Monday, April 23, 2012

Nazca, Peru – April 21 – 23, 2012



We spent two days in Nazca  trying to understand the mystery of the Nasca Lines.  Seeing the Nazca Lines in person is to experience one of the unexplained mysteries of our planet.  There are almost too many lines to count and it boggles the mind to make sense of it all.  What was the intended function? What purpose did they serve their masters??  How long did it take to create???

Our first evening there we enjoyed a very informative lecture at the Museo Maria Reiche observatory trying to make sense of what we would see.  Maria Reiche, the German mathematician and long-term researcher of the Nasca Lines, died in 1998, her house, which stands another five km north of Nazca center, along Carr Panamericana Sur, was made into a small museum.   The small planetarium in the Nazca Lines Hotel offers scripted evening lectures on the Lines with graphical displays on a domed projection screen that lasts about 45 minutes.

However, to make any sense of it all, it is best viewed from the air.  This takes place at the local Nazca airport for a fee of $100 per person.  We highly recommend that you charter the smaller planes (4 seaters) to control the time of your viewing...otherwise you end up waiting until the plane is full and it can be quite a lengthy wait. It is best viewed early morning or late afternoon as the shadowing allows for the best defined views.   

A short flight of 10 minutes takes you over the lines and you spend 20 minutes viewing the site.  After our flyover we admit to having as many unanswered questions as we had previous.  This appears to be the case for those more learned than us even after 80 years of studying this strange and awesome phenomenon.  Birds, animals and geometric designs hundreds of meters in size and lines running pencil straight for miles over hills and disappearing into the horizon and even a figure that truly seemed to represent a spaceman geoglyph...30 meters tall clearly etched in the side of a hill with space helmet and all. 

                                                 
                                              Nazca Spaceman????








Nazca Lines Hummingbird




The above picture was taken by Kaija of the Nazca Hummingbird as viewed by us during our flyover.  This is perhaps the most emblematic figure of the plains of Nazca.  It is 96 meters long and 66 meters wide.  The Nazcas attributed divine status to Hummingbirds and believed that they served as messengers between Condors, which were seen as Gods, and humankind.


The Nazca Lines, first discovered in 1926 by Paul Kosok...to date, have remained one of the unexplained mysteries of our world.  One of the theories regarding the lines speculates that they were sacred roads which had to be followed during pilgrimages, and that the trapezoids were sacred plazas.  Paul Kosok and Maria Reiche suggested that the figures and lines were associated with the constellations, solstices and equinoxes and that as a whole they formed an enormous astronomical calendar.  However, after our fly over, we are beginning to think it appears to be 4 separate terminals of a large airport (space station)...hahaha, (and we haven't even started chewing on the Coca leaves).  Altho, we have a feeling the truth is hiding in plain site...NAZCA (National Aerospace and Zoological Cosmic Agency).  One gets the feeling that there is more going on here than meets the eye, especially when you visit the local fire station and see their sign is CIA NAZCA FAA hmmmm??  This whole place falls into that category of Unexplained Mysteries of the Universe!

Now...on to Arequipa, Peru's second largest City...
 

 

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