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Published: October 19th 2012
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The first blog of our trip around Peru is in Huacachina, a natural oasis in the Peruvian desert. Due to a monumental cock up with our travel agent we arrived in Peru a day late and instead of spending a day in Lima we went straight from Lima airport to Huacachina in a car, in total 28 hours of travelling door to door.
When we arrived at our hotel it was nearly midnight and we were both so exhausted we decided to ignore the loud music from the club next door. After a terrible sleep due to the music and long journey plus jet lag we had to get up at 5am for our first excursion. The music in the club next door was still playing when we were waiting to be picked up outside our hotel at 6:30am. Curiosity was killing me, I had to see what all the fuss was about with the club, so I followed the music and to my amazement the ridiculously loud music was actually from a car. Four, very drunk, local Peruvians decided that they were going to spend their Saturday night blaring music out of their car all night whilst
drinking. Thank god I didn’t realise sooner that it was a car and not a club as I think I would have flipped out after the last few days I’ve had.
Our first excursion was to the Ballestas Island, also known as ‘The poor man’s Glapagos’. The island is inhabited by guano birds, seals, sea lions & penguins and it also has a symbol, similar to the Nazca lines, carved into the ground, the symbol is known as ‘The candle’. No one knows for definite who made the carving or what its purpose was for but there are a number of theories including showing the direction to Nazca or being carved by Freemasons.
We went on a 2 hour boat trip around the island, there are four piers that boats depart from and all head to the same place. After the boat trip we were both starving, we had 40 minutes until we were being taken back to the hotel so decided to try some local cuisine. One problem, no one would let us in to their restaurant. The first restaurant we waited for 20 minutes before approaching a waiter and telling him what
we wanted only to be told “No possible” to everything we pointed at. Whilst talking to him one of the things we pointed at on the menu was being taken to the table of some other customers. It was very apparent we were not welcome here.
We headed to the next restaurant we could find but this time we didn’t even get a menu or a seat the second we walked in a guy came from the kitchen, looked at us and said “No” and pointed to the door. Was this our first taste of racism or just bad timing as the restaurants were closing.....at lunch time? I like to think it was some other reason that I didn’t understand as my Spanish is terrible.
Once back at the hotel it looked completely different. In the morning was a thick mist, almost a fog and it was very cold, but by the time we got back the sun was shining and the mist was gone. Our hotel was completely surrounded by huge sand dunes everywhere. A very popular excursion in Huacachina is sand boarding. You can go in a group of about 8-10 in
a sand buggy and drive to the top of the sand dunes then sand board down.
As Nikki and I were starving food was my main concern. After lunch we enquired about sand boarding but it’s a three hour excursion and we didn’t have that long until we had to go to the coach station to make our way to our next destination, Nazca. So chilling out in the sun was how we filled our time for the rest of the day.
Having had a nightmare of an experience waiting for cabs to take us to the station in Bruges we decided to play it safe and get a cab early to the coach station. We got there an hour early and the coach was an hour late lol typical, just our luck. Whilst at the coach station we met a group of guys from the UK and got chatting to them about their planned itinerary for Peru and what they had done so far.
They had been sand boarding, I was very interested to hear how they found it so asked what they thought of it. Whilst telling me about
their experience one pulled out a very small part of a candle covered in sand. “You’ll need this if you’re going to give it a try”. Nikki asked what it was for and the guy said “you rub it on your board” to which she replied “Oh so it’ll be good for Machu Picchu then?”. The man, looking very confused, didn’t even have a chance to ask why before Nikki made her next statement “But haven’t you rubbed it on your balls already?”. “WHAT?” was the reply from the man followed immediately by everyone (including myself) bursting out laughing. When the guy initially said you will need the candle to ‘rub on your board’ Nikki thought he had said ‘rub on my balls’. Ordinarily Nikki would question such an odd statement however we had been speaking just before the holiday about ways to reduce chaffing around your man bits. I’m assuming she thought the candle would help with that lol.
I can honestly say I have never laughed so much on a trip in all of my life.
Once we got on the coach we almost immediately fell asleep, when we wake up we
will be in Nazca.
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Shelley and Scott
Michele Hutchinson and Scott Maberley
Thanks guys for giving us such a great laugh
Sitting at our hostel in the morning waiting to get a very long bus ride, and not looking forward to it and you guys gave us the biggest laugh of this trip....bloody funny. As for the restaurant, we have a word for it...."random". Use that word a lot in South America. Great photos, and can't wait for your next one.