Nazca

Small planes leave the Maria Reiche aerodrome for a little over 30 minutes, banking left and right over the hummingbird, monkey, spider and more. Constant tilting brings on airsickness, so fly neither hungry nor full; everyone is weighed first to assign seats.

A metal tower beside the Pan-American Highway; from the top the Hands and the Tree lie close below. The highway slices through the lizard's tail; it was laid in the 1930s, before the lines were widely known.

Puquios, underground channels dug by the Nazca people, with spiral openings that lead down to the water. Most scholars place them in the Nazca era, and water still runs through them to the fields nearby.

A desert cemetery about 30 kilometres south of town, where mummies with their hair intact sit hugging their knees in tombs opened by looters. The dry desert preserved cloth and bone, and a path leads past the roofed pits for a look down into them.

The ceremonial centre of the Nazca culture, with adobe pyramid mounds scattered over the desert. Much of it is still under sand as excavation goes on, and with no public transport a visit means hiring a car.

Maria Reiche, the German-born mathematician who spent her life surveying and guarding the lines, lived in this house, which is now a museum. Her measuring tools and workroom survive, and she lies buried in the yard.

A giant sand mountain rising above 2,000 metres, one of the tallest dunes on earth. Climbers set off before sunrise, walk up for hours and come down in one rush on sandboards; by midday the baking sand makes the climb punishing.

Inca-era adobe ruins of an administrative post below the hills east of town, guarding a route between the coast and the Andes. They lie close enough to reach on foot, and pair naturally with the Cantalloc aqueducts nearby.

A small planetarium inside a hotel in town, screening evening shows on the lines and their links with the stars. Afterwards a telescope is turned on the sky, and English and Spanish sessions run separately, so check the times.

On hillsides in the Palpa valley, some 40 kilometres north of Nazca, human and animal figures are etched, many from the Paracas era before the Nazca. Some show from a roadside lookout, and certain flights add Palpa to the route.

A museum in town run by the Italian team that has long excavated Cahuachi. Painted Nazca pottery, textiles and dig photos run in chronological order. An ancient aqueduct, still flowing, crosses the back garden for anyone who can't get to Cantalloc.

A Nazca-era site near Cahuachi where huarango wood posts once stood in ordered rows in the desert. Few posts remain, but you can walk the grid they formed. It shares the dirt road with Cahuachi, so a hired car covers both.

A plateau reserve at around 4,000 m, some 90 km from Nazca up the road toward Cusco. Herds of wild vicuna graze the grassland beside the road. Around June each year locals round them up for shearing in the chaccu.