<![CDATA[

Nasca, Peru

What to do after breakfast?… Hmmmm… What to do? Oh, I know! Let’s go to an open cemetery and see some dead bodies! What a grand idea… Or not. Bear with me, if I had to sit through it, so do you. It’s only one gory paragraph.
There’s not many places in the world you could drive into the desert and see hundreds of open graves. Mummies sit crouched down in these 3m x3m wide holes, still with clothes on and their hair up to 3m in length wrapped around their bodies and some with 20cm long toe nails. Nail technicians, eat your heart out! A straw roof now protects them from the sun but these graves were once covered in wood, then straw and topped with sand. Imagine the poor bugger that first walked over this hidden grave and fell in. In actual fact, they were only discovered because of a once in a blue moon flood that floated them to the surface.
It is impressive that these bodies have lasted a staggering 1800 years, through the harsh elements! It only rains for two hours each year so in actual fact it’s the dry elements that have preserved them all this time.
1800 years ago the world would have been a very different place, as would the culture and traditions. I had to remember that as I saw my first dead person and the stories that went with it. Once the mummies died, their tendons were cut before rigger-mortis set in, this was to place them in the foetal position as this position represented life. They were also cut open and had pottery placed inside them, filled with gold or just water. The fact the water was found in their bodies in bowls, 1800 years later is amazing – but totally weird. Baby’s heads were decapitated (while alive) and used as sacrifices to the condor birds – to pray for rain. Adult heads were decapitated during a battle, then a hole drilled in and a belt was threaded through and used as a trophy around the ‘winners’ waist. The missing heads on some of the bodies were replaced with cotton and then sat up to rest, for tourists to see 1800 years later… If you’re feeling sick, so was I. I left after the third grave. I got the point after a few, I didn’t need to see them all.

Moving right along. On to the Nasca Lines. Our guide, a National Geographic archeologist drew a comparison between the Nazca people (the mummies) and the Nasca Lines. He believes that the lines were completed at the same time by the Nasca people. Dave did a flight up and over the Nasca Lines as it’s really the only way you can actually see and appreciate the lines. Similar lines were completed by the Palpa people a few centuries before the Nazca lines, but were on the slopes of hills which meant they could be seen from the ground.
I got a little / lot frustrated with our Nasca Line’s guide. When I visit a place I need to know the “who, when, where, why, how” to really understand a place. Sadly these questions cannot be answered definitively about the Nasca Lines, even after a hundred years of research nobody knows the answers. The Nasca Lines look as though they have been dug slightly into the ground. It is said that whirly whirlies clean the lines out naturally. Each line width is about 30cm wide. The Nasca Line shapes are the following sizes: the whale (65m), three point trapeze (3km), owl man (35m), monkey (90m), dog (50m), condor (135m), spider (46m), hummingbird (97m), flamingo (300m), parrot (230m), hands (50m) and a tree (70m). These lines and figures are obviously very gigantic and would have been an achievement to accomplish nowadays let alone 1800 years ago without a plane. All they had was a string and chalk as markers. After listening to our local guide, one thing is for certain – aliens aren’t responsible for these mysterious lines and geoglyphs in the Ica desert.

A weird moment – we just popped into a supermerco / supermarket in a shopping plaza. The out skirts of this town is surrounded with clay huts and mud roads. Then we entered into this brand new, sparkly Westfield-like shopping complex, filled with designer shoe shops, Starbucks and other shops you would expect to see included. It even had a Bunnings equivalent next door. Trust me when I say it felt out of place in South America. Inside, it felt like we were in Australia. Then we stepped out to three seater tok toks. Odd feeling. So saying, we took advantage all the same and enjoyed a Starbucks coffee and fancy clean toilet facilities – although I’ll never get used to collecting my toilet paper ‘before’ entering into the cubicle.

