Birthday in the Desert

The 100 metre long hummingbird carved into the desert

Quite the bizarre place to spend a birthday, in the middle of the scorching hot Peruvian desert adjacent to the Andes, taking a flight over the Nazca Lines. A mysterious network of huge figures over 100 metres long, including monkeys, lizards and hummingbirds carved into the dry, arid landscape over 1500 years ago. They cover a vast area of over 300 square miles and the mystery remains today as to how they were made and more importantly why, as they are so huge they can only be viewed from the air.  Its remarkable that they haven’t been eroded but such is the climate here with virtually no wind or rain that they’ve remained intact.

The short 30 minute flight was an incredible experience as was the initial safety briefing of ‘’mind your head’’.

Getting here from Colombia has taken four flights in three days so a pleasure flight today was just what the doctor ordered. Considering we were in South America, we had to fly back to Panama in Central America before catching the flight to Peru which was via Miami in North America! It’s a bit like flying from London to New York via Rome and Cape Town.

The Spider in the desert landscape

We were very happy to be met at Lima airport as it was 11.30pm on a Sunday night, by the driver from the superbly named Inkafrog B&B. You’d think it would be easy to spot your name on a placard apart from there must have been a hundred placards to read as we stood there trying to read them all.

We spent just one day in Lima and were a little surprised how modern it was but it was enough time to be suitably impressed. A luxury 7 hour bus ride from Lima brought us through an ever increasing dry landscape to our home for the night in Nazca.

It's going to be a land of contrasts over the next couple of months, from the hot, dry desert here in Nasca to cold, high altitude lakes and from the 'white city' to the steaming Amazon basin. Its going to be a bumpy old ride as it coincides with both holiday season and rainy season.