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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