Wandergliding: Flying over the Nazca Lines

November 15^th, 2021

Yesterday I left Huacachina on another Peru Hop bus, or one chartered by them. My online itinerary stated that the bus would leave at 1pm but it wasn’t until close to 4 that two smaller buses showed up. I was a bit miffed as I could have chilled out at Banana’s (the hostel I was staying at it) but hiccups like this occur when backpacking.

It was a 2½ hour journey to Nazca and about 25 minutes before the town we stopped at a 4-5 storey viewing tower to get a look at a few of the Nazca lines. A lot of travellers on tight budgets don’t spring for the half hour plane flight over the lines so this would be their only look. It wasn’t terribly impressive. Sure, we could see a bit of the lizard, the hands and the tree in the flat desert strewn with small rocks but it was hard to make out much.

Looking out over the desert:

Looking down the highway:

The viewing tower:

The view from the tower:

The old viewing tower:

The Nazca Lines are a bunch of geoglyphs created between 500 BC and 500 AD by depressions or shallow incisions in the desert floor. There are more than 70 figures and many more geometrical patterns and the combined length of all of the lines is over 1300 kilometers! Why were they made? No one really knows for sure. One hypothesis is that the Nazca people created them to be seen by the deities in the sky. Since there is hardly any rain in the area (like 2-3 millimeters a year), they don’t easily get eroded. It fascinating to try and figure out how they made them without being able to see them from above.

The next morning, I was picked up from my hotel and taken to the small airport near the edge of the city. Our passports were checked as were our body weights, one by one we stood on a scale. If you were over 95 kilograms, you were purchasing a second seat! We walked out onto the tarmac were 4-5 Cessnas were sitting. Each of them looked similar in size and carried six passengers and two pilots. We took a few photos from the outside and were handed a small, laminated card that showed us the flight plan and which designs we would see and in which order.

Inside the tiny airport terminal:

Our ride:

After boarding, strapping in and donning our headsets, we took off. The co-pilot provided the play-by-play commentary as we passed by the various figures and geometric patterns. In order for passengers on both sides of the plane to get a good view, we often banked hard in a circle to pass over the same spot in a different direction. I couldn’t help but think that these pilots had a pretty cool gig. Most commercial pilots end up being glorified bus drivers and have to fly nice and gentle with smooth turns…not these guys!

Me and Jose ready to go:

Awesome alluviums:

The Astronaut. To me, this looks like someone made it later.

The Condor:

Two of the patterns that I looked forward to seeing were the Monkey and the Spider. The astronaut was up there on the list but man, he was pretty tiny. In fact, all of them were smaller than I had expected. The largest was maybe 360 meters in length but most of them were around 100-160 meters and being relatively high up in a plane made them look smaller. I guess all the pictures that I have seen in the past of the Nazca Lines had nothing to give you a frame of reference of the actual size.

The Monkey!