Huanchachina

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We got to Ica at about 5ish and jumped in a bike taxi straight to
Huanchchina, it is such an amazin place to see one road in, one road
out and just an oasis in the middle of the desert.

We had already booked 2 nights in Desert Nights Hostel and were
pleasantly surprised when we got there. It had loud music playing,
plenty of people eating in it's restaurant and friendly staff, the
only negative was the toilets/showers that smelt like the toilets at
the Riverside.
We dropped our bags and went for a mooch, it was a nice little town
with plenty of activities to do; sandboarding, camping, buggying, and
other sand related stuff. The lagoon was in the centre of the town
with all the restaurants around it, we looked in a couple of them then
decided to go to the bar at our hostel. It was Wednesday which meant
last day of that weeks budget, so Hollie got a cheese and pesto
sandwich and I got a cheese and ham toastie then we spent the rest of
our budget on happy hour cocktails. After a couple of cocktails we
grabbed a beer and went to the TV room to watch the last half of
Babel, then to bed.

An americano (scrambled eggs, 2 buns, juice, tea, butter and jam) and
a bacon, egg and cheese sandwich were ordered for breakfast, after I
trekked to the bank while hollie was getting ready. We then decided to
try our hands at Sandboarding (40 soles each) so booked this through
our hostel, then headed with Hollie in one hand and harmonica in the
other up the fairly big sand dune behind our hostel. It was fairly
hard climbing up simply because the sand was soo hot, but when we
reached half way and gave up the view was beautiful. We sat for about
2 hours until we ran out of water and Hollie was sick of the music
then started our descent. It must have took about 40 minutes to get
down, as by the tine we started descending the sand was boiling hot.
About 4ish we started our sandboarding with 6 of us hurried into a
massive sand buggy then thrown from side to side as the driver hit
dunes at 80 km/h. As none of the group had sandboarded before and the
dunes we were took to were too high to start learning we laid on the
boards. Holding onto the leg straps with our legs in the air we were
pushed by the drivers down. The first 3 were pretty timid but the last
3 dunes were steep and long. Alot of the group didn't do the last 3
dunes but of course I was first down and Hollie was straight behind me
again surprising me! After the dunes the drivers took us to a fairly
high sand dune where we watched sunset, it was nice. After
sandboarding we shopped around the restaurants finding a nice family
owned place that was reasonable with nice food, especially the free
Peruvian soup.

The next day we decided to tackle the Big Boy (massive sand dune
opposite) on the way we saw an English owned vegetarian restaurant so
Hollie was in her element. We both set off and it took me about 20
minutes and Hollie about 30 minutes, I couldn't do with all the
stopping but made sure she was safe from the top. We stayed at the top
of Big Boy about 3 and a half hours as the views were 10 times better
than the day before and it was also quite humerous watching an English
girl trying to learn how to sandboard. We headed down the steep side
of Big Boy before the sun made the sand hot, running all the way.

Beer (girls beer for Hollie), pasta and brownies were for dinner at
the English vegetarian restaurant before getting a taxi to Ica for our
17 hour bus to Cusco.

I am really not looking forward to this bus but definitely looking
forward to Cusco, you could say there is light at the end of a very
long tunnel.

Muchos love

Brown

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Comments

[richard]

belter
aleright buddy sounds awesome this ica place and sandboarding sounds fantastic too.. hope ya both well and enjoying every minute of it have more fun the blogs are ace pal keep it up.. richy mc

[tommy]

Hows it going mate, looks like you having a great time. That sand boarding looks pretty good fun, not sure about falling over though, sandy bum is never a good feeling. Big love for sam and tommy x x

[holtjames]

sandy bum
yeah the sandboarding was quality just have to bite the bullet and hope ya dont fall off as for the sand up ya bum was an eventuality anyway it got bloody everywhere! hows s e asia where are you now?

[holtjames]

sandy bum
yeah the sandboarding was quality just have to bite the bullet and hope ya dont fall off as for the sand up ya bum was an eventuality anyway it got bloody everywhere! hows s e asia where are you now?