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Published: August 6th 2007
Straight after the Islas Bellestas tour we headed straight to the bus station and caught a bus one hour south to a town called Ica. From Ica we grabbed a taxi to the chilled oasis town of Huacachina which was just on the outskirts. This tiny place is next to a scenic lagoon completely surrounded by huge sand dunes which are the real attraction as it’s possible to board and buggy all over them.
We checked ourselves into a cheap hostel that offered us a discount on the buggy tour if we stayed with them. Luckily for us there was a group leaving in an hour if we wanted to be a part of it so we signed ourselves up! We also signed up for a tour of the local wineries in the region for the next day. We dumped our bags in the room, which was next to a pool with beautiful people sprawled all over it, and kicked back for a while till the tour started.
The buggies soon turned up that would be taking us on the dunes, these buggies are effectively a huge roll cage with a huge engine bolted in the front each holding
8 people (plus driver). Faye and I had the fortune of being assigned the two front seats, I think due to the fact that the person sitting next to the driver has to straddle the gear stick and as Faye’s pretty small she wouldn’t get in the way as much. The buggy soon set of at top speed, and I think it was at this point I realised the old man sitting in the drivers seat was insane. He sped off into the distance taking us all the way into the dunes so all we could see in all directions was sand. The ride was as intense as you can imagine, speeding up and down the huge mounds of sand, pulling extreme turns on greater than 45 degree dunes. Thankfully every now and then he pulled over and gave us the chance to catch our breaths and take some photos.
After about twenty minutes of scaring us silly he pulled over on the edge of a small (ish) dune and pulled some boards out the back so we could have a chance at sandboarding, a warmer softer alternative to snowboarding. He waxed the bottoms to give us increased speed
and left us to it. It was actually a set of three dunes, once you finished one you just walked another 20 metres to another. On my first attempt I looked like a pro, sliding down with ease and looking every bit the part, although I didn’t know how to stop so I just fell on my butt which hurt like hell… softer my ass! The next two really didn’t go so well, I think the first may have been beginners luck. I literally fell one meter down the slope and then continued to slide down the rest of the dune on my face, scooping sand into every facial orifice. The second was no better, as I literally tumbled down head over heels the whole way! Faye was the same but the opposite way round, her first two attempts were a disaster, but on her third she glided down with the minimum of ease.
The driver picked us up at the bottom and then took us to another dune, this time much larger. This pretty much was it for the next hour, when we finished one dune he’d pick us up and take us to a larger one. There
really seemed to be no limit to the size these things could get. In the end Faye and I took to just laying on the board on our stomachs and shooting down them at incredible speeds. This way was much more exhilarating as we didn’t have to worry about balance and could just try and go as fast as we could. By the end we were covered with sand from head to toe as it had stuck to our suntan cream, we had sand in every crack, crease and orifice but it was an incredible experience that I wholeheartedly recommend. The rest of the evening we spent in the shower trying to get sand out of our hair and digging round in our ears, which I’m still finding sand in even now, three days later.
The next day our wine tour started at 10am and would last approximately 3 hours, so we checked out of the hostel and put our packs in storage. It was a really small group, just us, a Dutch girl and a girl from New York who luckily for us was Cuban and acted as our translator for the day, when the guide struggled with
English. We started off in a small family run winery, making wine in a very basic way with simple tools. This place also acted as a small museum of Inca and Nazca culture with artefacts scattered around and nailed to every available space on the walls. It looked like a junk shop more than a museum, but it certainly gave the place atmosphere. We soon got cracking on the tasting and were given the usual tiny cups that tasting normally entails, luckily for us though our guide filled it right up and then when we were done filled them up again and again. We tasted about 5 different wines, all of which were very sweet and then were given shots of Pisco the local grape brandy, Faye was having none of it as she’s really not a drinker so I had to drink hers too. What a great start to the day, 10:30 and wasted already. This was also only the first vineyard we were visiting too.
The second vineyard was a much more modern affair with industrial production methods in place, we learnt a lot about the process and how to tell which wines were which from bottle
shapes etc… but then of course it ended with more tasting. This time there was much more choice with dry and semi-dry also available and of course it all ended with a couple of shots of their award winning Pisco. There was time after this to visit one more, by this time I was really starting to feel a bit merry so I was up for anything. This one was kind of a cross between the two previous ones, it was simple but at a large scale. The tasting at this place also included some fruit juices that they also made so at least I got to water down some of the contents of my stomach before I fell over. Back in Huacachina we walked (staggered) around and found a cheap place to get some lunch before we left to get a bus to our next destination. I found Huacachina a really cool place and would definitely return if we find ourselves coming back this way!
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Julie T
non-member comment
You are obviously having a great time, but I am exhausted just reading about your travels. Keep up the blog its helping us to miss you less at work. Take care. Julie X