Cusco: Weekend 2

Huacachina: an actual desert oasis

Missed Spanish last Friday afternoon to meet the other girls at the bus station for our adventure to Huacachina! Haley from Maine, Sarah from Los Angeles, Shayda from Toronto and myself hopped on our giant luxury bus at 5pm and settled in for the long (15 hour) trip. The way the driver took our fingerprints and shoved a video camera in our faces as we got on was unsettling... this wasn't for a promotional video.. it was to identify us if the bus didn't make it! But our chairs reclined right back, the aircon worked, we got a blanket and pillow, and there were even videos being shown (in Spanish of course, with no subtitles. Didn't know Meryl Streep and Alec Baldwn were so fluent in It's Complicated!) I thought it was a pretty comfy trip! Woke up for a pink sunrise over the rocky desert as we wound constantly down the mountains to sea level. Unfortunately someone in front of us was very motion sick and provided a disgusting sound track to the tranquil scenery.

We were fed a strange fishy breakfast and papaya juice in Ica then all crammed in a tiny hatchback taxi with our bags for a quick ride to the oasis town of Huacachina. Amazing. The giant yellow sanddunes surrounded us on all sides and it felt like we were on a movie set. I loved the way the sand cut a straight line up against the sky, it was so pretty. There's a green lagoon surrounded by a couple of streets of restaurants and hostels and dune buggy rentals, and that's the whole of Huacachina. Apparently only 25 people live here and the rest drive in from Ica to work every day.

After laying out by the pool (it was really hot!) and having lunch by the lagoon we headed off for the only reason you come to Huacahina: sandboarding! A little eager, we all strapped ourselves in the 'boogie' (as they pronounce it) about half an hour before we actually left. It has racing car seatbelts and a roll cage and we soon found out why.
Shayda & I with the buggy

This was not just the simple transport to do the boarding, this was like an insane roller coaster ride with no tracks. The driver was wearing protective glasses and a backwards cap and roared us over the huge dunes. We had no idea how he knew which dunes were good to drive down, or how to tell where he was. Screamed down almost vertical drops, spun out to hang on the edge of others, and finally pulled up with untouched sand dunes surrounding us. I've never been in a sandy desert like that, it was mind-blowing!

Sand ripples

Some people (with snowboarding experience) wore the boots and boarded down like they would at the snow, but we chose to lay on our bellies on the board, elbows tight in front of us, to go down headfirst and use our feet to brake in the sand! The first dune looked huge and Shayda flew down without using her feet. We all followed and realised it wasn't quite as scary as it looked.
Haley, Sarah, Shayda & I

The second dune was absolutely enormous. I have no idea how to judge the distance but the people at the bottom looked like ants. Even using our feet to brake didn't slow us down much, it was so fast! If we'd been bumped off or rolled off it would have been the worst sand/ carpet burn in the world.
2nd dune: that speck at the bottom is a person

The third and fourth dunes were like moguls and we couldn't see how they ended up. A mystery for everyone; some people (Shayda) flew over the edges without caring but others braked so much they threw up sheets of sand so they could slow down and look over the edges before they went over head first! It was so much fun, everyone begged for una mas (one more!) but the sun was setting and we had to drive to a lookout point to see it properly.

Sunrise and sunset in one day, I don't see that often! Sunset was amazing orange and yellow over the dunes and we got some great pictures. Driving back in the dark was scary, we had to wear our sunnies so the sand didn't go in our eyes, and we couldn't tell the gradient of the sand at all, every time we went over a bump we didn't know if we were about to fly down a steep slope or not! Then the town came into view, just little dots of light around a dark patch of water, and we realised how tiny we are in the desert.

On Sunday we lay out by the pool again in the baking desert heat (hadn't expected this.. I thought my last sunbaking for the trip was done in Belize!) then headed off on a wine and pisco (famous peruvian grape brandy) tasting tour. Ica province is famous for its vineyards and we went to 2 artesanal wineries and were shown the traditional way to do it. Ica has 85 wineries and so in wine season there are 85 stamping parties where everyone is invited to jump in the pit and dance around all night, squashing the grapes. The juice is then fermented in huge ceramic jars which are the shape of bombs, and really reminded me of Laos and Vietnam where they have all the old bomb casings leaning together outside museums and stuff. We tasted really sweet dessert wines and different flavoured piscos and some jam and chocolate too!
Pisco tasting

Monday morning we got up early for a tour to the Balletas Islands which are known as the 'poor man's Galapagos!' Out on the boat it was like entering the land before time when we got close to the islands because every surface was just swarming with animals. Birds: sea gulls, pelicans, vultures and even little penguins. Crabs and star fish and mussels and sea lions draped over the rocks. So many birds flying they cast shadows over the boats. Just noises of squawks and fights and bellows and caws. The sealions were so cute; laying their heads on each other, yawning, waving a flipper around. It stunk and is a massive guana deposit spot. Apparently two men live on the island to look after the animals, but they have no electricity or running water or anything. What a strange existence they would have.
Penguins, pelicans, sea lions

Our hostel pool backing onto the dunes

We lay out and burned for the rest of the day, and all the pages fell out of our books. The heat? Then a quick bit of jewelry shopping and back to Ica for the bus home to Cusco. We all felt that the ride back was a lot rougher. I was on the aisle this time and as we swung around corners I'd be bashed into one arm rest or the other. All our stuff ended up in the aisle and was swept to the front of the bus where we found it this morning. Didn't sleep much, it was too windy! But home safe! Had lots of fun with the girls and was sad to find out Andrew and his girl have moved into an apartment of their own so I'm totally alone in my homestay! Think I might ask to move houses tomorrow just because I'm a bit lonely!