The curse of the oasis

---

Huacachina - 25th to the 28th of Feb

The next stop on our Peruvian adventure was Huacachina, via Ica, which we arrived at after two colectivos, a two hour bus journey and a taxi ride.

Like all the taxi drivers, the taxi man tried to get us to go to a different hostel but we had decided that we wanted to go to the Hotel Salvatierra, which was recommended by both of our guidebooks. We arrived there and everyone was lounging around the pool. It looked like heaven in the heat of the day, a welcoming oasis in the desert. After negotiations (there are always negotiations), including the woman telling us to get rid of the taxi driver and the room was ours for cheaper, we got a slightly run-down but perfectly fine twin room with ensuite. Pity the mattresses weren't better but for 25 soles for both of us, we couldn't complain. That's only about $4 each and the place had a pool.

While Fiona soaked up the sun, I went for a wander around Huacachina and the lagoon. It's a really beautiful place, like nothing I've seen before. Literally a tiny oasis set in the midst of golden sand dune after golden sand dune. I immediately met a local boy from Ica called Juan Carlos. He's studying tourism in university and wanted to practice his English so we had a conversation for a while. He then suggested a tour of Huacachina so I ran and got Fiona and Juan Carlos commenced his tour. It was really interesting, though at times his instructions were questionable. A particular favour of mine was "Okay, go left and fall down". We took him for dinner as a thank you and were going to go to the Bodegas (winery) with him but they were closed. Fiona and I went for a couple of pisco sours instead that evening which were muy forte, mostly due to our insistence that we wanted our litre's worth!

That was the last of the peaceful times in Huacachina, with the curse of the oasis quickly making an appearance. We both had bad bellies and bowels earlier on in the evening but put it down to standard traveller's belly and thought it would pass. But it didn't. That night Fiona spent most of the night vomiting or visiting the toilet for other reasons. The next day, although I was better than her, I was still feeling terrible. The lovely lady in our hostel gave Fiona some medicine and she seemed to pick up a lot. While she got better, I deteriorated. Not only were were my bowels and belly very unhappy, but I started to get terrible pains in my joints and muscles and started seeing some funny things. This continued, despite taking some medicine and the likes. And Fiona added sunburn to her list of aliments.

On Friday evening, we eventually ventured out of the hostel to an internet cafe. When we went to pay, there was no one around. The man finally returned and seemed very excited. We soon found out why. The lagoon was surrounded by people while more men with lights were in the lagoon searching. We never found out what happened for certain, but as far as we could figure a man had broken his leg in the lagoon and had died. Really sad.

Even though we still weren't well, we decided to try do something on Saturday. We went on a tour of two bodegas where they provided samples of red wine and pisco that I refused to drink. Fiona informed me that they were horrible anyway so looks like I didn't miss much. We got back in our sand buggy (like oversized go karts that can seat nine people) and while we were waiting at a junction, a man ran alongside the buggy and snatched the bag belonging to the man sitting in front of me. The driver and the man quickly gave chase but the bag was nowhere to be found. And it was the second time the man had gotten robbed in a week.

We finally got to the second bodega and after the strangest lunch, involving masks and garlands and a very excited band, we got to squash the grapes. I promptly squashed a wasp who strung me in retaliation. But it turns out that wasp stings are preferable to mosquito bites.

I was shattered after our morning and spent a lot of time weighting up whether to go sandboarding or not. I was still far from well and I wasn't too excited about being in a sand dune, and therefore no where near a toilet, for two hours. But I decided to go and I'm glad I did.

The dune buggy ride was lots of fun, bouncing over dunes, though we got stranded at one stage when one of the guys in our buggy got very sick and had to be rushed back to Huacachina.

Once we got to the first sand boarding dune, the instructor told us all to go down on our bellies which we did. We wanted to stand though but with our instructor on the top of the first dune, we had to take a guess as to how to sandboard standing. Fiona decided to go first and she did a spectacular flip, which looked very sore and left her covered in sand. Needless to say, I was a bit nervous following in her footsteps and promptly fell over. We went down the rest of the dunes on our bellies. Some of them were very high and very steep and if there had been another way down, we might have taken it!

That evening, we finally found a restaurant that didn't feel the need to fry everything. It was great to have some vegetables again but after our illnesses, a death, a robbery, sunburn, a wasp string and a spectacular tumble, it was time to leave Huachachina before anything else bad happened!

---

Comments

[Ash]

I´ll try it!
Hola I´ll try Ica next week and I´m very excited! Thank you for your post I have more clear plan now (in fact I decided to go there just a couple of nights ago). Safe trip and thank you again Ash