Memorable tours in Nazca

Chauchilla is a mummy-filled cemetery that was the final resting place of many important figures in the Nazca culture. Many priests, royalty and upper class citizens were buried. The cemetery was operative from from around 200 C.E (formally A.D) to around 900 C.E.

With your professional english-speaking tour guide, you will visit the cemetery, and learn about the burial practices and religious customs of the Nazca people. Tombrobers stole the jewels and precious metals long ago, but fortunately they left the skeletons, mummies and other items that provide insight into this ancient pre-inca civilization.

When you live in a desert, your biggest challenge is not warfare with other tribes, or dangerous animals. The primary threat you face is a lack of fresh water. This is especially true in Nazca, a particularly dry desert where rain is too infrequent to be useful.

The ancient Nazca civilization discovered an ingenious method of controlling and preserving water for their crops, via an underground system of channels. During your private tour, you will visit the CANTALLOC AQUEDUCTS and learn how the Nazcans brought life to the desert.

Recent investigations suggest that Cahuachi was a sacred place for the Nazca civilization, a destination for a yearly pilogramage from all over the empire.

A professional english-speaking guide will explore the site with you, explaining what we know and don’t know about this huge set of desert ruins.

Only a few of the pyramids have been excavated, so this site is very much a work in progress. Visitors should not expect complete, intact ruins because many of the pyramids remain buried and tombraiders and the elements of rain and wind have damaged some of the ruins. Still, it remains an impressive and fascinating glimpe into this coastal desert society.

Explore the sand dunes of the Usaka desert in a 4-wheel-drive dune buggy and then if you are daring, try sandboarding down the dunes. This is an exciting and memorable adventure tour that you are sure to enjoy.

Although the dunes here are not as big as those in Huacachina Oasis (near Ica) two hours north of Nazca, if you are unable to visit Huacachina this is an excellent alternative.

This is a small-group tour, so you will be placed in a buggy with other travelers. Please bring sunglasses, and wear tennis shoes (not sandals).

This is no ordinary sand dune! At 1,176 meters from the base to the tip, many geologists consider this is to be the second tallest sand dune in the world. In this once-in-a-lifetime tour, you will join a tour guide to hike up this dune (this takes several hours, and requires a good level of physical fitness).

And when you get to the top, you will have a brief sandboarding lesson, and then you are welcome to sandboard down. The slop of the dune isn’t dangerous, so it will allow you to have an exciting ride down without danger.

You might go ga-ga for the views from the top; stare down onto the cloud-covered tops of nearby mountains.