After getting to drive the truck, we were dropped off in the nearby town of Nazca, for those interesting in booking a flight over the famed Nazca Lines, could do so without any link to Oasis Overland. Yup, they wanted no liability in us booking the separate flights, since they’re considered dangerous. There have been some pretty bad crashes over the years and I guess are infamous for not maintaining their planes. After getting my research on, I decided I still wanted to do it–how can you go to Nazca and not see the famous lines?
Apparently pretty easy, as Richard and I were the only ones wanting to make the flight. We found a company recommended in the guidebook and then had a nice little meander around town before it was time to check into our hotel/campsite(Rachael and I upgraded to rooms instead of camping, cheating, I know, but it was crazy hot and we wanted air condition).
That night, we had our last cooked dinner. Lotte and Sarah did a BBQ for us, not unlike our first cooked dinner of the trip(a BBQ prepared by Claire and Wiz). Perfect capstone!
Next morning(March 29), after signing off on who got dibs one which of my electronics, Richard and I got picked up bright and early by a duct tape van(definition: van held mostly together by duct tape), and set off of the airport. Not the most auspicious start. But after we were essentially VIP’ed through airport taxes and laughable security screening, we only had to wait a few minutes and were taken out to our plane. The plane itself was from a different company than the one we booked, but nicely had had better rankings in Lonely Planet than our original one. So we took that as a good sign!
It was a relatively small plane, four passengers, and two pilots:
Getting on the plane, I realized I hadn’t been on a plane in almost 3 months, considering the job I left in November required multiple flights a month(if not weekly), it felt like going home a little.
We had a short runway stretch, and then we were off! We had headphones for the pilots to guide us around the varying sites. I was pretty glad the first few we saw were triangles, to give me a chance to adjust to looking for the lines in the sand and figuring out the best pictures to take. What an amazing experience! Its really pretty fascinating that these have lasted hundreds of years in the sand! Not to mention the gorgeous landscapes we also saw. Here’s a small smattering of pictures from our flight.
From many of the pictures, you can see it looks like something from out of space! I seriously felt like we were over Mars or something with the desert like reddish sand.
After our thirty minute tour, we headed back to the small airport. Unfortunately the flight that landed before us has a slight incident…so we had to circle quite a few times as they cleared the rubble and the ambulances and firetrucks did their thing…just kidding, it wasn’t that bad. There was an ambulance and firetrucks, but apparently that was more precautionary than anything else. One of their tires blew during landing, but there was no fire and everyone made it out safe.
It was a pretty amazing/surreal ride though. Very glad I did it! Thanks for the early birthday present Dad/Mary!
Belated Gap Year 