Huacachina

---

After we left the hustle and bustle of Lima, we headed 4 hours down the coast to the city of Ica. The buses between cities are a lot bigger than the local buses and are quite comfortable, which is good as I have a feeling that we are going to be spending a lot of time on them.

From Ica we head out of town a few miles to an Oasis in the desert, surrounded by a few hotels and restaurants and miles of sand dunes. It was such a big change from the city. The first night we chilled out by the lake and I had a few cocktails (with ice which I think was my down fall).

The next day we arranged a sand buggy and sandboarding tour of the dunes with Eric and Alex who were friends that John has met on his travels. The sand buggies sped pretty fast around the dunes and at some points made it feel like we were going vertically down them. I found it fairly scary but the boys in the group would probably disagree with me. After being taken to the top of a few high dunes for photo opportunities, we were then given a very quick lesson in sandboarding. It consisted mostly of here is your board, strap in your feet and away you go. Needless to say I lasted all of about 2 metres before going down the rest of the dune on my bum. After a few failed attempts at descending the dune on two feet, the guide then showed me the easy way, in a position much like body boarding, lying down on the board and hurtling head first down the dunes.

This was definitely the fastest and most fun way I found. I have to say I did scream a few times but it was loads of fun and the sand only grazed your arms if they slipped off the board. Each dune that the guide took us down got slightly bigger until we got to a set of three dunes that you could slide down. For some reason I was always designated to go first. When I got to the bottom of the last dune everyone on top looked like little ants. It suddenly gave me a bit of perspective as to how high they were. On the really high dunes, the boys also gave the head first approach a try. Some a little more successfully than others. (A photo of John with a face full of sand to follow).

As the sunset over the dunes we headed back into the town and sat down with a few beers and some food. Although Huacachina has a reputation of being a party town this can not be said on a Sunday night. I think all the weekend tourists from neighbouring towns had headed home and the influx of backpackers had not started. There was only one bar open late so we headed there for another beer and then headed to bed.

The next morning did not start off to well. Although I had a few stomach cramps the night we arrived in Huacachina and a little bit of an upset stomach the following day I had put this down to getting used to the food. On this particular morning I knew that it was a bit more than that but I didn´t expect to spend the next day or so visting the loo every 20 mins. I was very thankful that I had a private room and en-suite toilet. I´m hoping that is my only iniation of that kind into the life of a traveller as it wasn´t a pleasant experience.

As with life on the road, it soon becomes time to move onto the next place and this wasn´t I thought I relised with my stomach being in the state it was. However, feeling a little better and knowing that we were only heading two hours down the road, we set off with our backpacks to see what the mystic lines of Nazca had to offer.

---