Some five days ago however, I was a little heavier and I arrived early in the desert town of Nazca. There was some alarm initially when the hostess aboard the bus informed me my bag was in the wrong luggage compartment, thus meaning that it´d be heading to Lima while I´d be getting off in Nazca. Luckily when we arrived in the latter town, a man with a metal stick intervened and forced open the relevant hatch. Me and my bag were together again.
After the usual recon mission around the town, I came across a hotel nearby which offered a pool and snack combo for a small fee. Within an hour of this discovery I was sleeping and swimming in equal measure as I wasted away my afternoon in the grounds of the Hotel Nazca Lines.
I returned to the same venue later that evening to visit the Maria Reiche Planetarium which is attached to the compound. Miss Reiche was a German lady who died over a decade ago but in her final forty years on the planet, she dedicated her time solely to trying to discover the true meaning behind the Nazca lines. In my eyes she failed but nevertheless, she gave it a good stab.
Around three hundred etchings in the Nazca Desert cover an area spanning over fifty miles and while on the ground the paths are clear, it is only from the air that you get a true picture. The lines consist of geometric shapes and animal outlines varying from a condor to a monkey, with an astronaut-like looking figure in between.
Young Maria believed these lines to be a pre-Inca astrological calendar and while many lines suggest this could have been part of the answer, there is little evidence to suggest the entirity of the phenomenon adheres to this.
At the planetarium, beside the hotel where she lived for over five years, me and some irritating Asians enjoyed a compelling presentation about the known history of the lines, dating back from as far back as 200BC and then later an illustration of what factors led Maria Reiche to drawing her suspicious conclusions.
Following on from this, the guide presided to point out a whole host of constellations in the sky with a remarkably powerful little laser pen, which made the sky seem like an artificial screen only a few feet away.
The next morning I was able to see what all the fuss (and confusion) was all about when I took a Cessna plane ride over them and back. In truth, it left me very impressed but equally confused. Quite what possesed any civilisation in history to concoct such an elaborately random form of artwork, I have no idea, but with the bumps unrelenting in the dinky little plane, I was ready to come down.
After a light lunch, I boarded a bus, Ica-bound, from where I then got a ten minute taxi to the desert oasis town of Huacachina. On arriving at my hostel, I immediately enquired about the dune buggie tours on offer and to my joy, was able to join one at that precise moment. So with my bags dropped in my room, I made it like a flash into the back off the buggie.
The next 2/3 hours was jaw-aching fun as we bounded around the desert like we were aboard a mechanical camel on speed. Interspersed with this, we were able to enjoy the benefits of sand boarding which amounted to lots more grinning, high doses of adrenaline, bouts of complete failure and many mouthfuls of sand.
With the sunset behind me, I ate a delicious pasta dish by the lagoon then wrote my diary entry in complete tranquility.
The following morning I climbed the huge dune behind the hotel where I got some great pictures overlooking the town but had to take them with my chunky (and now departed) SLR as my compact camera had gotten to much sand in its mouth the night before. Getting up the dune was difficult but coming down was torture. On several occasions I had to drop anchor as my flip-flop exposed feet were in real danger of either melting or cathing fire or both. I made a beeline for the lagoon and threw myself into its curative waters, where I simmered for some considerable time.
Refreshed and with socks and shoes on, I caught another bus in the direction of Pisco from where I did another taxi run to the coastal town of Paracas. Sitting handsomly beside the Pacific Ocean, I´d unfortunately rolled into town on the day of their annual festival. Good in some respects but I´d come to relax, so hundreds of steamed Peruvians and screaming kids were not a welcomed sight.
In the evening I did take to the open-air dancefloor with a few people I met and we enjoyed some Pisco sours, beer and mock-indigenous dance routines.
I was below par the following morning but galvanised myself sufficiently to board a tourist boat to the nearby Isla Ballestas where I enjoyed the company of penguins, sea lions, pelicans and other loud but friendly birds.
Again my afternoon involved a bus ride, this time to the eight-million-people strong capital of Lima. The rest of my day was nothing out of the ordinary, much like the city.
Yesterday I ventured into the city centre and as soon as I could, ventured back out. I have no energy for a place like this right now and with it taking me over two hours and five bus headquarters to find myself a bus to Pucallpa for Wednesday, my patience had run out. Last night I collapsed and watched Russel Crowe show more vigour in Cinderella Man.
Today, I started my blog then got robbed blind. Usually, I keep my guard up when with my bag in tow but today, I let it slip. After a few nice chats on Skype, the horror dawned on me as did the mental checklist of what was in my bag. Luckily, no cash, credit cards or identification were in there, but a digital SLR camera, three memory cards (of which many pictures weren´t backed up), a phrasebook and several gifts were enough to put me off my narrative and chirpy stride.
As for my other camera, this is in an overnight camera hospital where they´re charging the earth to get the sand of Huacachina out from between it´s eyes. If this fails, I´ll be heading to the Amazon for two weeks tomorrow with only eyes but my own.
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