Day 168: Nazcan Skywalk

Lima – Nazca, Peru

I didn’t get back to the hostel until 5am in the morning to pack up my stuffs in order to catch a 6am taxi to the bus terminal and 7am bus from Lima to Nazca. Long story short, I bumped into Kathy in the hostel; she invited me to hang out for her last night in Lima after a month staying there; off we went to Eric’s apartment; Luis came shortly after; then the three medical students and I hit two of Lima’s hottest gay clubs. It was a wild and fun night even though I can’t dance nor drink. Hopping onto the bus with  no sleep and a stomach full of the biggest and tastiest Whopper I ever had, I was mostly knocked out the whole 7 hours trip to Nazca.

Nazca was hot and dry. Very dry. Dry as in 30 mins of rain per year kind of dry. It’s dusty as hell. The town itself is rather dead. I took it easy in the afternoon and then around 7pm, we went to visit the Maria Reiche’s Planetarium.

Maria Reiche was a German-born archeologist who dedicated 40 years of life studying the Nazca Lines. I believe she single-handedly brought the Nazca Lines into the world’s attention and making it a UNESCO World Heritage Site. On the last 15 years of her life, she stayed in a room in a hotel in Nazca for free. After her death, the hotel kept her room and built a planetarium to commemorate her work. Reiche was a proponent of the theory that the Nazca lines were used as sun calendar and an observatory for astronomical cycles.

The tour of the planetarium was 20 soles (about 7 bucks). It’s definitely a good introduction to the Nazca Lines.