Fodor's Expert Review Cementerio de Chauchilla

In the midst of the pale, scorched desert, 30 km (19 miles) south of Nazca, lies this ancient cemetery, whose precincts are littered with sun-bleached skulls and shards of pottery. Huaqueros (grave robbers) have ransacked the site over the years, and, until a couple of years ago, the mummies unearthed by their looting sprouted from the earth in a jumble of bones and threadbare weavings. Now, however, they are housed neatly inside a dozen or so covered tombs. It's an eerie sight, since the mummies still have hair attached, as well as mottled, brown-rose skin stretched around empty eye sockets and gaping mouths with missing teeth. Some are wrapped in tattered burial sacks, though the jewelry and ceramics with which they were laid to rest are long gone. Tours from town take about three hours and cost around S/50. Visits to the cemetery are also packaged with Nazca Lines flights.