Nazca Lines Mirador Tour with the Maria Reiche Museum

The Nazca Lines mirador tour is the ground-level option: a guided excursion that follows the Pan-American Highway north into the Nazca Desert, starting with a pickup at your hotel and using private tourist transport. The first stop is the Sitio Maria site museum, which tells the story of Dr. Maria Reiche, a German-born researcher who spent over five decades studying and guarding the lines.

• photographs from her early desert years, plus her former cabin, still holding her cameras and measuring instruments
• her tomb, on one side of the museum
• the Mirador, a metal tower with a clear view of two famous figures, the Hands and the Tree, and of the stretch of the Lizard that the highway slices through
• a natural viewpoint called the Hill, where numerous straight lines come together

At the tower the guide talks through the theories about the lines. On the Hill you walk a little over rugged terrain and take in the desert. The tour lasts about two and a half hours, admission is covered, and you are driven back to your hotel. Food is not included.