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Cahuachi
A dirt road travels 25km west from Nazca to Cahuachi , the most important known Nazca center, which is still undergoing excavation. It consists of several pyramids, a graveyard and an enigmatic site called Estaquería, which may have been used as a place of mummification. Tours from Nazca take three hours and may include a side trip to Pueblo Viejo, a nearby pre-Nazca residential settlement.
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Cantallo Aqueducts
About 7km southeast of town via Arica over the river are the underground Cantallo aqueducts , which are still in working order and essential to irrigate the surrounding fields. The Nazca's stonework is fine, and it is possible to enter the aqueducts through the spiraling ventanas (windows), which local people use to clean the aqueducts each year - for it's a wet, weird and claustrophobic experience.
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Chauchilla Cemetery
The most popular excursion from Nazca, the Chauchilla Cemetery , 30km south of Nazca, will satisfy any urges you have to see ancient bones, skulls and mummies. Dating back to the Nazca culture around AD 1000, the mummies were, until recently, scattered haphazardly across the desert, left by ransacking tomb-robbers. Now they are seen carefully rearranged inside a dozen or so tombs, though cloth fragments and pottery and bone shards still litter the ground outside the demarcated trail.
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Mirador Observation Tower
You'll get only a sketchy idea of the lines at the Mirador Observation Tower , on the Panamericana 20km north of Nazca, which has an oblique view of three figures: the lizard, tree and hands (or frog, depending on your point of view). It's also a lesson in the damage to which the lines are vulnerable: the Panamericana runs smack through the tail of the lizard, which from nearby seems all but obliterated. Signs warning of landmines are a reminder that walking on the lines is strictly forbidden.
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Museo Arqueológico Antonini
This excellent archaeological museum gives both an overview of the Nazca culture and a glimpse of most of Nazca's outlying sites. It also boasts an aqueduct running through the back garden, interesting reproductions of burial tombs, a valuable collection of ceramic pan flutes and a scale model of the lines. The exhibit labels are in Spanish, but the front desk lends translation booklets in various languages.
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Museo Maria Reiche
When Maria Reiche, the German mathematician and long-term researcher of the Nazca Lines, died in 1998, her house, which stands another 5km north along the Panamericana, was made into the small Museo Maria Reiche . Though disappointingly scant on information, you can see where she lived, amid the clutter of her tools and obsessive sketches, and pay your respects to her tomb outside in the garden.
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Nazca Lines
Spread over 500 sq km (310 sq mi) of arid, rock-strewn plain in the Pampa Colorada (Red Plain), the Nazca Lines are one of the world's great archaeological mysteries. Comprising over 800 straight lines, 300 geometric figures (geoglyphs) and 70 animal and plant drawings (biomorphs), the lines are almost imperceptible on the ground. From above, they form a striking network of stylized figures and channels, many of which radiate from a central axis.
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Planetarium Maria Reiche
This small planetarium offers scripted evening lectures on the Nazca Lines with graphical displays on a domed projection screen that last approximately 45 minutes. Call ahead or check the posted schedules for show times in Spanish or English (French and Italian by reservation only).
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Reserva Nacional Pampas Galeras
This national reserve is a vicuña sanctuary, high in the mountains on the road to Cuzco. It's the best place in Peru to see these shy animals, though tourist services are virtually nonexistent. Every other year, in late May or early June, is the biannual chaccu , when hundreds of Andean villagers round up the vicuñas for shearing and three festive days of traditional ceremonies, with music and dancing, and of course, drinking.
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Showing 1-9 of 9 results
