Day 5: NAZCA: Flying over the Nazca Lines and the Chauchilla Cemetery
Today we had the idea of getting up early and having breakfast early, because for fly over the Nazca Lines They recommend not to go with a stomach that is too full, but as it is sometimes impossible to follow the recommendations, in the end and despite the fact that at 5.45 in the morning we are already awake, we end up going down to the breakfast room of the Casa Andina Nazca hotel at 7.30 the morning and how could it be otherwise, we have a good morning feast.
We'll see who can stand the fly over the Nazca Lines.
We have just finished 8 in the morning and we go to one of the rooms of the hotel to continue resting, that although it seems a lie, we need it more than when we are working.
In the hotel we have just planned today until 8.45 in the morning that we are going to the reception of our hotel in Nazca to wait for the representative of Peruvian Wings to take us directly to the airfield.
The first adventure of the day begins, one that we had been waiting for years, fly over the Nazca Lines.
Another good option to make the flight over the Nazca lines is to book this excursion in advance in which they will also pick you up at your hotel.
We arrive at the airfield at 9.10 in the morning where the first thing we do is deliver our passports and pay the fee of 25 soles per person to be paid at the same airfield. Someone had said that in Peru there were no fees?
Now it's time to wait a few minutes until they call us to board at last to fly over the Nazca Lines.
Waiting for you to call us to fly over the Nazca Lines
While we are waiting I can't help remembering details of when I was little and had a special obsession with the Nazca Lines, when my father explained the different theories to me. And today I am here. I can hardly believe it.
It is 9.25 in the morning when we go out on the runway and ride the plane.
It is time to ride the plane
Roger and a man in front and me and another woman behind, in a crossed position to take pictures while we go to fly over the Nazca Lines.
Before taking off they give us some recommendations, such as that the reference of the figure will be the wing of the plane. The first thing we have to do is visualize the figure and then take the pictures so we don't get dizzy.
They inform us that flight will be about 30-35 minutes and almost without realizing it, we are already a few meters from the ground.
The first 10 minutes of flight are perfect, although the plane turns from side to side in a dive, so that we see the figures the seats on the right and those on the left.
Flying over the Nazca Lines in a plane, a unique experience
We see all the figures, although we have to say that we expected that they would look much larger than they look, although they are perfectly distinguished and more with the indications that the pilot and co-pilot are giving us.
The spider in the Nazca Lines
The flight continues and when we have been 15 minutes and the plane continues to turn, we begin to notice a cold sweat and feel that our body begins to turn.
This makes us spend the last minutes of the flight quite fatigued and with a feeling of wanting to land as soon as possible.
Views of the Pan American while flying over the Nazca Lines
Monkey figure
And so we continue until the end of the flight in which we have to recognize we have made real efforts not to make breakfast. We have to say that we have seen the last figures almost in refinement, avoiding turning the head a lot so as not to cause the dizziness to increase.
The figure of the hummingbird, one of the most marked of the Nazca Lines
The astronaut, one of the most enigmatic
In spite of everything, we believe that living the experience of fly over the Nazca Lines It is a must, although we, now that we have enjoyed it, can also say that we would not repeat it.
After landing and saying goodbye to the crew in less than 10 minutes, the Peruvian Alas representative comes to find us, to return us to the Casa Andina Nazca hotel, and we take the opportunity to stop at the agency, which is on the same street, to pay for the flight, Although we booked it online, as we said yesterday when we arrived in Nazca, we still had not paid it.
Book the best rated tours and excursions in Spanish from Peru by travelers:
- Flight over the Nazca Lines
- Archaeological tour of Nazca
- Colca Canyon: 2-day tour from Arequipa
- Excursion to Lake Titicaca, Uros and Taquile- Many more excursions and tours here
At mid-morning we are back at our hotel, where when they see us arriving, they directly offer us a coca tea, we intuit that from our faces they already intuit that we come from fly over the Nazca Lines.
