Machu Picchu, Cruise around Cape Horn, and Iguassu Falls
Mike and Judy Henderson
January 31 to March 1, 2017
I'm going to leave the map at the beginning of each page to help you visualize where we are.
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2/5/2017 (Sunday) Today we arrived in Pisco, a small town south of Lima. Pisco's claim to fame is the Nazca Lines that were created by the early people in the desert.
We docked at Pisco early in the morning. The city is some distance from the docks. The dock area is fairly barren, as seen in this panoramic view. The northern part of Chile is extremely dry, receiving essentially no rain. All water for that area comes from the Andes mountains, either as river flow or brought through pipes. As we move southward in Chile, it will become wetter.
Our tour was in the afternoon so we were able to take it easy in the morning. Eventually, we boarded a bus to the Pisco airport. Pisco was devastated by an 8.0 earthquake in 2007 and is still in the process of recovering and rebuilding. Unfortunately, the building techniques used are not earthquake resistant which magnified the destruction.
Eventually, we arrived at the airport. It's a new modern airport.
But inside, it's eerie - the airport is absolutely empty.
Here are the check-in counters, and the only one in use is the one we were to check in for our flight.
You can see that many of the check-in counters are still wrapped in plastic.
One of the waiting areas - absolutely no passengers.
And a panoramic view of the tarmac - not a single airplane.
I guess their attitude was that "if we build it, they will come."
Eventually, our airplane arrived and we began to load up. It's a high wing Cessna turboprop. It seats 10 passengers and two pilots, with one seat on each side of the aisle so everyone has a window seat. And with the high wing, no one's view gets blocked by the wing.
A view forward. We were in the third row (seats 5 & 6).
Judy getting read for the takeoff.
And here we go! The airport is close to the ocean.
This area is very dry and that's one reason the Nazca Lines have been preserved. So you may wonder how the people who created the lines survived in this area. There are a few rivers that flow from the Andes mountains and people apparently lived in the valleys and farmed, as they do today. The lines were created between 500 BCE and 500 CE, long before the Inca Empire.
Eventually we arrived at the area of the Nazca Lines. There are hundreds of lines and figures but only a few that are "pictures". Here are a couple of maps that show the location of the various figures. This map show the locations and the names of the most "popular".
Here's a copy of what they gave us prior to our flight. It doesn't show all of the figures, just the ones they were going to show us.
This next picture shows what the figures look like, but not in their map location.
Here's my photo of the hummingbird.
I processed the picture in Photoshop to increase the contrast and make the figure stand out better.
The next few pictures have been processed the same way. This one is "hands"
This one is called "tree".
Parrot
Condor
We saw more figures but I didn't get good pictures of some of them. The next few pictures of the lines were taken from the web.
Condor
Hummingbird with the kind of airplane we were on.
Man - also called "astronaut". This one was on the side of a small mountain.
Dog
Monkey
And then our visit to the Nazca Lines was finished and we returned to the Pisco airport.
Here's Judy with her "I survived the Nazca Lines" certificate.
A close-up of the certificate
Then it was back to the ship
That evening, we had a "block party" where everyone came out into the hallway and drinks were served. The captain, Serena Melani, came by and we had this picture taken of us with her.
Then it was to dinner at one of the specialty restaurants - Signatures. It was not very busy because everyone was watching the Super Bowl. Here we are with Carol, who is traveling alone. We invited her to join us for dinner.
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2/6/2017 (Monday) Today is an "at sea" day so we can relax and recover. About the only thing we did of note was participate in the putting contest.
This evening was the Captain's reception, which we attended. Here's the captain and the general manager, Massimo Arzani.
And the Constellation Lounge.
The captain addressed the group.
And we watched the sun set.
We had dinner with Ken and Sue in the Compass Rose.
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2/7/2017 (Tuesday) We docked at Iquique this morning. As we were waking up we noticed a strange smell in the ship. There have been a few cases of diarrhea on the ship, and the ship put in stringent controls to avoid transmission. We thought perhaps they were disinfecting the ventilation system. Eventually, we discovered that we had docked next to a fish factory. Pewww...
We signed up for a "city tour" in the afternoon. As we were leaving the ship, our friends Ken and Sue were coming back from the morning city tour. Ken advised us, "Don't go." But we had to see for ourselves.
But he was right. There wasn't much to see so Judy and I went to the city plaza and hung out until the tour time was over. We tried to get a drink in one of the cafes on the plaza but they didn't take credit cards and would not accept US money - and we had no Chilean money. We amused ourselves by people-watching in the plaza, and were at least spared an afternoon of smelling the fish-processing factory.
After the group returned and we boarded the bus, we were driven along the beachfront so we could see how nice it was. Here are a few pictures from that drive. This is high summer and schools are out for two months, so the towns and beaches are full of tourists as well as locals. Its a popular destination for Argentinians.
We had dinner with Carol this evening. The Executive Chef, Kelly Cochrane, stopped by our table.
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2/8/2017 (Wednesday) At sea - a quiet day. We did the golf putting game but I forgot to take pictures. And I spent a good part of the day doing this blog. In the evening, we had dinner with Ken and Sue.
Just a side note, as we proceed southward, the days get longer and the nights shorter. We never get to all daylight but when we get to the Cape Horn area, the nights will be fairly short. The longest day of the year was December 21 and now they're getting shorter. As we proceed southward, the daytime temperature gets colder. We're already feeling it compared to the temperature we experienced in Lima.
