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Published: October 30th 2009
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A short ride from Paracas put us again in the desert, only this time in the oasis of Huacachina. A very small village, a lagoon in the middle surrounded by palm trees and a few hotels and restaurants. (Although Huacachina is only 5 minutes from the much larger city of Ica). It was a strange setting to see, there are massive sand dunes surrounding also, must be around 10 stories high.
There was not a cloud in the sky and the heat made us really realise that we were in the middle of the desert, not many people around as they hide from the sun in the middle of the day. But come late afternoon things start to get moving. We relaxed by the lagoon with a drink, I am beginning to enjoy the Cusqeña beer. We both weren´t feeling that great, but we took a quick (but tiring) walk up the smallest dune we could find on the west side, just to take in some of the sunset. A quiet night in nursing some sore bellies (The bottled water hasn´t tasted that great at times, so we are wondering whether they are being filled with tap water and re-capped).
Our
second day we ventured in to Ica to have a look around, the town was bustling, plenty of markets and cars around. There were plenty of young kids dressed up for a festival, some as Incas. It made for a nice spectacle. We then went to the Museo Regional de Ica. It had a good collection of artefacts from the Ica area, some of the pottery was very well crafted and painted, I could see it selling well even today. There were also some good weavings and very well preserved mummies, as well as skulls that while living the people had had them sculptured so that the skull gives a very long elongated look at the top.
Now in the afternoon back in Huacachina I hit the dunes (Deb resisted after hearing horror stories about the buggy drivers) but it was no where near as bad as I was expecting, it was great on the buggies, zipping around on the dunes, climbing steep dunes and then dropping down the other side at close to 90 degrees (not getting metres in to the air as I had heard stories). You get bumped around a bit but feel quite safe all the
time. We then did some sandboarding (albeit on our stomachs). We started on some smaller dunes, I thought hey this aint too bad. But hitting some of the larger ones, I have never seen dunes so tall, massive at least 50 metres or more. They did get the adrenaline going, but I made sure I kept the legs dragging in the sand behind me to make sure I didn´t hit light speed.
The scenery up on the dunes was surreal, the sun setting, the light on the sands and the fact that all you can see apart from the sky and sun is sand, nothing else. We rushed quickly to the Cial bus station for our bus, only we shouldn´t have. We waited in the cold as the bus turned up 2 hours late, now on to Arequipa to see the Condors in the Colca Canyon
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