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Published: March 7th 2011
Sand boarding, or falling off a 150 metre sand dune with a piece of fibre glass attached to your feet as I initially knew it, is a sport similar to snowboarding that’s carried out in many of the deserts throughout the world.
Its easy to spot sand boarders around the town, take a Arab with big beard and shamag, give him Bermuda shorts , wrap around Oakley’s, hiking boots and a few new age tattoos and you have your typical sand boarder. Sand boarding is popular in Death Valley and we were brought out for one hour instruction followed by two hours of giving it a go ourselves.
After hiking to the top of the great dune our instructor showed us how the strap into the board and go which involves bringing your board flat atop the sand. Once this happens you simply let Isaac Newton’s laws do the rest and try keep your balance as your hurtle down the dune. We were also told how to stop but unfortunately I was distracted by a really cute wild dog chasing his tail in the valley below while this was being explained so I remained ignorant of this
important procedure until Laura and Niamh enlightened me the bus home.
My first run I got about 10 feet before toppling on my side and falling the rest of the way while doing a spot on rendition of the “Lando Scream” in Return of the Jedi. With each progressive run though I managed to improve and eventually I was able to make it nearly all the way down.
The buzz is intense, the board rapidly picks up speed and a cloud of dust is thrown in your wake, a slight loss in balance results in you cart wheeling, legs helplessly strapped to the board and eventually face planting into the dunes and swallowing a few pounds of Atacama sand. You get up, adrenaline glands doing the Hakka in your veins and you stagger up the massive dune again in your eagerness to do it again, oblivious to the fact that you were convinced you saw your left arm on the far side of your right during your last fall.
By my third run my face was caked in sand and the sweat that was pouring off me began to act as kind of glue for
FACEPLANT!
The First of many!further sand covering, I looked a bit like a really hyperactive crazed golem.
While I improved each run, my ignorance of the stopping technique meant it was now standard operating procedure to purposely fall when I neared the end of the dune, a practice that thankfully didn’t involve me losing any limbs.
After Sand boarding was over, our guide took us too Moon Valley where we were given a beer and told to watch the sunset. Moon Valley is named due to its topography matching that of a lunar surface.
Due to its unique rock formations the sand is a unusual grey colour and some of the rocks closely resemble the formations and craters you might imagine you’d see up their among the stars. God switching off the lights in the Valle De Luna is some show, for a brief moment the surrounding rock formations are set alight in an orange hue that eventually glows a brilliant pink and then finally dims to blackness. Watching the spectacle on a mountain peak while enjoying a cold beer, you bones aching from collectively falling down a good mile of sand dune, is an experience I’ll not forget.
Our
On my way down
You get the hang of it fairly quickly final trip was a visit to the Laguna Cejar, a salt lake on the outskirts of the town, After shopping around we found the most competitive tour operator and set off on our merry way. The fact that we choose the cheapest tour operator meant that once we were underway we discovered the guide had no English so we were at bit at a loss to what was going on.
Our first stop was the Cejar like itself, a body of water with a salt content so high you can float on its surface without effort. We had an hour to soak ourselves and it was some experience, the desert sun heats the very surface of the water but point your feet downwards and you can feel a layer of ice cold water about 2 feet down before the salt content itself propels you to the surface as if you were a swimming float. Leaving the water the salt sticks to you, leaving what appears to be toothpaste stains all over your body, putting on cloths feels like rubbing sandpaper on your skin and is fairly painful.
Following the lagoon we got in our minibus and the
Moon Valley at sunset
Lovely way to round a hard day of sandboarding with a cold beer tour guide asked if we needed to use the national parks toilets. Naturally I refused and once we were minutes away my bladder suddenly decided it was time to go and time to go right now. Having two cans of beer prior to the trip was probably the cause. My bladder was in the process of being bounced and battered as the guides minivan droves over the rough dirt road and despite my best efforts, my memories of my trip to the Iguassu Falls in Brazil and the sound of 60 imaginary children doing a full volume rendition of “Stop the bus I want a weewee” took root in my frontal cortex and I could do nothing to make them vacate the premises.
We were heading to the Ojes de cajir, which in English are the eyes of Cajir, two nearly perfectly circular sinkholes of fresh water located a short distance away. Freshwater equal’s greenery, greenery equals cover for emptying bladder and I awaited our arrival like a dog welcomes his walk.
We pull up outside the two lagoons and despair strikes, the terrain was wholly unsuitable for the covert operation I intended to carry out, the largest
NIamh floating on the salt lake
It just took about half an hour to persuade her to get in! shrubs rising to the height of my ankle and they didn’t get any bigger as far as the eye could see. To make matters worse there were a good forty tourists about in swimming trunks psyching themselves up for the 12 foot jump into freezing water of the lagoon.
My bladder was now nearing the end of a Fidel Castro like epic speech and thunderous applause about to explode. I had only one option, the option Charlie waters refers to as “Going Delta”. Not letting the frigid cold get me down I flung myself into the nearest eye, doggy paddle into its centre and let nature take its course. while threading water.
What am I like, I’m at one of san Pedro’s most beautiful tourist attractions and the first thing I do is enthusiastically hurl myself in and relieve myself in it but unfortunately the option of just unzipping right out on terra firma with no cover for miles and relieving myself in front of several tour buses worth of horrified tourists would have certainly been the greater of two evils.
Final stop was the Salt flat itself, we were given half an hour to
The Salt eyes
AKA flushing meadows explore its surface and marvel at the layer of hard salt that across the ground and then get shouted at by German tourists who demand that no one appears in their pictures of the vast expanse of white, a tough task considering your shadow alone spans nearly 50 yards. When the sun came down the tour guide gave us some snacks and a liberal measure of Pisco Sour, Pisco combined with sugar and egg white that a lot of Chileans enjoy as an aperitif.
Then it was back to San Pedro to meet Tom and Laura for dinner It being our final night in the desert and Tom’s birthday, we enjoyed a lovely meal in town coupled with an awful lot of Pisco and retired to the hostel for a nightcap and trade a few stories, Niamh and Laura discussing where to buy nice dresses in the markets and myself and Tom exchanging tales of boyhood pranks that invariably involved streaking and hurling dairy products at unsuspecting victims. Tom also informed me of a three man water bomb catapult he had acquired in Uni and some of the hilarious fun that resulted from its usage…I of course spent breakfast
shopping for my own one on EBay.
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simon blake-knox
non-member comment
Hey andy how ya getting on, i have fond memories of falling down that very slope.Its a tough old sport to get the hang off. Sounds like your havin a great time, always get depressed seeing other people doin that trip,only wrote a long email for someone the other day with tips. Best year of my life. Anyway hope you enjoy the rest of it.