Nasca- Nazca

One full on day today.

A morning boat ride to see abundant wildlife. A five hour bus ride.

Nasca or Nazca?

Well the road sign at the entrance to town says Nasca but many internet articles including Wikipedia say Nazca.

Then after checking into our accommodation it is time to head out to the the airport to take a 30 minute flight over the Nasca Lines.

That's when the drama began.  We checked in at the airport. We were all weighed. A good sign in my book and then they made their weight and balance calculations.

After that they called out some names to go through security to begin boarding.  We then realised that   the five couples had all been split up.  Well, that wasn't happening.  There were enough of our group that were apprehensive enough about flying in a light aircraft let alone not being able to go with their partner.

There was a stand off for a while.  Our tour group leader was called to be the translator but still the aircraft company was adamant that this was the way it had to be.

We then said that we weren't going and that we wanted a refund. That caused some movement where we were then told that 11 of us could go, not 12, and so someone needed to pull out.

Well, one couple opted to pull out which wasn't what the company wanted either.  Now we were ten. Eventually they reworked all their weight and balance calculations and all 12 got to fly.  

We were boarded last.  Given our briefing and then the pilot went to start up.  Oops. Nobody home.  As the Aussie next to me said to the pilot "did you leave the lights on?"

Next a battery cart was produced and that didn't work.  Then the ground engineer turned the prop a third of a turn, plugged the cart in again and hey presto we were turning and burning.  I had to make some reassurance noises to the rest of the group who were by now about to jump out and make a run for it.

Up up and away, eventually and we climbed to 750 feet.  Next thing you know we were making left hand orbits followed by right hand ones over these ancient geoglyphs.

They are pretty amazing and I found it hard to get my head around them being ancient.  

The "artwork" included a monkey, a dog, a humming bird, a whale, a fisherman (or astronaut), a spider and a condor.

There are many others spread over a wide area of the Nasca desert but those are the ones that we saw.

All back on terra firma 30 minutes later and it appears that everyone survived and all seemed pleased that they had done it.

We returned to the hotel and then ventured out again fairly quickly with our guide for a short introductory tour of the Nasca town centre followed by dinner.

It turns out that Nasca's main industry is gold mining quickly followed by tourism.

For dinner Lindsey had a local dish of dried potato and shrimps and I, being sick of potato and rice, had stuffed ravioli with mushrooms and ham.  Both were excellent with the ravioli tasting very fresh and I finished the meal off with a very nice, light and fluffy, lime pie.

PS. At the hotel we discovered that we had a small double bed allocated to us. Lindsey hasn't been sleeping well as she recovers from the jet lag and this was an unwelcome sight.  Luckily there are three members of our group that have single supplements.  Lindsey was straight on to Fiona, a lass from Edinburgh, and swapped our double bed room for her three single bed room.  Both were happy and I was too, for the record.

On a follow up, the next day we have discovered that our share twin booking in NZ has morphed into a "matrimonial" room in Spanish which means a double :0.