Sandboarding and mummies in Huacachina

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We got the overnight bus from Arequipa to Ica. There was no option for fully recline-able seats like in Argentina so we had to make to do with the uncomfortable standard seats. We got there in one piece but unfortunately my bag hadn't. It had been put on another bus and was on his way to Lima. After much confusion we managed to understand that they would put it back on a bus to Ica and it would be available for me to collect that evening.

Ica is the capital of the Ica region of Peru and it suffered severe damage and loss of life in the 2007 Peru earthquake, which measured 8.0. It appeared that very little had been done to rebuild the city when we were there, probably due to lack of money. However we were not staying in Ica but had decided to head to Huacachina which is an oasis just outside town. So we hopped in a motorised rickshaw to get there.

Huacachina is built around a small lake in the desert. Called the "oasis of America," it serves as a resort for local families from the nearby city of Ica, and increasingly as an attraction for tourists drawn by the sport of sandboarding on the sand dunes that stretch several hundred feet high and surround the tiny town, population 115, on all sides. The buildings, mainly now restaurants and accommodations, were pretty old and we could imagine the well-to-do Peruvian families coming here in the 1930's.

Legend holds that the lagoon was created when a beautiful native princess was apprehended at her bath by a young hunter. She fled, leaving the pool of water she had been bathing in to become the lagoon. The folds of her mantle, streaming behind her as she ran, became the surrounding sand dunes. And the woman herself is rumored to still live in the oasis as a mermaid. We didn't spot her though.

We only stayed two nights as the only thing to do besides sunbathing, our hostel had a pool, is sandboarding. We obviously decided to give it a go and we rented a couple of boards and climbed up the huge dunes to give it a go. The views from the top were awesome, behind us the Ocucaje desert stretched out endlessly and in front was a birds eye view of the palm tree fringed oasis town, a small patch of lush green amongst the vast, arid desert. The sandboarding was good fun and after a few attempts we got the hang of it managing to build up quite a bit of speed before inevitably falling on our arses. The sand gets everywhere. That evening we climbed back up the dunes to watch the sunset over the desert.

On our last day we headed back into Ica with some Irish guys we had met to visit the Ica Museum. The museum is home to an impressive collection of mummies which are thousands of years old and they are amazingly preserved if a little creepy.

That night we got an overnight bus back to Arequipa in order to get to the border town of Tacna to get into Chile.

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