Country #63: Nazca, Peru

For the past month, I have been traveling around the incredibly varied country that is Peru (#63). I followed a well-travelled route that has appropriately been dubbed the "Gringo Trail". The Trail runs along a string of cities in the Southern section of the country, almost all of which contain some pre-Inca or Inca ruins, lots of hostels of varying quality, plentiful bars featuring increasingly more generous drink specials and loads of indigenous women strolling through main squares with picturesque llamas. The first stop, after landing in Lima, for many (myself included) is a small town named Nazca. Nazca, a short five hours bus ride from Lima, does not immediately reveal its charms. It is not until you take a flight around the surrounding desert that you get to fully appreciate the reason for its popularity. That is when you see the Nazca Lines. These are massive pictures etched into the sand by a pre-Inca culture, known as the Nazca people, sometime between 500 BC and 500 AD. There are various theories as to why these people chose to put so much time and effort into creating works of art that they would never be able to appreciate, but the bottom line is that no one really knows the why. From the air, the drawings are astounding to look at and bedeviling to try to photograph, what with the itty bitty planes turning this way and that way to give everyone a good view. The axiom "pictures don't do it justice" may have been created expressly for the Nazca lines. So was "you probably shouldn't have breakfast right before going on an itty bitty airplane that is going to be doing a lot of banking", but fortunately it was not too big a problem for anyone on our plane. Done with the flight by 10 am, I had the entire day to explore the town before catching a 9 pm bus to Arequipa. I was immediately delighted to stumble across a parade being held in celebration of the Peruvian Education Day. There were adorable pre-schoolers in beautiful, hand- sewn costumes (not the poly vinyl crap I grew up with) marching on every street. What incredible luck and timing. That thrill did manage to diminish somewhat over the course of a month as I soon came to realize that every other day in Peru marks an occasion that warrants a parade. In the span of 27 days, I must have seen at least a dozen parades. If there is ever an international March-Off, my money is on Peru to bring home the gold. In Cusco, I inquired about the reason for an elaborate parade that was blocking all access to the main square, I was told it was because it was Sunday. But Nazca's was my first parade and I was still excited. So how best to follow a bevy of awwww-inducing toddlers? Why, with a visit to the slightly ugh-inducing Chauchilla cemetery, of course. The ancient Nazca people would wrap their dead in neat bundles and place them and their possessions facing the nearby mountain, which was considered a deity, or apu. The arid climate preserved the fabrics and resulted in a form of natural mummification for the bodies, so that centuries later when grave robbers arrived, the scene was not much changed from ancient times. The grave robbers, who clearly were the least superstitious people ever born, took most of the possessions (ceramics, jewelry, household goods) to sell to international buyers and left the bodies scattered all over the desert floor. Nowadays, scientists have replaced the bodies into graves and attempted to reconstruct the original scene, as best they can. The result, as you can see above, is as interesting as it is ghoulish. Ugh, indeed.