After returning from the Colca Canyon on each of my trips I have spent a few days enjoying the social scene in Arequipa. There is pretty good craic to be had there with the locals and the gringo tourists. Then from Arequipa the road heads north along the coast to Lima. Its several hundred kilometers and there are several things to see on the way. Probably the most famous are the Nasca lines.

The lines are in the desert outside the town of Nasca, and they can only really be seen from the air. So we needed a pilot. As usual the local tourist industry provides. (The second time I was here the weather was completely overcast and it was not possible to fly)

The 'Lines' are a series of shapes and drawings on the ground. They were made hundreds of years before the Spaniards arrived. But because of the way they were made (by moving rocks and other material on the ground) they are only visible from the air. So if their makers could not see the result of their work, why did they do it and who did they do it for?

And they didn't just do lines. There are stylised drawings of animals as well. This one is of a Condor.

Here is a hummingbird. The drawings, hundreds of metres in size are the same as the small images painted on the local pottery from the same period.

This one is a monkey.

In some cases the lines run for kilometers accross the desert.

After a 20 minute spin we returned having seen but not understood. There are a load of theories as to why the lines are there. I don't have an answer myself, but I do know THEY ARE NOT UFO TRACKS!!!!

For the rest of the day we got a tour of the pre-columbian graveyards. The dry climate and tradition have preserved the dead as mummies. But more recently the graves have been robbed by theives looking for gold and textiles. All that remains is the mummies in their funeral pits though.