Two Beers and a Pretzel

I´m in a crappy internet cafe in Nazca, Peru.  Aside from the famous geo-glyphs and lines, there´s really no reason for there to be a city here.  I can not upload pics here, so I´ll try to update this post tomorrow with images.

I booked a pretty standard small plane sightseeing trip over the lines with a very cute Dutch girl, a Brazilian guy, and another guy.  It was $70 per person including airport tax fees and taxi transfer to and from the airport.

There are a number of tour companies here, and they all sell you trhe same trips.  You fly over the most popular geo-glyphs and the pilot points the wing down at it and spirals around so you can get good pics.  Then he does it for the people on the other side of the 4 passenger plane.  Multiply by ten.  If you get motion sick, skip Nazca.

I loved it and got some great pics and video.

Flying over the lines….

The Astronaut….

The Monkey…

The Tree and Hands near the road…

The Spider…

The Condor…

The Hummingbird…

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Erich Von Däniken -vs- Sean Danekind

If you´ve ever watched any of those alien conspiracy shows, they always quote Erich Von Däniken … a crazy old Swede who is always linking everything to alien domination in relatively recent human history.  His surname sounds close enough to mine (unrelated) that I figured I should clear up a few things…  He believes that the Nazca lines were runways for alien spacecraft.

After seeing the geo-glyphs and lines, I´m pretty convinced that they are ancient gang signs related to the Pre-Inca cocaine trade and meant to relay the dominant clan to whomever the current favorite diety of the day happened to be.  Either that, or there really are aliens and the Earth is the only place in the universe for good drugs – so it´s intergalactic alien drug gangs marking their territory in the geological equivalent of spray paint and street art.

Oddly, my guide back in the Copan Ruins in Honduras had mentioned that old Erich Von D had been touring the Mayan ruins only days before I was there.  He must be researching the fact that the Mayan calendar ends in 2012, and many loony conspiracy whack-jobs are predicting the end of the Earth around then.

My personal theory is that 2012 is the Mayan equivalent of the Y2K bug (Y2K12).  Imagine the peak of the Mayan Empire over 1000 years ago… The guy making the calendar was sitting around telling Emperor 18Rabbit that it will cost 10,000 goats to plan the calendar past 2012, but it´s OK because some future calendar maker will figure it all out and make a new calendar when they need it for a much cheaper price and it´s not really our problem.  …But the empire collapsed and they never made a new calendar.  Now every alien conspiracy nut decides to believe that since the Mayan calendar was not planned past 2012 that the world is obviously goin to end…  Idiots…

On the brighter side, I found a cheap flight from Lima – Miami – LA, and will be there for a few days starting on the 24th before heading to Fiji and New Zealand.