Nazca Lines & Creepy Skeletons

I've been really looking forward to Peru, and it's not disappointing.  Mysterious shapes in the sand and well preserved old mummies, what more can you ask for?

Flying over the Nazca Lines
So the truth about the Nazca Lines is that no one really knows who built them or why.  After seeing them, I think those alien conspiracy theories are just crazy talk.  To me, it's obvious that some ancient civilzation created these figures in the sand as tributes to gods.  Some guess it was part of a ritual to walk the lines.  The best scientific guesses are that they were made by a Nazca civilization about 900 BC to 600 AD.  There are pottery and things that replicate the same shapes in the sand.

There are over 800 lines in total, and they're all just spread randomly around the desert.  Some are animals, plants, and just plain fun geometric shapes.  Part of the mystery though is that you can only really enjoy them from a plane.  Even from nearby mountains or on land, you can't tell what you're looking at.

I also made a little video, so you can feel what it's like to bump around in this little plane.  My stomach ended up doing cartwheels after the pilot kept spinning us in circles over the shapes, and I'd see the horizon perpendicular rather than it's normal horizontally, comfortable self.  My friend Kate and I ended up getting split up on 2 flights, but us both sitting co-pilot made it worth it.   The 30 minute ride costs a hefty $60, but it's well worth it, especially if you keep down your breakfast.



Creepy Cemetery of Chauchilla
A cemetary is a cemetery is a cemetery, unless you're in the desert of Peru and the cemetery at question is hundreds of years old and full of loose bones, mummies, and skulls.  There's a theme in Peru that little is known about many of the ancient civilizations because very little or nothing was written down about them.  But you leave behind mummies and things, all sorts of modern day archeologists will sort through and deduce things about your culture. 

If you're creeped out by bones and dead people, maybe just skip over the paragraphs and "enjoy" the Halloween scenes.  They are very Tales from the Crypt-esque.



The mummies at hand here are super well preserved because the people used herbs to wash there dead, peeled back their skin and put layed of cotton between the bone and skin.  Creepy, but cool, because dozens of old mummies are hanging out in hundreds of years old cotton with hair, some even have dreadlocks.


Basically it was burial site after burial site filled with bones.  How did someone discover this?  Well, it's the desert, and basically as the sand blew away people started noticing the cotton and random bones around, and they decided to dig.  Walking along the trails there were random femurs and skulls hanging about.  There were obviously some offerings of pottery and things in the burial sites, but if there was any gold, that is long gone.