We beat the Dakar Rally to Nazca

Special Baggage has made an extraordinary effort and has managed to get to the Nazca Lines ahead of the participants in the Dakar Rally, who are not due here until next month. Well, to be fair, we just drove from Lima, but the drive did, at times, feel like a rally, with sandstorm included.
When thinking about a title to this post, I also thought of "an X-File in Peru". A certain degree of mystery still surrounds the lines and why the Nazca people made them around 1500 years ago. The archaeologist Maria Reiche, who spent most of her life living here and studying the lines, proposed that the lines were somekind of astronomical observatory; other scientists believe they have a religious significance and yet others believe that they are landing strips for extraterrestial visitors. Whatever, you decide to believe, the experience is worthwhile despite the long and dusty trip. Being in the middle of the grey Nazca desert, images of science fiction movies come to mind and the terrain reminds me of the pictures of Mars or the Moon. A footnote: We decided not to take one of the light aircrafts that offer flights over the Nazca Lines because there have been a number of accidents.