June 29th 2012
In the afternoon, we decided to go out to Huacachina near Ica to sleep. We arrived just 6km outside of the big city to this oasis with a laguna, palm trees surrounded by high dunes of sand. I had never seen sand dunes this big, it was impressive! We took a buggie ride further into the desert and it looks like what you see in movies, just sand and sand and sand! The little town itself is very touristy: restaurants, hotels and excursions, not much more. Unfortunately we did not sleep very well that night, there was a club in our hotel and we only found out after dinner. The walls of the room where shaking from the bass in the music that was playing.
The buggie ride we took in the desert was really fun. I normally do not like roller coasters but this was pretty close to one. We were going pretty fast and up and down the dunes! We stopped a few times as well to do some sandboarding!
I could stand a bit when the dune was not too steep, but it was very difficult to go down on the higher dunes. And so the guide would make us lie on our stomachs on the board and slide down head first, like we do with toboggans in the snow! It was really fun, at one point I opened my mouth to scream and realized I couldn’t because sand would go in!
It was such a blast! I recommend it to anyone traveling in Peru, it is a complete different experience. They also hold sandboarding competitions in Huacachina.
La chola 