This is our first contact with who will be our companion from now on the trip to Peru, coca tea.
We went up to the room and taking advantage of the fact that we have been told that we can check out until noon, we lay down half an hour in an incredible way, they fix our body and return us to the state we had this morning before fly over the Nazca Lines.
Once recomposed of the overflight over the Nazca Lines and with the body ready for new visits, we return our backpacks.
It's 12 in the morning when we lower our backpacks to reception and go for a walk through the streets of Nazca, to learn a little more about this city that hosts one of the most enigmatic mysteries of Peru.
Bolognesi Square in Nazca
The truth is that the most central area of the city is traveled quickly and we take advantage to enter several stores, including one of handicrafts (there are no more where they sell things focused on tourism) where we talk a good time with the owner and we take several recommendations of places to eat in Arequipa that he knows.
This is one of the things that we are falling in love with Peru, its people. Everyone talks and explains things about the country, about culture ... asks us about the situation in Spain.
To meet someone here is to know that you are going to have a good time talking about things that you probably had not thought for a long time.
After 1 noon we will eat at the Mamashana restaurant, recommended in several forums, where we ask for a Lima cause of chicken, huacaina potato, grilled chicken plus water and coke for 64.50 soles. All great and with exceptional service.
Tasting Peruvian cuisine in Nazca
Shortly before 3 in the afternoon we leave and go straight to the Bolognesi Square in search of a taxi to take us this afternoon to visit the Chauchila Cemetery and the Cantalloc aqueduct. On the way we see an agency and take the opportunity to ask the price, taking the surprise when they tell us that for these visits we have to pay 100 soles per person.
We had the idea that this route was going to be much cheaper so we go straight to the hotel to ask and we met a guide who is at the reception waiting for some clients. We take advantage of the situation and ask for the price by adding the visit to Cahuachi and already tells us that it is impossible to do all that tour because of the time it is, since it gets dark at 6.30 in the afternoon and every place we want to visit is in one direction.
After this explanation and agreeing that we eliminated Cahuachi from the planning, it gives us a price of 120 soles, tickets separately.
This is getting more expensive and counting that the references we have last year for this tour are 50 soles and seeing that time is coming up and in the end we will be unable to visit what we have planned we go in search of a taxi from the street to see if we have more luck.
As we begin to ask, the only answer we receive is a negative. They do not even give us a price directly and tell us that they do not make that journey.
We ask a police officer who is directing traffic in Bolognesi Square and tells us that he is in charge of looking for someone. It begins to stop at different taxis and the only two that accept the 10 that stop, give us a price of 120 soles, a price equal to what the guide in the hotel had given us.
We thank the police and half-desperate we return to the hotel trying to find the guide we had left 10 minutes ago.
We arrived at the reception and the guide just picked up other clients who have confirmed a tour for that moment.
The truth is that we would never have imagined that it would be so difficult to hire this route, if it is not clear that we would have closed it this morning with any agency.
But as not everything could be bad, we are lucky that another guide who had stayed with some clients comes in to explain the overflight they will do the next day, which after explaining everything we want to do, gives us a price, including tickets to all sites.
More practical information to prepare your trip to Peru
- 10 essential places to visit in Peru
- 10 essential tips for traveling to Peru
- The best travel insurance for Peru
By telling you that it is very expensive and haggling a bit, in the end we reached an agreement, including tickets to the sites to visit.
And we thinking it would be to sew and sing find a transport to the Chauchilla Cemetery and the Cantalloc aqueduct.
It is very clear that it is not as we thought and the rest of the routes that we have programmed for following days we will have to book them with more time if we do not want to take a dislike.
We meet the guide at 15.30 in the afternoon and with a good sun that starts to burn, we go out to the road.
Here we make a small paragraph to talk about Juan Chumbe, the guide with whom we made the tour to the Chauchilla Cemetery and the Cantalloc aqueduct.
