Last night I got home from another weekend trip to Nasca, Peru, which is about seven hours south of Lima. I have had a lot of opportunities to travel, so I have just been taking them (especially to escape the overcast weather of Lima's winter!). I went with two friends also from Indiana University, Jacqui and Jaycee, and we had a great time!

The attraction in Nasca is the Nasca lines, which are simliar to crop circles, only they are in the desert. Anyways, there are tons of different lines that were etched into the desert by the Nasca people thousands of years ago, and thanks to the arrid climate of southern Peru, they are still visible. We took a tiny airplane over the desert for about 45 minutes in order to see all the lines. There is also a tower that you can climb to see a few figures, however, it is not nearly as cool as seeing the lines form a plane. The Nasca lines are a huge tourist destination in Peru, although aside form tons of Japanese tour groups (its really fashionable to travel to Peru if you're Japanese, as I was told by a Japanese friend), there weren't tons of tourists in the city.

Also in Nasca, there are some semi-freshly uncovered burial grounds that are thousands of years old, but also very well preserved thanks to the climate. There were tons of skeletons and mummies. And more Japanese tourist groups, too.

We also saw some neat aquaducts that were constructed by the ancient Nasca people. The aquaducts stream water into the city from the runoff water of glaciers in the Andes. The aquaducts are actually still completely intact due to the ingenious engineering of the Nasca people. The water from the aquaducts is still used, and we were invited to drink some because it is supposed to be completely purified, too. I drank some and didn't get sick, so I guess the Nasca people were really smart because that is the first place in Peru where I have seen a source of clean water. And it was constructed over a thousand years ago!

As it so happens, these couple weeks in Nasca are the weeks of fiestas for the patron saint of the city, Guadalupe. Every night there was a TON of music, dancing, street vendors, food, and other festival like things. It was cool to see everybody celebrating in the city's plaza. It was very apparent that everybody from the entire small town, and probably everybody from all the other small towns close by, was in the Plaza de Armas for the festivities. Our hostel was right on the Plaza de Armas, so needless to say, it was hard to get adequate sleep as parties are only getting started around midnight here. The walls of our room were constantly vibrating as a result of the loud music.

This is one of the huge aquaduct spirals. There is water in the hole at the bottom.

Mummies. The one on the right has really long dreadlocks. For the Nasca people, dreads were a mark of the upperclass. I think its amazing that hair of people from a thousand years ago is still around...

More skeletons.

Us with our pilot. This was the smallest plane I have ever been on. Maximum of four people, including the pilot.

Jaycee and I in the backseat of the plane.

La araña. The spider.

El mono. The monkey. It might be a little hard to see the figure on the small photo, but the monkey has a spiral tail. It was my favorite Nasca line.