Saturday, May 21, 2011

Today was another monumental day! We got up early to tour Nazca, Peru and then head back to Lima. We arrived first at the Nazca lines and climbed a small observation tower, ten at a time, to see two figures: los manos y el arbol (the hands and the tree). Two theories exist for how these figures appeared in the desert. The first, that extraterrestrial life forms came to our planet and created them. This theory is supported by the existence of an alien-like figureamong the numerous Nazca lines. The second, and much morelikely theory, is that the carvings were created by pre-Incan civilizations in Nazca. This theory states that removing the dark colored, iron-coated pebbles that coat the surface of the Nazca desert to expose lighter colored sand is the process that created the lines. The extremely dry, windless climate of the Nazca desert has helped keep the lines visible for centuries.

Our next stop was a gold mining/production site. We had a brief tutorial about the 15-18-hour process. The men start their day by hiking up the mountains to search for stones from which they later extract gold. Our guide told us it was a more labor-intensive, arduous process than at a factory and also a bit more difficult because the chemicals are quite toxic and are handled by humans instead of machines. From one stone, about size of an apple, one gram of gold would be extracted. I couldn’t believe that such and intense (and seemingly dangerous) process yielded such minuscule results! After the tutorial, we popped in their jewelry shop with items that had been made on the premises from start to finish. It was crazy to think about! My favorite part of the gold production site was by far my trip to the bathroom. I met an elderly woman who was watching her two grandchildren. She introduced us to her youngest grandchild, a little girl who was two years old. Her older brother soon ran out and said, “Tengo cinco años!” andimmediately did a handstand. A-freaking-dorable.

We walked shortly down the street to sit for another tutorial, this time about ceramics (I love crafting!). The woman showed us the process that her grandfather had taught her which mimicked the process used in ancient Nazca. The paint used to decorate the finished ceramic was extracted from different minerals and soils. This place also had a gift shop with some rather interesting pieces. One in particular depicted a woman giving birth. I’m fairly positive every single one of us took a picture of it. Easily amused Americans, I suppose! Aside from the colorful ceramics, it was quite nice to see this woman carrying on her grandfather’s traditional ceramic work.

Next we stopped at a series of ancient aqueducts that still work to this day (although they are not in use). They were very large and spiraled deep into the ground. Our guide, Miguel, passed water around for us to try and it was surprisingly refreshing! From the aqueducts, we could see the world’s largest sand dune. (I was very skeptical that the world’s largest sand dune was in Peru. I though for sure it was in Africa. After wiki-confirming, I was totally stoked to have gotten a picture!)

Lastly, we toured ancient Incan ruins that were built on the side of a small mountain, which overlooked the entire valley. Our guide said that the Incans wanted to keep watch over their newly conquered valley and from this location they had a perfect view. The stones were very soft and many, many people had carved their names into the ruins. I found that to be a bit lame. I think that those tours really show me the importance of remembering and preserving the past. We should feel lucky to be standing on such ancient ruins instead of carving “Joe was here!” on a rock.

We headed back to Ica to eat dinner. I got some fantastic Chinese food with Andrew and Vinny. After about two hours, we boarded the bus and went back to Lima. I tried falling asleep on the bus with no luck. A bunch of us sitting in the back of the bus played games and told stories to better get to know one another. Upon returning to Lima, we went out to a discoteca and had a blast! It was our last night all together in the hostel before we all split up to go to our host families the next day.