Typical Nazca lines viewing plane. If they tell you that the seat next to the pilot is the best one, hit them.

Not very exciting landscape in general in the Nazca region.

The following pictures are in pairs - the real one on the left and the sidewalk look alike on the right.

Okay, this first one isn't really a look-alike, but it's the closest thing I could find on the sidewalk in the town center.

The Dog, 50 meters long.

The Dog is supposed to be related to fertility.

Monkey, 90 meters long.

This figure was discovered by Maria Reiche in 1954.

Long-tailed mocking bird, 135 meters long.

A line that runs parallel to its wings points towards the summer solstice, on December 21.

Spider, 46 meters long.

Discovered by Maria Reiche in 1946.

Hummingbird, 97 meters long.

This figure is the best conserved of all (the one to the left, not this one).

The Flamingo, flying east, is 300 meters long.

The Parrot is 230 meters long.

The Owl-Man, or The Astronaut, is 35 meters tall. Another example of why the seat next to the pilot is not good.

These trapeze shaped things are everywhere and thought to be places of worship, or landing strips for aliens.

Airport.

This is the terrain the Nazca "artists" worked with.

Tower that Maria Reiche had built to observe the Figure of the Hands, and The Tree.

Hands. Maria had lost a finger to an infection after an injury, so she felt especially drawn to this figure, which has a hand with 4 fingers.

Sidewalk version of Hands. The real version is 50 meters long.

The Tree, as seen from the Maria's tower, 70 meters long.

The Tree as seen from the airplane. You can see the tower in the upper right, under the wing support.

Part of The Tree seen from the ground. Seeing it this way really made me lose interest in the "mystery and intrigue" of the Nazca lines.

Bolivar on a horse, Pisco center.

Cathedral where dozens of people were killed when the whole thing collapsed from the earthquake, 12 days after this photo.

Inside the cathedral. The altar seemed like a temporary scenery setting for a low budget play, made out of paper machete type of material.

Part of the cathedral ceiling, near the front door.

Magistrate office next to Cathedral, it was still standing after the earthquake but severely damaged.

The girl on the right was a student on a gringo interviewing assignment and the one on the left was the teacher, who made her very nervous.

Older church behind the cathedral was already closed because of damage. I didn't see it on the news but I imagine it was mostly destroyed.

Funeral procession in front of the Cathedral, 12 days before the earthquake. Sort of eery in retrospect.

Argentinean students in Pisco. We had a good talk about their countries history, the "MF-ers" war, and the Dirty War.

The shoe-shine kid on the left sat and watched very intensely as this family was hanging out in the centro taking pictures of each other. Sort of sad.

Altar scene from a church that was about 5 blocks from the centro.

Ceiling of that church, I don't know how badly it was damaged. It didn't seem temporary, like the cathedral scene.