The Nazca Lines
It's been an expensive week. Two touristy type tours - that's not like me; but I feel that for the things I'm seeing they're quite necessary. I've noticed that the rate at which I blog is proportional to the amount I'm spending (currently quite a bit more than ten pounds a day).
The Nazca Lines begged to be flown over - there is a tower that you can observe some of the figures from, but the view is quite limited. After some Spanish haggling that I'm quite proud of, I got the total price of a flight down from $60 to $43, and so this morning, I boarded a Cessna for a thirty minute flight over these famous and mysterious markings in the Nazca desert. I got to sit up with the pilot - woo hoo!!
The lines were first noticed by a German mathematician (get in) called Maria Reiche. Despite the fact she blatently looks like a man, she became a respected authority on the Lines and had lots of good solid mathematical theories behind why they exist. A number of slightly less well educated personalities have since come up with all the inevitable 'out there' theories, involving aliens and so on.
The Lines comprise a number of animal figures, tonnes of straight lines and many 'trapezoid' figures. It's intriguing to wonder how these huge objects were marked out from the ground, with no advantage of an aerial viewpoint.
I'm enjoying myself very much, but occasionally I get tired of being in this part of Peru. After having been in Ecuador and northern Peru for so long, I had forgotten the downsides the the 'gringo trail'. The tourism industry is much more prolific here, and it shows. There are more taxi drivers beeping at you for business and trying to rip you off, more annoying Peruvians shout out 'gringo!' and 'mister!' (it's sir) and more tourist company employees who try to grab you straight off the bus, telling you anything you want to hear for their commission. I say this as I'm imminently going to board a bus to Cuzco - here the rip-off factor will no doubt be unsurpassed. But nevertheless, I am really looking forward to seeing Machu Picchu and the other sites, before heading on to Lake Titicaca and Bolivia. Roll on 14 hour bus!
![This is a hummingbird. The animal figures are such that you can walk round the whole figure by following the lines (ie they're topologically homeomorphic to [0,1])](https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/blogger_img_proxy/AEn0k_vB9J561C1uMzKYhnu_lmSklzQCAW8SMN1Mw5a4nKqDBdYDiazLq8u37NFY-xBrg5Hk-DJhO4qhb2yFDXbF1RPlA2ttrsjxUmBXfNuMILI1oFy2WSg2vw=s0-d)
4 comments:
Woo Hoo! That's the closest you've come to being a pilot yet. What a place to fly over, and a great combination of Maths and aeroplanes. Grandpa would be proud of the haggling (in Spanish too!....all he could say was non comprendo).
Please could you define gringo some time - I kind of know what it means but am not completely sure.
Will think of you on the bumpy bus when we settle down to a comfy night at home. xxx
Initially I thought it meant white traveller to Latin Americans, but then I learned it really just means white person. Wiktionary defines it as Caucasian American, but I've heard it applied to Europeans such as myself too.
i am fast running out of synonyms for 'wow'...
cool!! have seen a programme about those lines- very impressed that you've actually seen them!! Thank you so so much for postcard- just got back from the alps today so this is a v quick message to say that i'll e-mail u properly soon!! (prob tmrw when im bored at work!)
What is the next adventure from "mikes exciting tales?"
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