PART II: FOAM OF THE SEA, NAZCAN LINES AND PIRI REIS MAP
Part II Foam of the Sea Peru and Bolivia Chapter 4 - Flight of the Condor I’m in southern Peru, flying over the Nazca lines. Below me, after the whale and the monkey, the hummingbird comes into view, flutters and unfolds her wings, stretches forward her delicate beak towards some imaginary flower. Then we turn hard right, pursued by our own tiny shadow as we cross the bleak scar of the Pan-American highway, and follow a trajectory that brings us over the fabulous snake-necked ‘Alcatraz’: a heron 900 feet long conceived in the mind of a master geometer. We circle around, cross the highway for a second time, pass an astonishing arrangement of fish and triangles laid out beside a pelican, turn left and find ourselves floating over the sublime image of a giant condor with feathers extended in stylized flight. Just as I try to catch my breath, another condor almost close enough to touch materializes out of nowhere, a real condor this time, haughty as a fallen angel riding a therma...