Nazca – Lima

Nazca

From Cusco we took the night bus to Nazca. It was a long and curvy way (around 700km) through the Andes and it took us around 14 hours. In the bus it feels like we were on a boat, because the bus was shaking a lot, because of the many curves. When we arrived in Nazca we watched the end of the football game Spain against Russia (3:4 n.P.). After waiting an hour till our next host Juan picked us up at the bus station. Nazca is a small town 450km south of Lima. This town is famous for the Nazca-Lines, which belongs to the Unesco World Heritage sites since 1994. These lines are ancient geoglyphs founded in the Nazca desert and determined by the German mathematician Maria Reiche in the last 100 years. The largest figures are up to 370 m long and the best way to see them are by an airplane. Juan’s place was very close to the touristic airport called “Maria Reiche airport” and he works as a tourist guide and could give us all the information we needed. Lisa was supposed to do such a flight in the afternoon, so we decided to see three of these famous Nazca Lines in the morning from a small viewing platform. We saw the three figures a hand, a tree and a lizard. In fact, its impressive to see these huge figures kind of painted or engraved in the dry and very hard sand desert. We also went on to the Maria Reiche museum, which was located at her place, where she used to live till she died in June 1998. On the way there we met the Italian guy Alessandro, with whom we spent the whole afternoon walking around Nazca and sharing our travel stories while Lisa were waiting for her flight. Unfortunately, there were too many people, so she could not fly this afternoon. She got the opportunity for another flight early in the morning of the next day, which turned out as an amazing time replacement. The weather was fantastic, sunny and no clouds. She had a clear view of a lot of different figures engraved in sand and rock as well (monkey, whale, astronaut, spider, etc.)

Lima

The bus ride from Nazca to Lima was wonderful on the “Panamerica Sur” highway through the impressive landscape of a desert. This street runs between the Pacific coast and the mountain range “Cordillera de los Andes” and from time to time we passed by some oases around a river in which are located small villages with a lot of fruit markets and a lot of orange trees, corn fields and palm trees around. After this nice calm bus ride, we arrived in the crazy busy city Lima. From the bus station to the place from our next host Jose we took an Uber-Taxi. It took us 2 hours to get there and we got to know how crazy high traffic in Lima’s rush hour can be. We just saw cars around us and heard horns everywhere. I guess some streets in the city had kind of 12 lanes (or maybe 6? Why we should not use the empty space between each car?). Once we have arrived in Los Olivos (suburb of Lima), we met Jose our host. He showed us, where we could stay, and we had a whole equipped apartment for us alone, like Airbnb. Together with Jose, we went out for dinner, just close by to not use the car anymore. I ordered fried fish and I did not expect what I finally got. I got a whole fish fried! It was sooo funny to see Natascha’s face, when she got her fish! It was like, oh my god, what should I do with this thing on my plate! 😉

The next morning, we ate breakfast as usual (Milk with muesli). Together with Jose we went to the city centre by bus. He wanted to show us around but suddenly Lisa got sick. We needed to find a restaurant with a toilet immediately! Lisa was so sick, she was not able to go home by bus. We found a hostel room close by, where she could rest for a while. Without Lisa we continued our sightseeing tour in the city centre with Jose and we walked from nice Plazas to nice old buildings and saw nice parks. We tried different kinds of Pisco and chocolate and we discovered Chinatown where we shared an egg tarte, which reminds us at the time in China. After our sightseeing tour we went back to pick up Lisa. She felt a lot better, but not good enough yet. Nevertheless, we tried to take the public bus back to our apartment. Horror! Never saw anything like this. It was rush hour again. We were waiting for the bus at the bus station. More and more people were standing on this platform and waiting for the bus. Once the bus comes, it starts such a rush, and everyone just tries to get in this bus as fast as he can. Once we were in this bus, I thought I will die or collapse.

The next day we took a bus to Miraflores (a really beautiful part of Lima) and met Oscar from Cusco again. It was so nice to see him again. Because Oscar is actually from Lima, he showed us around. We went to the coast, saw a big shopping mall and enjoyed an amazing lunch at the local market. After our delicious meal we visited the Parque Grau. It was so cool, the view of the sea was fantastic. After our stroll we went back to our appartement, packed up our stuff and ordered an uber to the airport of Lima for our flight to Asuncion (Paraguay).