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Published: November 21st 2008
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So we left Cusco to head towards Huacachina, a little oasis in the middle of a desert. We got here via a night bus to Ica, that passed via the famous Nazca lines. We decided that for the money this was low on our agenda, particularly as the people we met had all been sick on the plane! Huacachina is 3km from the city of Ica, and is a tiny oasis surrounded by huge sand dunes. The place was historiucally a "hangout" for rich and famous peruvians, but is now a big backpacker destination. We were hoping for good weather and were not dissappointed as it was stunning every day, leaving time to sit by the pool and relax!
Apart from sitting by the pool and enjoying the glorious weather, there wasnt actually a great deal to do in Huacachina except sandboard and take rides in the dune buggies. The dune buggies can be best described as a large engine (in our case a cheverolet v12) attached to a roll cage with seats, and felt like being on a rollarcoaster flying through the stunning sanddunes (the best way to think of the place if Tatooine in the original Star Wars).
We regularly stopped to board down the sand dunes, which started relatively small and ended with very large ones! Sandboarding isn aparently similar to snowboard, but as actually cant snow board so we took the simple option of lying down on the board to avoid falling over.....plus it is much faster. It was hilarious to watch each other fly down the dunes, and although scary at first it was great fun in the end. We topped off the sand boarding by watching the sun set from the top of the highest sand dune, and again I must make reference to the famous scence in Star Wars (a New Hope) where Luke watches the sun set over his Aunt and Uncles home. Simply stunning.
Huacachina is a good launching point to tour to the 'Poor Mans Galapagos', the Ballestas Islands, and as we could never afford to visit the Galapagoes we thought this was an opportunity not to be missed. The day included an early start to reach Paracas, north of Ica and closer to Lima, where we would begin the boat ride out to the islands.
The boat ride to the island was an hour in an
incredibly fast speed boat, and along the way we viewed a huge symbol carved into the rock that was created by a pre-incan civilisation in Paracas. It was very similar to the lines in Nazca, and we were delighted to see it after missing out on the Nazca lines themselves. Upon reaching the islands we saw many sea lions, there was approximately 2000 on the island along with Penguins, Pelicans and many other birds. The island is also used to produce fertiliser (guano), from the faeces of the birds and sold to countries such as the USA every 7 years......and it really did smell!
The trip was fantastic and a great way to view wildlife so close up....and for the price it certainly was worth it, poor mans galapagos or not! The day was rounded of with a trip to two local vineyards. The first made local sweet wine and the second the legendary Pisco (as tasted in the local cocktail Pisco sour). Both were very interesting, and although the wine and Pisaco was rather disgusting, it made a good day.
On our final day in Huacachina, as there was little to do Daisy decided to relax by
the pool, whereas Adam and one of the friends we had made on the inca trail decided to visit a local football match. We arrived to realise we were the only "gringos" in the place and quickly had 500 peruvians staring at us. A warm up game was taking place when we arrived, and was similar to a sunday league game in England - the standard was not the best but we had been told the main even would be "mas picante!" (more spicy).
The ground only had one stand where all fans congregated (with no seperation or police control like in Europe) and the fans began to drink copious amounts of red wine and sing many song (including trumpets, drums and horns). The game started and the standard improved slightly but we were more entertained by the local fans than the game. The away team scored and the home fans were very unhappy at this and began to fight among themselves (at about 5 metres away from us) and out of nowhere one man pulled a knife out and tried to attack another! Cue a mass stampede and everyone running out of the ground. The fans continued to
fight and throw bottles until finall the police thought it was calm enough to intervene and they wouldnt get hurt. The game was stopped for 10 minutes and as it was half time we decided we had seen enough and left for our own safety!
We enjoyed Huacachina but three days was easily enough and we headed south towards the city of Arequipa.
Photos of the last three entries will be added very soon, as unfortunately current computers will not register our photos!
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