We believe that coincidences do not exist and that everything goes through something and after meeting Juan, we believe that not finding transport so quickly for these visits was for us to meet him.
We have nothing but extraordinary words for him. Not only as a guide, we can say that we learned more with him in the hours we shared that everything we could read or see in documentaries about the country, but as a person, is one of those that we will always remember along with the trip to Peru.
If you ever go around the area and want to have a guide and companion first, remember Juan. We leave the website of Jat Peru, your agency.
We continue with the travel diary. It takes about 40 minutes to reach the Chauchilla Cemetery while Juan explains everything about the Nazca culture and what we will see in a few minutes.
Just arrived at the Chauchilla Cemetery
Chauchilla Cemetery
The mummies of the Nazca culture date from the year 1000 A.D. and until not long ago they were scattered across the desert, something that grave robbers took advantage of to plunder most of them.
Tomb in the Chauchilla Cemetery
Now you can see a dozen tidy tombs, carefully organized, although you can still stumble, as happened to us with the odd bone and cotton of the bales along the way.
Tombs in Chauchilla
Mummy in the Chauchilla Cemetery
Undoubtedly Chauchilla Cemetery is an essential visit from Nazca, but above all we recommend doing it with a guide. In our case, as you have read the idea was to do it directly by taxi and now, after making the visit, we have to recognize that if we had done so, we would not have understood even 10% of everything we could learn with someone who He has been explaining everything we were seeing.
Juan's explanations in the Chauchilla Cemetery
After these hours in the Chauchilla Cemetery, we can say that it is one of the visits that attracted our attention and now, once done, we think completely the other way around.
In the end we have been in Chauchilla longer than expected, but Juan's explanations have captivated us and that the air he made and we had to endure, has made us get out of there with sand even in the ears!
From Chauchilla and almost being almost 6 in the afternoon, we go to the Cantalloc aqueduct, making a short stop in Paredones, 2 kilometers southwest of Nazca, some ruins that are not too well preserved, but worthwhile if You're passing
Paredones in Nazca
We arrive at Cantalloc aqueduct at dusk, when they are about to close, but Juan talks a few minutes with the guard and in the end they let us through.
Cantalloc Aqueduct
We find a very different environment to what is usually seen in the sunlight, which is not the best for photos, but which for us is a very special moment. Sometimes you have to turn the topics to find new sensations.
Cantalloc Aqueduct
After 6:30 in the afternoon, we set off to return to Nazca and before arriving at the Casa Andina Nazca hotel, we told Juan that they can leave us at the Nazca Lines hotel where we want to reserve a place in the planetarium for the function in Spanish tonight at 8:15 p.m.
But as soon as we get surprised, they tell us that on Sundays there is no function, so we say goodbye to Juan and the driver, to continue our late move in Nazca.
As it is just after 7 pm, we take the opportunity to make a stop and go to the restaurant where we were at lunchtime where we enjoyed a jug of great lemonade that serves to recharge batteries and enjoy a pleasant evening.
With the day almost over, we can say that we take a more than pleasant memory of Nazca.
After 8 in the afternoon we approached La Choza for dinner, where we ordered a pizza plus beer and lemonade for 37 soles with which we secured dinner in case tonight the menu of the Bus Cruz del Sur from Nazca to Arequipa we do not like it.
Having dinner at La Choza in Nazca
After 9 pm we go to the Casa Andina Nazca hotel to pick up our backpacks and we are on our way, this time on foot, to the Cruz del Sur Station to wait for our Night bus from Nazca to Arequipa, of which we have reserved VIP seats to try to spend a night in a seat as close as possible to a bed.
About to check our bags on the night bus from Nazca to Arequipa
There are a few minutes to 12 at night and we notice that the road is a non-stop cornering. We prefer to close the curtains and eyes looking for some of today's images.
The hummingbird. Nazca Lines
Day 6: Arequipa
