The famous Nazca lines are half an hour north of the town of Nazca and quite conveniently right on the Pan American Highway, In fact the highway cuts right through the middle of one the large geoglyphs. Maybe the highway was there first? The lines consist of various shapes, including geometric patterns, animals, and plants, with some of the most famous figures being a monkey, a hummingbird, and a spider. It’s very popular to fly over then in a light aircraft but flying didn’t appeal to me and some people I spoke to spent more time looking into their sickbag than looking at the figures.

There is an old viewing tower on the highway and a new flasher one across the road. It was a couple of bucks to climb it but gave a nice view of a couple of the figures. They are between 1500 and 2500 years old. What amazed me was that they were made by scaping away the reddish pebbly topsoil and exposing the white surface underneath. And they have lasted for centuries. You can see one of them up close on the side of the road and the lines are only about 25 centimetres wide. That’s about 1/16^th of an SUV for the Americans who read this. The biggest one is about 370m long (7 and 2/5^th of an Olympic swimming pool). No one really knows what the purpose of them was. Except conspiracy theorists. They know.

From there it was off to my nice hotel in Nazca. The Nazca Travel One Hostel. My bike had to sleep around the corner in a locked yard but was guarded all night by multiple chickens. I quite liked the town. It had some nice street art and trees and some nearby attractions. Actually I have been thinking a lot about it and most of the ancient stuff in Peru is in the cities and so I think the people from the ruins just never moved or died out they just built newer houses on the block next door and kept having kids and grandkids.

One of the local attractions are the Nazca aqueducts, which are called Puquios. They are a series of stone aqueducts that were made by the Nazca people over 2000 years ago. Many of them are still used today. I have seen them pop up on social media occasionally and think they are cool. Maybe because I’m a plumber. The set I looked at had a line of over 30 open wells that were spiral shaped and of varying depths. The region is arid desert, but they dug these spiral wells down to the water table and connected them all together and created a series of aqueducts which, combined with the natural fall of the land, allowed the water to flow out to the fields where they grew crops. They grew maize and cotton for food and textiles which helped the town prosper.

The spiral shape allowed the wind in to assist with the flow of the water, allowed air in, and also as a way of accessing the lines for cleaning. While I was there a group of local high school students pounced on me with lots of questions and English practising. They mostly wanted to know if my phone was an iPhone?

I also went and had a look at some other ruins thing which is just across the street from an industrial area. Surely some of the workers ancestors lived and worked across the street a couple of centuries ago.

The next morning I had a lovely breakfast up on the terrace. Had another long chat with the lovely lady who worked there and then rescued my bike from the chickens and packed my bags and headed out of town. I had decided on a long day after a couple of days of short rides and ended up doing just over 400kms which is my longest day yet. The scenery is definitely getting better the further south I go. I also had to ride through some serious fog for an hour or so at a slow speed. So I’m just going to photo bomb a heap of photos of the ride. Including a couple of earlier ones where I stopped at a cutting and checked out the different types of rock on the wall.

 I got into town just on dark, but I had pre booked a room at the Hostel Qaleta Azul. The owner was there, lovely guy, nice place, and I was able to put the bike in his garage with his car and his bike. I dumped my stuff, walked down to the local shop with him and grabbed a couple of beers and then we returned to the hostel where he also had a friend staying and we sat around for ages, chatting about all sorts of stuff until my head nearly exploded in Spanish.

The next day I was up early, had a nice breakfast, said my goodbyes and headed to the Pan American for my last days ride along the coast. Within 2 minutes I came across something that would consume my thoughts all day. And beyond.