Wednesday 9 May 2012

Day 45 - Huacachina, Peru (2 May 2012)

Day 45 – Huacachina, Peru (2 May 2012)  

We arrive in Ica at about 8am.  I am feeling quite tired but that’s alright, I’ll get over it.  We jump into a taxi for 6 soles (NZ$3) which takes us to Huacachina (pronounced Watch-a-che-na), this taxi took about ten minutes to get there from the bus station.  We had not organised a hostel but had a few in mind, we figured since it was a town of 200 people we would be able to get away without booking.  We were right, but we were directed to the ‘cheapest hostel in town’ by the taxi driver, who was a nice guy with a little bit of English.  The place we stayed at was relatively nice too, it had a restaurant and bar on site, a swimming pool, and we could even book our sand dune buggy and sandboarding tour through the hostel.  When we got to our room I noticed a window was missing.  This wouldn’t have been a problem because of the heat, the problem is all the bugs and insects getting into the room at night and having a good nibble at us while we sleep.  I told the hostel attendant this and she puts us in another room, an upgrade at no extra cost, what a deal!  At the same time we book our dune buggy tour for 4pm that afternoon.  We have been told that the 4pm time is the best slot as towards the end of the tour you get to see the sunset.  During the day we just relax in the sun (and heat!!!) and go for a swim.  We also have a good wander around the small town.  The town is centred round a lagoon in the middle of massive sand dunes.  It’s quite incredible really.  As we wander round we notice the typical Peru behaviour still exists in Huacachina, we are constantly being hounded to go into restaurants or buy souvenirs off the street.  4pm rocks around and we are ready for our Dune buggy tour.  I’m getting a wee bit excited as we jump into our buggy.  We have been told seatbelts on this are a must (as I would never have got into the buggy if it had no seat belts, safety first!).  This is because a couple of tourists didn’t put their seatbelts on and after five minutes their tour was over because they bumped their heads on the bars above them and had blood streaming out of their heads.  Anyway we got underway and I think I put my seatbelt on a wee bit too tightly as when we went over the first bump, the seat belt got me where it hurts!  Lesson learnt.   The driver took off at a good pace, we were going up the sands dunes and the further we got up, we realised how large the sand dunes were, they went on forever!  Our first drive went for about 10-15 minutes, it seemed to fly by and it was so much fun.  We were going up steep hills, and then down steep hills, it was a bit like a roller coaster.  We jumped out of the buggies at a good spot for some photos so we started clicking away.  After five or so minutes we were back in and off for our second ride.  This was a bit shorter and we were taken to our first hill that we were going to sand board down.  The driver told us to jump on the board on our bellies and slide down.  He said this first slope was the practice run, but it was very steep.  It took a while, but I finally gave it a go and it was so much fun.  We got up to a reasonably pace, but nothing too serious.  This is because the driver told us to spread our legs as we were going down, at first I thought this was to speed us up but then I thought about it and a lightbulb went off in my head, he wants to slow us down so there are no injuries.  Well the legs wernt spread anymore after my lightbulb went off, I wanted to get some more pace going down the hill.  We did another two hills close by and then we got picked up by the buggy and taken back to the top to do all three hills again.  After this we were taken to another two spots, one was a very steep hill, in hindsight it was very very steep, but it was so much fun.  I wanted to do it again but it was getting dark.  We made our way back to Huacachine town and the tour was over.  A lot of fun was had over the last two hours, although we had sand everywhere! Ann jumped in the shower as soon as we got back, I jumped into the swimming pool to get all the sand off me.  When we were back in tip top condition, we went out for dinner on the lagoon front and had a set menu for 15 soles each (total NZ$15).  This included a starter and main and drink, although the fella gave me two drinks.

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