#66 A Line in the Sand - The Nasca Lines

'Whale'

I remember as a small child blessed with chicken legs and a high pitched voice, watching a documentary on the Nasca Lines. These mysterious lines, sprawled out across the desert, sometimes stretching for kilometres. These mysterious lines, only viewable from the sky - forming triangles, squares, monkeys, condors, astronauts? Like the Bermuda Triangle or the City of Atlantis, these lines were indeed a mystery - why were they made, for whom, and for what purpose? The documentary talked of alien beings, water cults, and mapping of the skies. Who knew I would one day find myself in Peru, boarding a small plane to see these wonders.

A quick history lesson: the Nasca people created these lines somewhere between 400 and 650AD over the course of many generations. The area encompassing the lines is nearly 500 square kilometres made up of many intersecting lines. They were made by removing the sunbaked rocks and leaving the dry lighter earth below exposed. Because Nasca is one of the driest places in the earth, the lines have remained untouched.

They are almost impossible to see on the ground and were only 'discovered' in 1940 when a plane looking at irrigation systems flew over them. Until then, no one knew what was beneath their feet, demonstrated by the fact the Pan American actually cuts through one of the figures, unknown when the road was built.

'Astronaut' (or a man with an owl head)

In the hope of recruiting Charlotte to the Nasca Fan Club (NFC for short), we went to the local planetarium which hosted an informative nightly talk on the lines, their history, and the various theories. With so many crisscorssing lines over such a large distance made over hundreds of years, no one really knows why they were made. Some lines point to water sources so it's theorised a water cult used the lines to point the way, or to dance on them on religious occasions. Others say they map the constellations and signal important astrological events. Given that the lines can only be seen from the sky, some say they might be made to be seen from someone in the sky...

'Reece' and 'Plane'

So here we were, boarding this tiny plane, two pilots in the front and the two of us in the back and up we went. And it was just as spectacular as I had hoped. The lines stretched out into the distance, many intersecting. But the best were the figures. They say a picture tells a thousands words, so I won't write anymore.

- Reece

'Monkey' - made from one single continuous line starting with the triangles on the left.

'Hummingbird'

'Spider' (you'll have to look closely)

'Condor'

'Plant' and 'Hands', and a lookout tower.

Not quite the same when you're closed to land, and this was at the top of the lookout tower.