There couldn’t have been a better way to spend our last night camping. Under the stars in the middle of the sand dunes. Backing up a few hours, dune buggies picked us up at 4pm from Huacachina. Huacachina is a cool little town built between sand dunes. The picturesque lagoon is surrounded by palm trees and towering sand dunes and creates a tranquil natural oasis in the dusty coastal desert that has been dubbed the ‘Sahara of South America’.
The buggies we took out for an afternoon on the dunes were fitted with full body roll cages and racing car safety belts. The engines started and the 10 of us zoomed off, straight up and around the dunes. In Namibia we did the dunes on 4×4 quad bikes. Doing it in buggies we were in the hands of an experienced driver so could go four wheel driving, should I say flying over these huge dunes at tremendous speed. That wasn’t where the adrenalin stopped. The drivers stopped at 4 dune peaks, pulled out snowboard looking boards for the each of us to fly down at excessive speed – on our tummies. Each dune got ***************er as the day went on. Each time we lay with our face two centimetres from the sand, then the driver put his hand between our legs – the back of the board and pushed us of the cliff. The last one had two hills first then the ‘drop’ down. It was epic. I fish tailed my way down with bruises in all spots and Dave came rolling off mid way before recovering last minute. After watching the sunset over the dunes, the buggies delivered us to a sand dune mega bowl. Our campsite for the night. It was perfect as the wind was quite cold so being at the bottom of a bowl provided protection. The drivers had a fire going and camp chairs surrounding it. A BBQ dinner around the fire, Pisco cola, wine and clubbing music (?), mixed in with great company made for the perfect last night. As I write this, I’m lying in my sleeping bag in the sand, trying not to roll down the hill, in a sand dune in western Peru. This is really an amazing last night in the outdoors before our journey comes to an end. The night of all nights.

I can’t say it was the best night sleep I’ve ever had. Mid way through the night I worked out a way of making a ledge for my foot to be dug into so I didn’t slide down the hill. It doesn’t rain out there but it does have fog that makes everything a little wet at times . I wouldn’t swap travelling experiences for anything, even sleep. At 6:30am we were back in the buggies for our last big spin before returning to the Huacachina for a 2 minute shower and 3 minute breakfast. The very last outing included in the trip was a boat trip around the Ballestas Islands. Widely known as the “poor mans Galápagos Islands”, yet it is one of the most popular ecotourism points of view along the Peruvian coast.
The Ballestas Islands has weird and wonderful wildlife. From the boat we saw Humboldt Penguins, Blackish Oyster catchers, Guano Cormorants and Peruvian Boobies living alongside vast colonies of South American Sea Lions nosily crowding the Ballestas coastline. That explanation is straight from the brochure but in Julia terms this is what we saw. One of a few thousand sea lions we saw was a male teenager, lying on his back with his ding dong just hanging out. I didn’t even know male seals had ding dongs but I suppose they’d have to. Quite rightly, he was placed next to the beach named “pregnancy beach”, mums giving birth and teaching their cubs to swim. Around the corner was a whole rock face filled with boobies, endangered ones at that. Sadly they were the sort of boobies that delivered unwanted droppings to passers by, not the ones the boys were hopi
ng to see. The penguins will always be my favourite, all dressed up in their black and white, sadly with nowhere to go.

Our home for the last two months rolled into Lima. Cindy, the Dragoman truck, started with 21 travel buddies, but finished with 8. I won’t lie, this particular Dragoman trip has given me some unwanted grey hairs both from the passengers and crew. Overall, we have enjoyed it and come away with lasting memories and friendships. The more you put into anything, the more you get out of it. Patience and tolerance is a new skill I have, sort of.
Sixty days ago we started our South American adventure in Rio, Brazil and travelled through Paraguay, Argentina, Chile and Bolivia before finishing in Peru. Of course over landing in a truck meant we could go in every which way to get to that finish line. This particular route took us on four legs or four trips:
* Rio – Buenos Aires, 4,375km – 75 hours
* Buenos Aires – La Paz, 3,603km – 83 hours
* La Paz – Cusco, 825km – 16hours
* Cusco – Lima, 2,070km – 38hours.
In total, that meant in 60 days we drove 10,873 kilometres in 212 hours! Although sad we can’t finish this trip in Ecuador with our friends, it’s time to go home. There will always be places in this world we will want to see. I think we have done South America justice. We have five more days left, to explore two capital cities and prepare ourself physically and mentally for the trip

South America has a lot more history than I’d realised and it’s a place that knowing the language would really go along way, particularly numbers. After two months this is what we learnt, phonetically:
Hola, puedo comprar un cafe con leche caliente y dos agua frio sin gas, y un baño por favor (Hello. Can I buy one coffee with milk hot and two cold waters with no bubbles and the bathroom please?)
Gratis (thank you)
Da nada (no problem)
Ciao (good bye)
Buen dia (good day)
That by the way is more than we learnt in all languages in 12 months. What can we say, languages aren’t really our thing but we give it ago

]]>