Peru Day 4 – Nazca

So we head to the airport because we don’t want to get scammed by all these middle men and buy our tickets to flyover the Nazca lines.  The taxi driver tries to hustle us but eventually drops us off at the airport.  Tim and I find a airline, look at the plane, and negotiate a price of $85 each to fly over all 12 Nazca Lines and all 10 Palpa lines in a 3 passenger plane.  This is the deluxe package.

We took our Dramamine and then they took us to the gates where we found out it was another plan (and later found out another airline) and away we went, me and Tim and this guy from Turkey.  It was amazing! Such a wonderful flight and a clear day.

But after seeing all of the 12 Nazca and 2 of the Palpa lines he said that was the end of the tour and took us back.  When we went to complain we were shuffled all the way back to the other counter.  After an hour of being jerked around by the owner of the airline who claimed we only purchased the 40 minute tour and that the guy who sold it to us was a middle man Tim got really frustrated and said he was going back to complain at the terminal.

But instead of taking a Taxi he just walked out onto the tarmac! That got everyone’s attention and they send a van for us.  After talking to everyone on the planet it turns out that the kid who sold us the tickets was a subcontractor for the airline. The airline didn’t have any planes going up and handed us off to another airline and they took us on a lovely but wrong flight.

After having lunch at the airport I went back to the hotel to pack up while Tim handled the rest.  In the end he met with local police, airport police, the airport commissioner, and every airline involved and the forced some guy from the ground crew to fork over $30 for each of us and free tickers the next time we come to Nazca (ironically though for the 40minute not the 1 hour tour).

I picked Tim up luggage in hand and talked the Taxi driver into taking us to the adobe ruin I mentioned yesterday – Cahuachi. I told him I wanted to be there before the sunset and he said it would be hard since it was all gravel, dirt, and sand in the desert.  He drove those 20 miles like a bat out of hell it was like driving in the open desert we could barely see a road.  Then this caretaker came out and showed us around and we stayed till the sunset and it was dark dark.

Then a little slower he drove us to the bus station for our bus to Cusco.  The ride through the desert reminded me of something that happened on a previous ride through the desert on the day before at the cemetery as we drove two wild dogs chased the car.  Wild dogs are everywhere and just kinda wander around.

At the bus station Tim and I balanced the first 4 days of the trip and I watched as Tim talked a moth land on his tongue. It was gross!

We had the front two seats on the bus.  I took my Dramamine and faded out to a subtitled Deja Vu – unlike the last trip the movie was in Spanish with English subtitles.

We left Nazca at 8:30 at an elevation of 1800 feet.

[Re-posted from my University Blog & Edited 07/01/2011]