Quick facts: Locals built runways here for aliens; GPS: -14.82759, -74.93705; GMT-5; Altitude: 1710′
Today is when I officially kick of the ancient aliens tour; I’m going on a Nazca lines flight with Aeronasca. I have heard several people say they wouldn’t go up in one of those planes if someone paid them to. I’ve been on many small airplanes before and don’t see the issue but I guess there were problems back in the day. I decided not to get a real early flight so I could have breakfast before since I like my routine. I ate at the hotel and then caught the shuttle at the hotel (the owner of the hotel happened to own the flight tour company too) to the airport at just before 10:00 for a tour flight at 10:00-10:30. As I would have expected given the time frame and how relaxed he was driving, we were rushed through security and onto the plane for a not on time departure.
Once in the air it was only a minutes before I could start seeing lines in the ground. We were flying in a Cessna 207 and although the plane was full with 6 passengers the windows were large and it was easy to see the ground. For most of the flight the pilot would fly by one of the lines, dip the wing down quite a bit so the one side could see and swing around and do the same for the other side. The flight lasted about 30 mins and we probably saw maybe 15-20 different drawing type lines and tons of the straight lines. At the end they also swung by the aqueducts and the castle. I didn’t feel unsafe at all on the flight and given what I know about small planes even safer probably than the big jets. The lady at the hotel warned against eating breakfast or even having coffee but I did not feel sick at all afterwards. I wanted to go find a bumper sticker or something that said, “I survived a Nazca lines flight.”
After the flight I looked around a bit at a couple of the small shops near the airport and waited for the shuttle to return. Some of the people on our flight went to Mom’s cafe in town and I decided to join them for a quick lunch. The food was good, I tried some different empanadas and not too long after finishing the shuttle came back by so I jumped on it and I went back to the hotel and hung out for a little while. I mostly worked on some planning for later and wrote a little for the blog. It was about 16:00 by the time I called my guy and even though they’ll tell you 5 or 10 minutes it almost never is. So after 30 minutes he showed up, drove me to Rico Pollo again for an early dinner since I was catching the Peru Hop again at 18:45.
This time around instead of being experimental I decided to try some of the chicken which everyone was eating last night and raves about in most of the reviews. It was pretty good and while chicken is not my favorite as long as it’s not all the time I do enjoy it. Mom’s cafe was basically next door and also the pickup spot for us catching the bus. I waited around for about 45 minutes before the bus showed up pretty much on time and we all loaded. This leg of the journey is one of the few that is an overnight ride. It left Nazca right about 19:00 and will arrive in Arequipa at 5ish in the morning.