Jan 13th – Back into the desert

Leaving Nasca at dawn and heading north you have to stop at the tower to see examples of the Nasca Lines; a world heritage site of pre-Columbian geoglyphs put there by the Nazsca indians in the first few centuries AD.

There are miles of lines and dozens of pictorial images over a 100km distance of desert but the little tower only shows two of them. This is an acacia tree – upside down from this angle as the roots are in the distance the closer pieces are the branches. What are they – messages to the Gods and signals for religious ceremonies or communications to aliens along landing strips for when they arrive? Scholars disagree; so you decide.

We then went to see the start of the next to last special stage of the rally – whoever has it sown up today is the winner as tomorrow is just a small parade stage like the ride around the Champs Elysees for the Tour de France.

What you see here are:

Two spectators who decided to keep their distance and stick to the long perspective

Stephane Peterhansel (302) sitting ready to blast into the desert – he is the race leader and today’s stage did not change that. Yes, this is a Mini and maybe one like this one will come to a showroom soon – 4WD and 3.6 litre turbodiesel – perfect for shopping.

The first few trucks getting ready to race. Hard to imagine that these behemoths more-or-less keep up with the bikes on total time.