request into Google translate and befuddled our waitress. Another waiter came over and translated, so we paid for it all and I was given a cute slip of paper that said "1 Vegetarian Lasagna" with her signature.
We took a taxi to the archeological museum, which didn't have chairs or air conditioning. The garden out front and out back were beautiful, so we hung out there while reading the English translations to what we had seen inside. Oma exclaimed over the pottery, the well-preserved textiles, and immediately recoiled at the mummy. I loved that the back garden was built around a section of aqueduct (so some stone walls with water trickling through them) and that the peacocks and doves were loud and persistent. Not a bad museum, but the heat of the day wasn't a good time to start looking.
It was just a ten minute walk back into town, so we strolled through the now-setting sun along the one road to get there. A park was on our way, so we read (and blogged) on benches until those got too hard. A few more blocks to Mom's Cafe, and it was time for some king's corner on their couches and a bathroom break before I walked off to get my lasagna.
Glad I was a bit early, because they hadn't already made it, so I got them started. The bus came at 6:45, so at 6:25 I rushed back, a warm carry out container in my bag, to find Oma a little twitchy. (I would be too - no judgement.) We had ordered an Oreo cheesecake to-go from Mom's, so we were all set with our dinner when the bus drove up.
A pair of seats was left for us, and our friends from the past few days greeted us (especially dancing Oma - they hadn't seen her since the party last night!) We tucked into our food (lasagna great, cheesecake had a bad jello texture) as we heard about their stop at a pisco factory, then "Bruce Almighty" started playing.
The next nine hours weren't terrible, but they definitely weren't something we wanted to go through again. A panel came back from the seat in front that gave a spot for our legs to rest, and the seats reclined pretty far. Both of us slept, but it sure wasn't highways we were driving on. Speed bumps and gravel and twists and turns didn't exactly rock us to sleep, and Oma cramped her neck and I felt my knees get more and more sore.
Eventually, it was 5am, and Oma went back to use the bathroom on the bus (only for #1, guys!) and it was out of order. A shuttle took us the last bit to our bed and breakfast, which made me think that it might be in the wrong part of the city... until the monastery and plaza were a few blocks before it.
The driver rang the doorbell, and we got some poor attendant out of bed to give us our key and the information about breakfast. Because the place was only $30 a night, we decided to pay for two nights instead of one so we could be guaranteed to get a bed right away. And so we did - a room with four single beds, a private bath, and two ladies that slept for another four hours. Horizontal is wonderful!
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