Chauchilla Necropolis

20 miles south of Nasca lies a desert plain filled with...bones.
Lots of them. The area was the home of a large number of
burial sites of the Nasca people, dating over 1000 years old.
Over the centuries, grave robbers left the bones while taking
everything else. The local government has tried to restore the
site as an educational open air museum of sorts in a rather
macabre way.


The authorities have set everything up as closely as possible to
how their ancestors would have positioned them.


There are still whole bones and fragments lying everywhere!


Some crypts only contain partial bodies.


Mummies of babies have also been found (lower right corner of photo).


This stuff could keep you awake at night!


If it weren't for the cemetery, this might be a beautiful landscape.


The most intact mummy is kept in a small museum at the entrance.

Nasca

After a six hour bus trip, with the Pacific
Ocean on one side and miles of barren desert
on the other, we spent the last two days in
the remote city of Nasca. Nasca is most
famous for it´s mysterious lines carved into
the desert floor. We took a tiny six person
plane ride and saw dozens of drawings and
geometric designs that have been in place for
over a thousand years.


Later that afternoon, we took a tour of the
Chauchilla Necropolis, about 20k from Nasca,
where hundreds of mummies and skeletons have
been unearthed (mostly by grave robbers) over
the years and besides the neatly displayed
bodies, there are bones scattered everywhere
in the desert. A really eerie sight.

I´ll post more photos and give more detail
once we get back to Quito and I have better
access to the pictures.