I arrived in Nazca and enlisted the help of Luis (from my previous post) to find my hotel and
book a tour for the next day. Since I had the rest of the afternoon, I went to a museum in town. It has everything you could ever want to know about the ancient Nazca culture...that is known. They remain an elusive people...archeologically speaking. They had English translations of the displays available, too. I think the thing that I was most taken with was a group of about eight mummified skulls. They were all female, still had the hair and a little bit of skin. What was most interesting about them was they had holes above their 
foreheads about 2cm in diameter with rope sticking out of them. The caption said the heads were ofrendas (offerings) in the temples. Can you imagine that? Walking through your temple and having heads hanging in the alcoves everywhere. What if you knew one of them?? Well, I suppose if they were mummified they probably weren´t identifiable. But still! (somebody tell me why I didn´t take a picture of them. stupid)
There was also a real mummy in the typical upright fetal position in a replica tomb. It seems like all the mummies I´ve 
seen (a couple in Lima, too) have all been in this position.
Outside the museum are the original aquaducts used by the Nazcas for agricultural irrigation.
And next to the aquaducts, there was a small garden with a copy of the famous Nazca lines. Within the garden were replica tombs of several time periods showing the layers of how they were built. All very interesting. 
Before I got to Nazca I decided not to fly over the lines because it´s so expensive. I figure I won´t be able to see the lines any better than pictures in a book. I told Allan, my boyfriend, this and he freaked out. Apparently he´s dreamt of 
seeing the lines since he was a little boy. So after getting duely scolded, I boarded a little cessna plane the next morning! I´m glad I did, although I lost my breakfast because of it.
This is the gallena (whale). It´s the only photo that´s easy to see. That afternoon I took my tour of the 1500 year old Nazca cemetary. There were a good 2,000 tombs found here back in the late 80s. There was a small museum with one of the mummies and even a baby mummy.
After the cemetary, our tour (there were four of us) headed to a small workshop owned by a man and his esposa. He makes pottery using the same materials and methods that the ancients used. It was very interesting and everything was pretty. Wish it weren´t so damned expensive. Across the street was another workshop where they extract gold in the same methods using giant cement blocks.
After we returned to the hotel, I found my cell phone was stolen out of my bag. Needless to say, I was rather upset. Everybody helped me try to find it to no avail, but I just want to say how nice everybody was. The driver took me back to the ceramics shop and gold shop and Luis said he´d call the cemetary, etc etc. Everybody was very sympathetic and friendly. So instead of heading back up to Ica that evening, I spent the night again on the offchance of it
showing up. Of course it didn´t, so I spent the next day in the hotel lobby sewing padding onto my backpack straps and chatting with an Australian traveler. He is in his 40s and has backpacked all over the globe so he had lots of great stories to take my mind off my anger. I appreciated that immensely. That evening, I hopped a bus to Ica.
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