Peru 4U

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Nazca lines Information

The flight over the Nazca lines is a fascinating experience. Wer offer you an excellent opportunity to see one of the world's unresolved mysteries: the Nazca Lines. We take you there by bus through the panamericana highway, passing through the small oasis of Palpa (which is famous for its orange groves), then through the coastal mountains to Nazca, which is 598m above sea level and around 450km south of the Lima. It is also possible to do the flight at the end of your Peru vacation, coming from the north or coming from Arequipa.

Nazca is a relatively small town of about 30,000 people.

Most designs represent a variety of giant animals such as a 180m-long lizard, a 90m-long monkey with an extravagantly curled tail or a condor with a 130m wingspan. Others are simple but perfect triangles, rectangles or straight lines running for several kilometers across the desert, only to be observed by plane.

The lines, thousands of them in all, were made by the Nazca and Paracas cultures by clearing darker rocks on the desert surface to expose lighter soil underneath.

Scientists debate why the lines were built. Among theories, they may have served as a calendar, a map of underground water supplies or even as landing strips for alien spaceships.

The flight over the Nazca lines is highly dependable on the weather conditions. Usely they start early in the morning when the weather is nice. Cloudy or bad weather may result in a couple of hours delay.

Islas Ballestas Information

Pisco normally is the first town you will visit after your stay in Lima in the sequence of your Peru travel adventure. The white-grape brandy produced in this region, shares its name with the town.

This fairly important port with about 90,000 inhabitants lies 235km south of the capital. Most visitors use it as a base to see the wildlife of the nearby Islas Ballestas and Peninsula de Paracas, declared as a National Reserve park. Islas Ballestas is also known as "poor mans Galapagos". The area is also of historical and archeological interest.

The resort village of Paracas is about 15km south of Pisco and has many private seaside villas that are empty for most of the year.