I was a bit late getting up this morning because of the events of the night before, but once things got rolling I was probably the most excited to start that Saturday. Breakfast was at the hotel was till 7am after which we got on a bus headed for the famed town of Nazca about two hours away from our hotel in Ica. I swear the farther and farther away we traveled from Lima the more degraded the country seemed to be and by the time we got to Nazca one could definitely tell that this was a place of development. Our first stop was an older spring that was used by the Nazca people for irrigation and as a well to collect water. The underground stream was natural mineral water that came from up in the mountains around Nazca. I have got to say after I tasted the water it had quite the mineral taste but was fresher than many other city taps that I have drunk.
Next was our trip to the first of many Nazca lines. We parked at the base of mountains on the edge of town and hiked up a couple feet to overlook a giant plateau where low and behold laid lines of Nazca. If I sound underwhelmed it is because I was. Now this first stop wasn't the famous animal lines but just a grid and a swirl. Cool but not as exciting as the many icon pictures seemed to encourage. I was more facinated by the giant mountains that surrounded us and I wanted to hike to the top to get the full view. Unfortunately the guide said it was too dangerous and that we had to get going. We made another stop latter to look at the Animal lines which were much harder to see as they stretch out over miles and we only had one 3 story outpost. But one could still see parts of them and it was hard to not get a strong sense of nostalgia for the past and the ancient civilizations that had been there so long ago. Initially the lines had been drawn with giant white stones however the stones were removed later on. One of the saddest things I heard was how the lines had been disturbed. A couple years ago a truck apparently swerved off the road and right into one of the figures, it was repaired but it was obvious where the damage had been done. Additionally the famous hummingbird had been disturbed by the organization Greenpeace who whipped out part of the wing to write their organizations name in the earth.
Probably the most interesting part of the day were two lessons by a potter and a man who worked to collect gold. The potter was first and taught us how in the past jars and pots were made in the distinct form that was common to pottery. She did a demonstration showing how to polish and pain the pots using natural stones and materials. We finished by looking around her shop for gifts to bring back. The gold miner was around the corner and explained the history and process of harvesting gold from the mountains around Peru. It was a little complicated but essentially they break the rocks down to a very fine power, which they then soak into a mud and add mercury. The mercury then separates the real goal from the mud and forms a compound. This compound is collected and is then distilled via heat and cooling to remove the mercury from the gold. The process sounds easy but breaking down and harvesting a large enough sum of gold to make a neckless must take weeks. After the demonstration I bought a little gift for someone a nice pair of 14K gold ear studs.
All of these stops took up most of the day and we returned back to Ica for dinner at 5pm. Almost as tired as we were yesterday many of us retired to our rooms to get ready for the big night out to a Peruvian club The Who. It would have been a great time except I had been so exhausted from the last two days that I left after an hour of dancing.
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