The agency came to pick us up at our hotel at 7am and drove us to the airport (5min from the centre). The flight went very well (small plane, one seat next to the pilot and two more at the back, in this way all of us had a great view, well, certainly we did, the Frenchman in the front complained a bit afterwards that our seats were better). We did not feel sick, but still appreciated the agency advice to not have breakfast before the flight as our stomach felt a bit funny after the flight. We never had the oportunity to fly in a very small aircraft before and we have been nicely surprised. It gives you a different impression from flying in a big aircraft, the plane obviously is much slower, so you have an amazing feeling of hanging in the air. The seats were comfortable, the engine not too noisy and all the experience not too scary. The flight lasted for 35min and we have seen 12 Nasca figures and lots of lines. This was very impressive! After the flight we saw a video about the Nazca civilisation (IV and X centuries) and returned to the hotel at around 10am. We had been offered many tours for the afternoon (the cemetery of Chauchilla, the aqueducs, ...) but we did not feel like doing any of them. We opted to go to the mirador built next to the panamericana road to see the Nasca Lines from close. We caught a bus to Ica and asked the driver to drop us at the mirador (S/2, 30min). This was a great decision as we liked it a lot. From the top of the mirador (S/1 entrance fee) you can see mainly two figures, "The Tree" (hard to see as very big) and "The Hands" (very easy to see, as it has been recently refreshed by some archeologists). Then we walked to a hill 1km from the mirador where you can see more lines and get very close to them. The landscapes were very nice, the very flat and huge desert where the lines are located is impressive and on one side you have a very nice chain of arid mountains. To go back to Nazca we did not have to wait long as there are many buses doing the trip Ica-Nazca. In the evening we were very surprised to see many kids dressed up in the streets for Halloween collecting sweets. Gosia bought a bag of sweets and started to distribute sweets to the kids, ... at one stage she got stuck in a corner surrounded by more than 20 kids! We had a nice meal at the Plaza Mayor restaurant on the main place and from our table on the first floor we could see all the kids going from one shop to another to collect sweets. However Laurence noticed that she kept being badly bitten by probably the same insect that was in our hotel room. She had to go to the pharmacy to buy a cream and go back to our hotel to have a shower and change clothes (she had 63 bites! Nearly double the 33 bites from the small flies in Wilcabamba). In the evening we caught a night bus to Arequipa (with Cial, S/70, dep 22h15, dur. 9h). We had never travelled with Cial before and our first impression was not the best as our bus coming from Lima arrived 1h late.
