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Published: February 11th 2006
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After Lima we were suitably refreshed and ready for some more extreme activites. What better than a desert oasis, surrounded on all sides by huge sand dunes, and from which you could both sandboard (gulp!) and go for rides in ridiculous 320 horsepower sand buggies?
We decided to stay in Huacachina rather than Ica itself, the latter being a bit mucky and city-like, the former a collection of hostals and restaurants around a lake-sized oasis in the desert. The areas both north and south of Ica are pretty much uninhabited and it's not hard to see why as you drive through them. Neither Em nor I ever imagined that Peru contained so much desert. I imagined rainforests and mountains, which there are, but there's also A LOT of desert. Perfect for sandboarding, then...
Basically the way it works is that you rent a board, a bit like a big skateboard deck with foot straps but no wheels, you climb a bloody big sand dune, grease the thing up (it goes nowhere otherwise) and point it down the hill. I suppose that sensible folk would get lessons or something before giving it a go, but with an unhealthy sense of
Pro sandboarders
Jon, me, Ruth and Em.... "it can't be
that hard, can it?" we set off up the nearest dune we could find. With us were Ruth and Jon who despite the size of the dune made it to the top to join in the experiment. Em videoed my first run, so you too can share the excitement... ahem.... amusement.
Click here to laugh. After a while we were totally exhausted - walking up sand dunes really takes it out of you - but happy that we'd had a few vaguely reasonable runs and had at least had a go.
Unlikely as it may sound, Ica is also Peru's foremost wine region, despite being smack in the middle of the desert. We were offered a tour of the local wineries and, both Em and I being fond of the odd glass (or bottle!) of wine, went with Ruth & Jon on a tour of the local facilites. They were very interesting to see - we went first to Tacama, the biggest winery and distillery of pisco (the local firewater, very much like Greek raki for those of you who've tried it) and then to an artesan distillery and winery, whose fare in our opinion was far better that
it's industrial contemporary. By the end of the afternoon we were predictably a bit on the wobbly side, perfect for our next acitivty....
We had noticed the sand buggies parked outside the hostal and knew that they did break-neck dune tours in them, so when we heard that the particular beast (for those petrol-heads amongst you, I never found out exactly how big the engine was, but it was well over 5 litre, 320 bhp, a V8 and with no silencer... you get the picture!) was to be piloted on that evening's run by a desert rally driver in training..... well, there was no stopping us. We paid our $12 and were ready that evening, and what a ride we got for our money! That thing
flew!! I can totally see now why they wouldn't let us rent one and take it out in the dunes by ourselves, I'm sure that without any experience it would be a one-way journey. The buggy stopped every now and then for us to have a go at sandboarding without the pain of walking back up the dunes, although for me the buggy ride was where it was at. Sandboarding I could do
Deformed skull
Those who were subjected to these mutilations were prestigious members of society.... lucky them... without the machine, but flying around those dunes at suicidal speed required some horsepower which I alone don't posess! The best way that I can describe the experience, in summary, is this; it's like a rollercoaster with a HUGE engine, no tracks, and some crazy scenery. I really can't recommend it enough, and the buggy at hostal El Huacachinero seemed to be the best in town.
If you'd like to see a 30 sec video of Emma making friends with one of the smaller residents of El Huacachinero hostal,
click here... Well worth it I assure you!
Whilst in the Ica area we also took in a museum, the Museo Regional de Ica, at 20 soles each (about $7.50, expensive for these parts) it wasn't cheap, and we felt that we'd been somewhat fleeced. Until, that was, we got to the section displaying human remains from pre-Columbian times. There were many interesting exhibits, not least those of human skulls that had been intentionally deformed from an early age by binding them with cloths and pieces of wood..... eerie.... so eerie in fact that to me they looked almost alien.
After Ica we headed yet further south, having arranged
everything with the jovial chaps at El Huacachinero, to Nasca - home of the famous Nasca Lines, huge figures carved into the desert hundreds of years ago and only discovered in recent times when they were seen from the air (the shapes are so large that they are next to impossible to see from the ground). We had an amusing ride to Nasca in a 1974 Dodge sedan - as old as me in fact, although it was running on some big old diesel V6 rather than the original petrol guzzling V8, and had been reincarnated as a brown taxi. We went straight to the airfield where our chariot awaited - from the picture you can see that it wasn't a very big chariot. Still with Ruth & Jon, we had all taken anti-travel sickness pills beforehand, which for the most part helped us keep our breakfast inside us.... with the unfortunate exception of Ruth, who I fear didn't enjoy the flight as much as the rest of us!! We had read that the flights are a bit on the rough side, but I don't think any of us were ready for this one! It was a case of "There's
the astronaught - everyone seen him? Good! Now for a left turn...." WHOAAA!! The pilot was used to his plane, and we weren't. The lines though were really interesting although it was very frustrating that there remains no explanation as to why they're there..... If you want to know more, here's
an interesting discussion of the lines.....
Following the lines, and as part of the tour, we visited an ancient Nasca burial site that had sadly been looted over the years for various items of pottery and gold. These items were buried with the dead as offerings for the next life, although none were apparent when we visited, due to the looting.
Our tour of Nasca ended with a trip to a local pottery studio (where Em and I sucumbed to the desire to take home souveneirs and bought a nice pot, crafted in the same way as the Nazca people did hundreds of years ago) and a gold museum (where thankfully we managed to buy nothing, gold being expensive and all that). That night we eat at a local tourist restaurant, and were somewhat taken aback when an indigenous chap that we'd been talking to wanted our table scraps as he was
hungry - you tend to gloss over the poverty over here sometimes, but experiences like that really bring it home to you.
That evening we headed to the beatiful city of Arequipa, known as the White City, as most of the buildings are made from a white stone that occurs locally. We hadn't planned to go to Arequipa intially, but were advised by fellow travellers that the road to Cusco was better from there, and that it was a nice place to spend a few days. Why not, eh?
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Jgirl
non-member comment
Boarding bum
hey Georgey, love your boarding styly! im gutted we wont get to hook up, how did we get that so wrong? still, sounds like you and Emma are having a wicked time and making the most of this crazy continent. Reading your Blogs with a smiley face :) Big Luv J XXX