Nasca, Peru – With the Cessna above the Geoglyphe

The plane could do with some more horsepower. It accelerates infinitely slow, but suddenly, faster than expected we take off. The Cessna C 172 – the world’s most produced plane type – seems to stand in the air, so slow it flies, but that’s good for taking photos. At every figure the pilots move the wings once to the right and once to the left so that every passenger – in this case Joerg and I – can take pictures. That’s why we were told not to have breakfast before the flight, but our stomachs are resistant.

The Nasca scratched a monkey with ringed tail into the sand, a condor, a hummingbird, a dog, a spider, and a parrot. Other figures include a tree, hands, a flower, and a whale. A man with goldfish glass head is tended to be called an astronaut, others claim it’s a shaman with owl mask. Some of the Geoglyphe are well to see, others only on closer inspection. Even more questions than the figures prompt the surfaces and the numerous kilometres long lines that are at a tangent, cross, intersect, or come from a common midpoint in regular angles like rays. Why one would go to all that trouble?

The underground aqueducts of Cantallo, built by the Nasca and essential for the fields’ irrigation still today, can be visited by tourists now only from outside. The spiral-like entrances that are still used for cleaning the channels by locals can be seen from the air. When floating above the runway the pilots forget to advice us to fasten our seat belts again. Doesn’t matter, the landing is as soft as the starting was.

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