Pisco/Nazca Lines, Peru

            Thursday, 13 Feb 2020 – At 7:00 AM, the ship was scheduled to dock at Pisco, a small port city of about 105,000 on Peru's southern coast.  The city experiences a hot arid climate, with warm temperatures and extremely low rainfall prevailing all year-around.  Pisco was founded in 1640 and originally prospered because of its nearby vineyards; it became noted for its grape brandy or pisco which was exported from its port.  Pisco was very near the epicenter of the devastating 8.0-magnitude earthquake which struck south central Peru on 15 Aug 2007.  Media officials reported that 80 percent of the city was destroyed, including the central San Clemente Cathedral of Pisco, in which Mass was taking place at the time of the earthquake.  The resulting dead account for a reported 30 percent of the total 519 fatalities caused by the earthquake.  The city is still recovering from the damage done during the earthquake.
            The Nazca Lines in southern Peru are a group of pre-Columbian geoglyphs etched into desert sands.  Covering an area of nearly 386 square miles, there are about 300 different figures, including animals and plants.  Composed of over 10,000 lines, some of which measure 90 feet wide and stretch more than 5.6 miles, the figures are most visible from the air or nearby hilltops.  They were created between 500 BCE and 500 CE.

On the Pier

We made it to breakfast before closing.  Although Jesse’s cold had become a lot worse, he still insisted on riding the complimentary shuttle to town.  The shuttle was scheduled to leave on the hour.  Since we missed the 11:00 AM shuttle, we had to wait until noon.  This time, there was really nothing to see along the way except miles and miles of brown sand dunes, not much else.  We finally arrived at the very small town, which was apparently, only a portion or suburb of Pisco.  Again, since we didn’t bother to get off the bus, we were back on the ship in time for lunch.  Because neither of us felt like dancing or swimming, we spent the remainder of the afternoon relaxing in our stateroom.

Although the Terrace Café was very crowded for dinner, we managed to find seats close to the buffet.  We didn’t see any of our friends, including Dave & Peg who had taken the overland excursion to Machu Picchu and were due back on the ship tonight.  When Jesse tried to make his first post on our blog tonight, he discovered that he was unable to log on to the blog site.  It seemed impossible to do without access to our mobile phone, in order to receive a verification ID code.  Tonight we set our clocks ahead by one hour again, now one hour ahead of US EST.