DUNE and the ancient alien airports!

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08/18/12

We took a fairly comfortable bus ride to ICA. We had the comforts of AC, Wi Fi, movies, all while taking in the sites of the desert and their accompanying slums. Immediately, we took a cab over to a Huacachina, which is an oasis amidst the sand dunes. We were pretty tired so we just walked around the oasis, found a place that had good garbanzo bean burgers, drank some beers in the evening at the top of the dunes, and then made party with some solid people we met from the UK. The following day we hiked up to the top of one the biggest dunes surrounding the area which, from below, looked like an easy feat, but the fact that it was sand definitely made it a bit more strenuous. Afterwards, the pool of the old Banana's Adventure hostel was calling our names. Usually avoiding such tourist traps, we decided to the whole dune buggy/sand boarding trek into the dunes and it was pretty rad! The sandboarding was very awkward. Basically, you're given a very large skateboard with foot straps and you wax the bottom with some candles. Getting going is kind of hard and once you get going, it's hard to have any sort of control. You kind of just go straight and hope for the best. It's very easy to get the fine sand into any and all bodies cracks and crevices. We were really hungry and just wanted to eat something, so we let a touter lure us into a very mediocre restaurant where we ate very shitty sandwiches. At night, we made party again with our new friends from the UK, caught a good buzz, shared some laughs, exchanged high fives, kissed each others girlfriends and passed out.

Early morning, we took another bus to Nazca to check out the ancient geoglyphs, or "lines", located in the Nazca desert. Megan opted out due to her past experiences of motion sickness, which, based on my experience, was a good idea. It was the first time I had ever felt the least bit queasy on an airplane. It was a combination of the aerial maneuvers they perform and attempting to hold the camera steady to take photos. If I were to give any advice, it would be to NOT take any photos because they turn out shitty and it will simply make you sick. Just buy the postcards. Afterwards, we hit the town, which is pretty small, and just walked around taking in the sites. During our short time in Nazca, we discovered an outdoor market, noticed more dogs than people, saw a motorcyclist get hit by a car (miraculously he was unharmed), ate shitty food at a really nice restaurant (they weren't too keen on what exactly vegetarian food was), and a jar of peanut butter burst in my bag, but luckily a very kind business owner let us use their facilities to clean up our mess.

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Photos

Inca Cola
Tastes like bubble gum.