Hell on wheels

When we found out we were moving to Argentina, we started a list of cities we'd like to visit. I wrote down places like Santiago, Quito and the Galapagos Islands, and in Sean's very incomprehensible handwriting were the words Nasca Lines.

Nasca is a speck of a town out in the middle of nowhere Peru, and unfortunately there aren't flights or transportation options other than travel by bus. The buses, though, are tourist buses that serve meals and have seats that convert into beds. Still unappealing to me, but completely reasonable. So we booked the bus trip, which happened to be a 13-hour overnight ride.

When we boarded, a police officer stopped at each person's seat with a video camera and had each person say their name and seat number to the camera. Later I found out that on night rides, Peru has a problem with tourist buses being hijacked. Awesome. I should have known when I saw "continuous monitoring by GPS" as the first bullet on all of the bus ads.

What we also didn't know is that the road from Cusco to Nasca has no straight lines. The tiny two lane 'highway' runs through the mountains and is basically one never ending curve, peppered with thousands of speed bumps. Each time there was another large vehicle going around the curve, the bus had to stop to allow for the wide turn. It was pitch black; we couldn't see anything outside, and the bus swayed and overcorrected nonstop to the left and right. Motion in every direction possible. I have never been so sick in my life.

Almost as bad were the movie selections they offered on the bus--Jessica Simpson in "Major Movie Star" and Eddie Murphy's "Imagine That. Fighting motion sickness was bad enough without having to sit through two crap movies.


We arrived at Nasca bright and early and headed directly to the tiny airport to get a flight over the lines. After learning that 5 of the 7 airlines at the airport had been shut down by the government, we were able to finagle a flight in a 5 seat cessna. They're required to have a pilot and a co-pilot, so even though it was sketchy, I knew that in total there were 3 pilots that could keep the flying tin can in the air. There are 12 different patterns that they fly over, and the pilot explained that he would bank to the left and right at each pattern, so each side of the plane can see and take pictures.




I made it about 5 minutes into the flight and then used every available plastic bag for the remainder. I blame the bus ride. Flying was all too exciting for Teague, who fell asleep. Sean really enjoyed being in a plane again and got some great photos.

Afterward, we checked into our hotel and I feverishly started planning the next leg of the trip, to Paracas (or my escape to Lima). The boys headed to the aqua ducts and a museum and I stayed behind, in an attempt to get everything around me to stop spinning. By noon the following day, we got back on the double decker bus (because it was our only option) and crossed our fingers that the next three hours wouldn't be as bad.
And they weren't!

Nasca aquaducts.


Booming metropolis.