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Published: December 7th 2006
Huancachina is a couple of hours south of Lima, and is a small oasis in the middle of the desert. This desert continues south all the way into Chile, and Huancachina itself is famous for its sandboarding, dune buggy riding, and swimming in the dirty green healing sulfur lake if you´re brave enough.
Something about mad dogs and englishmen, we hired our boards and decided to have a go at this sandboarding malarkey in the morning. We eventually made it to the top of the first dune, having already seen the mirage of the chairlift, oooo, and were ready to collapse in a heap! Falling with grace we both carved some clean lines (keiths really getting into this!) and ate a lot of sand, even managing some sunblisters along the way...extreme or what? After a couple of hours we were both dehydrated and burnt and filty dirrty, desert living is hard. Having also come quickly to the conclusion that falling down is fun, walking up is not, (see how bright we are!) we booked a dunebuggy ride, including sandboarding where they promised we wouldnt have to walk anywhere!! yes!!
Sooo, Mad Max and his crazy machine roll up with
something like 350 horsepower and not a silencer in sight, keith thought it would be fun to blag the front seats.........Having not been in a car for a couple of months with keiths driving, (who has never once gone above 50mph mum) my stomach has never been in such a happy place...Mad Max lived up to his new name! He drove headon at dunes and pretty much freefell down the other side, all the time laughing like a crazed torturer while we were left breathless and thoroughly sandblasted.
The sandboarding was a lot of fun with Keith being recognized for being the crazy one going first down the biggest slopes he could find (i swear I did shout out that people are expecting grandkids, but i think that scared him even more and made him pick up extra speed!!) I however, found an all together easier and more elegant way of falling down the dunes...on me stomach! No thinking involved which usually helps us blonds...and i was apparently the fastest one down the dune, of course nearly taking out 3 Koreans in the process but no one explained how to steer the damned things....
We ate sand, got
airborne, got bruised and sandburned, but it was a lot of fun. We were brave enough to try the sandboarding, but the lake? er, not this time...
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