Wednesday 10 Mar 2010
Nazca, Peru
A do nothing day... bliss!
The plan was to head to Cusco this evening on the overnight bus, but when I went along this morning to buy the ticket at the CIAL station they didn´t have any spare SINGLE row seats, so I possibly would have had to share a row with someone else which isn´t a good thing when the bus would be rolling left and right up sharp turns all night.
The only option left to me was to book the bus for the next day.
This meant I had a day to just relax, read email, and snooze all day. I haven´t had one of those in so long, so it was welcome!
In the evening I went to visit the rather good "planetarium" in the Nazca Lines hotel, which gives a very educational history of the lines and what archeologists THINK they were used for. The theories range from "messages to God", "pointing to sources of water", "mapping of stars", "calendars based on summer/winter solstice", to "rock n roll loving aliens" (ok maybe that last one is mine).
They also believe that the Nazca would have danced along the lines to pray for water.
No one really knows their purpose even after a German lady, Maria Reiche, spent her entire life trying to unravel the mysteries. The planetarium is an homage to Maria, who not only single-handedly cleaned up debris that had accumulated on the lines over the centuries (that´s 300km squared of surface-area folks!), but also instilled a pride in the history of the Nazca among the local Peruvians.
Definately recommend the planetarium.