Paracas and Nazca Lines Extension

Transfer to the bus station for the tourist class bus service toIca. The 4-hour journey travels southwards along the coast, through irrigated valleys of cotton, fruit and olives before heading inland to the desert town ofIca. Here you will board a light aircraft for an overflight of the Nazca Lines. This flight gives spectacular views of the lines and animal designs (such as a spider, monkey, whale and hummingbird) which have been cut into the sand by pre-Columbian cultures who settled in the area from around 900 BC until 600 AD. Decades of archaeological study and supposition have thrown up any number of explanations for the Nazca Lines, from alien intervention to man-made astronomical charts or maps of water courses. Some of the explanations are more scientific and more plausible than others, but none have provided a definitive answer to the puzzle - why would an ancient civilization without the means of flight create something that can only be seen from the air? After returning to Ica after a spectacular overflight of the Nazca Lines transfer to Paracas in the late afternoon.

The following morning you will have a boat trip to theBallestasIslands, now part of the Paracas National Reserve but once important guano collecting islands. The islands are now home to thousands of sea birds including Inca Terns and Peruvian Boobies, the occasional Humboldt penguin, and hundreds of Sealions and Fur Seals. Paracas is the only protected coastal-marine system in Peru.