Happy in the Huacachina sun

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On Tuesday, after three days in Lima, we took a bus to Ica, our next destination. In fact Ica itself was not the target, but a tiny place 5 minutes away (in a taxi) called Huacachina. Taking a taxi there from Ica's central bus station is a quite annoying experience, because from the minute you get off the bus, and especially after you get out to the street, you're surrounded by thousands of taxi drivers trying (quite loudly) to convince you to take them. For a few minutes you just stand there with all your heavy bags and their talking driving you crazy, trying to decide which of them is not going to rub you on the way.

So we chose one and got to a hostel in Huacachina, and went to look around. Huacachina is a popular Peruvian vacation resort, an oasis in the coastal desert. The place consists of hostels, restaurants, some souvenir shops and a "lake". According to the guide book this lake's water contain good minerals or something, and "thousands come here to swim". There is only a small remark saying that sometimes the water are polluted, so ask around before you get in. Well, the truth is that this lake is hardly a dirty pond with some pedal boats that you can rent (looks like the Yarkon), and no one goes in there.

Still, there are some very nice things about Huacachina, for example - it's warm, and you can spend your noon lying on the grass at the shore of the lake. Another thing - the place is surrounded by amazing sand dunes, and you can go with a sand buggie (you don't drive it yourself, don't worry) to do sand boarding on some of them. This is in fact the main tourist attraction there. And one last thing that was a real attraction for us - their traditional sweets called Tejas, that are made of some kind of fudge inside, maybe with some fruit or nuts, and covered in chocolate. They were indeed very good.

So what did we do there? On the first day right after we arrived we had lunch, that took most of the afternoon. We sat in a restaurant with some very funny owner/waiter. When we asked for coca cola or ketchup he went to bring it from another restaurant... the ketchup was in small plastic bags and one of them didn't open, and we asked for some more. He asked what's the problem with what we have and we told him, so he just took it, opened it with his teeth and served it to us...

On the second day we just lazied around, slept on the grass at noon, bought a bus ticket to our next destination (Arequipa) and then afternoon we went to do that sand boarding. It looked very scary at first but it's really not, you can always just drop yourself back on the sand. It does require some excercise though - I could hardly board for a few meters without falling on the sand.

On the third day we went to a pool. It was a nice idea, but the pool was too cold and after bravely entering the water, we didn't stay inside too much. That evening we took a night bus to Arequipa with Cruz del Sur, a very good bus company. You are served dinner (by a stewardess of course) in the beginning of the ride, and wet napkins just before arriving in the next morning. Unfortunately we didn't plan ahead enough, otherwise we would have bought enough tejas for the rest of the trip - they weren't that good in any other place.

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Photos

Yaron lying on the grass
Note that the picture was taken from horizontal position - we were too lazy to get up and take the picture

The lake
thousands come here to swim...

Me and a monkey
The poor monkey was tied to a tree at the entrance to our hostel, and really liked some attention, like a baby.