Latitude 14° 42' 55" S: Arica, Tacna, the Nazca Lines, and the Jumana Desert

August 9, 2010
Montreal, PQ

By the beginning of March I was just drifiting. My body was in South America, but my mind was in Plattsburgh. Sometimes, it's just time to come home. Had I listened more carefully, I would have followed the call from the Spirit of God telling me to leave Bolivia and fly home.

But I didn't. And...thankfully...Mom stayed on. Had I come home though, I would have that much more time with her at the end.

But...sometimes we just don't know. And even now, almost six months later, I must return over and over again to what my mother often said: "You are where you are supposed to be," Perhaps this was the case.

I'll never know.

By early March I was in La Paz, Bolivia, having a devil of a time acclimatizing. I was tired all the time aned finally just wanted to leave. I wanted to be warm. I wanted to be at sea level. I wanted to be by the sea.

So I flew to Arica, Chile and, in so doing, came full circle. I'd been in Arica two months earlier at the beginning of the trip, at the beginning of summer. Arica is the kind of place I like. It never rains and is one of the driest inhabitable places on Earth. I wouldn't want to live there, but it's a great place to visit.

By March, though, school had started, tourists had left and the city was quiet. One of those days I hired a taxi for a few hours to bring me out of the city and into the Azapa Valley. The Azapa has a continued existence dateing to 4,000 BC. Geoglyphs carved into mountains date back a thousand years and two museums house mummies over 4000 years old. The Valley is also home a number of oases and these farms produce much of the local food. It was a great day out. That evening, I walked down to the sea and watched a local track team practice on the beach and waited for the sun to set.

A few days here was enough to warm me up, restore my tan and my spirits, and strengthen me for the long journey back to Lima. I crossed the border to Tacna, Peru, spent two nights and a full day exploring one of Tacna's valleys, enjoying an afternoon at a thermal hot spring.

My real goal, however, was Nazca and its famous desert lines. (to me continued....)