Nasca plain and Cahuachi

For some reason Chuck extended his finger toward the pilot, apparently

trying to demonstrate our tight confines...

Here's a cool little picture of the Nasca plain from our plane. 

Chadd is standing in front of the hardly known and 

very impressive (for the magnitude of the site) Cahuachi 

Pyramids.  What we saw unearthed was a minute %

of the total compound which is said to be 30 square 

kilometers

Chuck just had to take a pic with Sr. Juan, the current "guardian" of 

Cahuachi, if only to demonstrate the slight size difference between your

average American guy and your average Peruvian man.  

Hopefully the first of many adventure trip pictures with Brien Foerster, 

one of the guys we look up to in the area of ancient civilization work, and a new friend.  

Brien is incredibly humble and has a wealth of knowledge, especially relating to 

ancient cultures and civilizations of South America. 

Here's Chadd, playing archaeologist as we explore Cahuachi. 

It was a painful ride down a dirt road to get to Cahuchi.  This is

not your average "tourist" site.  In fact, we were the only ones

out here, well, us and the archaeological team that is excavating at a 

rapid pace.  At one point, our bus driver was driving very erratically and we 

were told, "our bus driver is worried because he's used to driving the streets

 of Lima and the white spot you see right there is actually quick-sand!"  

Here's Chuck, struggling with the heat and humidity at Cahuachi.

The Cahuachi site is apparently made up primarily or solely of adobe

bricks.  We asked the guardian, Sr. Juan, what these people did for 

entertainment or sport.  He motioned to a central area that looked like a plaza

and described how a word, spoken in that area, would be amplified upward.  

It sounded like he was describing an amphitheater of sorts. As often occurs, 

Chadd had predicted the usage of that area for that purpose before hearing 

what Sr. Juan had to say. 

In this short video clip you should be able to see the "Astronaut"

geoglyph apearing on the dark mountain (maybe not-lol) which is in the bottom left 

quadrant of the screen when you first start the video. In later versions

we will have arrows and such to point out the geoglyphs, but laptop editing

on the bus is not our specialty just yet.  Anyway, the "astronaut" is one of the more

difficult geoglyphs for me to explain because a bird's eye view would presumably be 

necessary to complete it, since you have no perspective from the ground, and it's difficult to 

see how one would accomplish that...

While in Lima, we saw people on the street performing all types of stunts to earn money. 

We rarely just saw someone begging, rather, they were resourceful and found a means to 

earn that money.  This guy was balancing an orange on his head and walking and dancing in the street.

Unfortunately we only caught the tail-end before the light changed.