Southern Exposure

Monday, February 9

We woke up early today knowing that we had a long and exhausting day ahead. The hostel residents partied until 2 am last night and our room was un-conveniently located right next to the discoteca. The ear plugs and the eye masks saved the night again, and we actually got decent sleep.

Out the door at 8 am I was only able to get a cup of instant coffee at the hostel bar for $1. The hostel restaurant which advertised its doors open at 7:30 am was tightly locked up, and everything else in town was still asleep.

The ride to Nasca started out uneventful. As we left the dunes the road took us through a number of dusty road towns. The police usually set themselves up at the entrance of each town, so it was difficult to gain momentum as the speed limit goes down to 35 km/h around urban areas. We’ve heard a lot about corrupt Peruvian road police, so we have been very careful about slowing down when we need to or as soon as we spot them hiding in the bushes. We’ve been stopped twice but they never had anything on us, just checked our papers and let us go.

The next stretch of the road was quite spectacular as we rode through completely flat and uninhabited light grey colored desert. Only once in a while there would be an unlikely shack hunched down by the side of the road, and strangely enough a person sitting on the “porch” watching the occasional car go by. I really wanted to stop and take pictures of these isolated nomads but felt uncomfortable doing it in their face. The only picture I was able to snap is of the lonely shack in the dessert.

As we were pulling up closer to Nasca town the highway passed through the area where the Nasca lines were located.

You could not tell from the road that the geoglyphs existed there. We went directly to the Nasca airport and got our tickets for a flight over the Nasca lines. After about 40 minutes wait we were finally boarding the small five-person plane.

The pilot gave us all a barf bag, “just in case” he said. We all laughed at him, put our head phones on and the plane took off. Right away as we were gaining altitude up to 100 meters the ride felt very bumpy and exceedingly unpleasant.

Before we even saw the first geoglyth I was thinking to myself that the barf bag might come in handy, and how embarrassing that would be to actually use it, and oh my god, I am so glad we didn’t have anything to eat that morning, may be I can get through this 35 minute flight with dignity.

The pilot was pointing out the geoglyphs and flying around them once in a circle to make sure each side of the plane could see it and take pictures. The more geoglyphs we saw, the more circles we made, the more sick I felt.

The lines were all different in size and definition, but much smaller than I imagined. My favorites were the monkey, the astronaut, the spider and the humming bird. I was on my last reserve when the pilot signaled the end of the tour.

We started descending and judging by the look on everyone’s faces I was not the only one feeling so sick. When we finally landed, we got out of the plane and all walked very very slowly into the lobby of the airport. It took about 15 minutes of chair rest to get back to normal. All I wanted to do was to lie on a bed for a few hours, and the prospect of needing to get on a bike and riding through the mountains made me feel sorry for myself.

It was 12:30 pm when we left the airport and started climbing up into the mountains. The weather conditions were becoming worse as we went higher, the drizzling rain turned into heavy rain, combined with heavy fog, combined with some of the worsts roads we have travelled on up until now. After two hours in first and sometimes second gear we finally made it out of the clouds and into a beautiful scenery of brown and yellow meadows with picturesque mountains on each side.

We rode through the Reserva Pampa Galeras park where adorable vicunyas where roaming around the fields. I couldn’t get enough of them and we stopped frequently for pictures. They are extremely cute, curious but very skittish.

After the park we started climbing up again. It was getting cold so we put on more clothes and were faced with more rain, fog and awful roads. It didn’t seem possible, but the roads were getting even worse than before, there were more potholes than the road. I was swearing all ride long and towards the end lost all patience in trying to avoid the pot holes, it was all the same.

After six grueling hours since we left Nasca we only did 100 miles, much less than we expected. We decided to spend the night in Piquira the only town in the next hundred miles that would have a hotel. We were so exhausted and wet from the ride that we took the first hostel that we could spot thinking that might be our only option. They had a garage, which sealed the deal for us. This was the worst hostel we have stayed at on this trip, but we were just happy to get a roof over our heads at that point.

Once we settled in, we went to find dinner and discovered there was actually a main plaza in the town and more and what seemed like nicer hostels. You would think by now we should have learned that if one wants to find a decent hotel or a restaurant one should always look for the main plaza in any size town. After the ride of today however everything we have learned skipped our minds.

After another dinner of roasted chicken and french fries (that seems to be the plate de jour anywhere we go) we went back to the hostel, put on warm clothes to sleep in, watched a couple episodes of Dexter and fell asleep planning to wake up as early as possible tomorrow to get out of this dump and make it to Cusco.