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It's a twister, it's a twister! Huacachina is an oasis in the desert of Southern Peru. Being a suburb of Ica it is close enough for convenience but far enough to escape the packed city. Surprisingly, being in the desert, the region is home to the majority of Peru's wine and Pisco wineries or Bodegas as they are called locally - hence our visit. The vineyards are irrigated by the Rio Ica which channel water from the Andes to the Pacific.
We arrived at our hostel late afternoon, quite a lively place with a younger crowd and loud music. This is not normally our prefered environment but as we were here to taste Pisco this was not a problem. The problem came when we went to the hostel bar - the Pisco sours they were serving were rubbish. A Pisco Sour is made with Pisco, (a locally brewed wine brandy) lime juice, sugar and egg white. As the name suggests they are quite sour. Mark (my best Man) brought a bottle of Pisco back for us the year before last after his visit here and the Pisco Sours we had then were delicious. We had them in Chile and again they were delicious, we even had
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Huacachina Oasis them in Brazil and they were delicious - we were gutted they were so poor so we made our excuses and went on to the next bar. The next bar came up trumps and we ended up spending the evening in there.
The next day we woke up a little later than usual with a mild headache and a desperate thirst. After guzzling gallons of water and a slow start we went for a walk around the beautiful oasis that is Huacachina. The centre of town is a boating lake surrounded by a promenade with restaurants and bars, behind these are the biggest sand dunes I have ever seen. The dunes are about 200m high and protect the village from the winds and sandstorms of the desert. Even through our hangover puffy eyes we could see the beauty of the place.
The next day we visted two Bodegas. Vista Alegre was the first Bodega we visited. A large commercial operation producing many litres of wine and Pîsco each year. We were shown the juice extraction process, the fermentatin process, the brewing process and the distilling process to make the Pisco. It was all very interesting and despite this
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Noel on the Pisco being the large commerical operation there was still lots of manual work involved in the process. At the end of the tour we were taken to the tasting room where we drank several different wines and several shots of Pisco and it had only just gone 11am!
The next stop was Bodega El Catador, a traditional family run operation. During the months of February and March you can watch the grapes being crushed by foot. At the end of March there is a big festival where the village carnival queen gets involved and there is a big party. Unfortunately we had missed the March madness by a couple of weeks. Judging by the pictures we were shown everyone had a good time. The juices from the foot crushed grapes is filtered via cane baskets then left to ferment in Piscos (huge earthenware jars named after the birds beaks they apparently look like). Two weeks later all the jars are emptied into a large vat in the ground beneath which is a fire. Here the distilling process takes place and in another room the filtered Pisco is collected.
Following our education we were once again plied with wine and
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Sunset in the desert Pîsco and then encouraged to purchase some of the local brew, we of course obliged, great gifts for the family that we will now carry round with the gifts we bought in Riobamba.
On the way back to our hostel we saw a remolino - a small whirlwind in the desert. Our driver also introduced us to Pacay, a seed fruit that looks like a giant pea pod. You open up the 'pod' and eat the white fluff that surrounds the 'pea' , it tastes very sweet.
That evening we hiked up the largest sand dune surrounding Huacachina. It was quite a task being 200m high but the view was worth it. We watched the sunset then ran down bear footed, our feet sinking into the soft fine sand, it was beautiful. We were taking the night bus from nearby Ica to our next destination the next evening so we hired a sandboard in the morning and did some sandboarding down the dunes. Boarding was fun, but hiking back up was exhausting so we were only at it for a couple of hours. The afternoon was spent in Ica city where we took a short walk to view
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Noel sandboarding all the historic buildings. On our walk, to my surprise, I saw a man in a Newcastle United shirt. I explained to its wearer that I was from Newcastle and inquired as to his interest in Newcastle United football club. It turns out Nolberto Salano is Peruvian and sure enough the back of the mans shirt named his hero.
It was time to leave Ica and Huacachina for Cuzco centre of the Inca empire and site of Macchu Picchu.
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