Ica, Huacachina, and Trujillo

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Back to the desert: Huacachina and Trujillo

I’m gonna cram a few small travels in one entry here, despite them being quite far away from each other geographically. I’ve been moving pretty fast over the last few days and spending alot of time on buses (something like thirty hours over the last four or five days) because i’m excited to get to Ecuador and Colombia and have some time to catch up after my long stay in Cusco.




The somewhat rowdy bus journey from Arequipa to Ica was followed up by a very short mototaxi journey across a short stretch of desert sand dunes to the oasis Huacachina. It’s basically a resort town built around a lagoon surrounded by desert as far as the eye can see and massive sand dunes. It looks a little worn out from the sun and heat, and the bright architecture is all faded and there weren’t many people around because it was the low season. Still a pretty visually stunning place to sit about and drink beers.
After a morning of rest to recover from the bus ride, I booked a dune buggy tour leaving in the afternoon. The buggies are small, loud, brightly coloured death machines manned by PARTICULARLY insane Peruvian men, who tear across the dunes with such ridiculous pace that all you can do is grab the seatbelt where it runs between your legs and hope you don’t catch your nads on it when you go over the next dune. It took about twenty seconds for all the moisture to get sucked out of my face and I was left with wild hair of epic proportions. Massive fun. They then unloaded a bunch of modified snowboards (Velcro straps instead of boot clips on top), waxed them up, and we went sandboarding.




I took to the sandboarding surprisingly quickly, and after only one epic fall that sent me sliding headfirst on my back for about twenty metres and collecting several kilograms of fine sand in my underpants, i ended up reasonably competent and managed not to hurt myself. On a couple of particularly gigantic dunes i took the opportunity to go lying down facefirst, and built up a crazy amount of pace. And a mouthful of sand. We headed back to Huacachina with the sun setting behind us and echos of other tourists hollering obscenities while they glided down dunes. Well worth the twelve USD. Rehydrated for a few minutes in the pool at the hostel, had a brief beer with a Dutch couple from the tour, and passed out.



Another night bus later, i landed in Trujillo, on Peru's north coast. I booked into a hostel that tripadvisor had recommended called Casa de Clara (the house of Clara), which turned out to be a lovely family-run hostel with a huge dining area downstairs filled with family photos where Clara cooked me gigantic and delicious dinners and lunches. She also took myself and a couple of French guys on an epic archaeology day visiting the surrounding ruins from the pre-inca civilisations of the Moche and Chimoe. To be honest, i wasn't hugely into it. Possibly all archaeologied out from south Peru, or tired from the bus trip, or maybe Machu Piccu has just ruined it for me, but i wasn't all that amazed. Clara was a wealth of interesting information, though. We visited museums, the temple of the sun (which was worn down to what was essentially a pile of rocks, but had amazing murals on the inside which had been protected from the elements and retained their impressive array of bright colours), another temple that i can't remember the name of, and the ruined city of Chan Chan. This was pretty impressive just due to it's size, but it is built entirely of mud-brick, which has all become a bit crumbly. There is one (very large) area with really cool wall carvings and fancy patterns, but it's hard to know how much of it is original and how much has been restored. There are Peruvian hairless dogs hanging out at all the ruins, which was pretty cool. I think they were of significance to the people who built the temples, but that bit got lost in translation and i forgot to ask again.




Clara's meals were probably the highlight of Trujillo. Huge slabs of grilled fish and prawns with cerviche (raw fish 'cooked' in strong citrus juices with onions and some green thingss) served in tall glasses, and salads and deserts made in typical north-peruvian manners (or so i was told).

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Photos

Riding the dunes
Went over a bump and whacked myself in the face with the camera shortly after taking this photo. Lesson learned.

Laguna Huacachina
There is a photo of this lagoon on the peruvian S/50 note.

Huaca de la luna
The angry-looking fellow down the bottom is a god called 'The Decapitator'

A peruvian hairless dog
Ain't he pretty? All scaley and mohawked.