Ica and Huacachina

All the advice that I recieved about Ica was to not bother going there, but to go directly to Huacachina, a small paradise oasis a short drive outside of the city. Ica had nothing worth visiting, too many cars, people, and the heat was outstanding. I took the advice and took a cab directly to Huacachina.

Immediately upon arrival I understood why this dessert oasis was so popular among gringos. A small natural pond sat in the bottom of a valley, surrounded on all sides with hostels, restaurants and bars. Huge sand dunes rise high into the sky on all sides. This was the perfect spot to relax completely for 2 or 3 days. I was quite suprised to see that the majority of the people walking around and swimming in the pond were Peruvians, I thought this was a gringo spot...Well all the gringos were hiding in there hostels where there were nice pools and bars. Only the Peruvians dared to enter the murky, brown waters of the pond. All the photos made the pond to look like a tuquoise jewel, happily surrounded by sand. In my 3 days there, I didn't see one foreigner in the water.

The atmosphere was filled with noises of sand buggys roaring off into the dessert carrying 4 to 15 people. The loud, uncovered motors could be heard and smelt from miles away. I spent the first day relaxing in the sun and hiking the sands to get a better view of the great beyond, always to find more rolling sands continue on and on. Unlike the hard, almost sand-stoney dessert of Paracas, the dessert of Ica was soft sand. Hiking it was deathly tiring, every step I would take the sands would just slide away under your weight.

Travellers visit this oasis to take rides into the dessert and go cascading down dunes face-first on wooden planks. They say this is the best place for professional sand-boarding, although being an avid snowboarder, I didn't see much difference, or immense skill. I never did get a chance to rent an actual snowboard with boots and test my luck, that was probably the largest regret. Anyway, that first evening I was casually walking around and this rasta looking guy was coming in the opposite direction and telling me to come see the sandboarding competition which flocks of people were beginning to climb the nearby dune to watch. I agreed, so we went together to watch the races and tricks. I was quite impressed by the organization that they had, flags, point systems, everything that a similar snowboard race would have at home. The fastest one to the bottom wins ultimately, although the riders hardly had to turn, the ones that did always lost. None of them could ride, a lot of it was quite ammusing. I wanted to try it myself and see if there was a great difference between sand and snow. The sand was super fine, almost molecular, and heavy. Once the sun started to go down, it got dark in the oasis before the dunes so all the people in the town began to crawl out of their holes up the sand walls to get the last few minutes of the sunset. Like ants the people struggled up the sand in hordes! Me and my new Peruvian friends sat in the sand with beers sitting in the hot sand waiting for them to warm up... I couldn't help but see the difference once again between sand and snow.

The second day was spent with more relaxing which ended up with sunburns down the entire front of my body, which would I would be reminded later of. That evening I took my own buggy ride out into the void to be covered in sand head to toe. Resistance was futile... The adrenline rush was exciting as the buggy climbed sand dunes and spun around 180 degrees to fly down again. Between these tours we would be dropped off at the tops of 500 metre sand dunes and lay down on these sand boards, this is where I felt the burns! Flying down the dunes for hundreds of metres and rapid speed was exciting, although a real snowboard would have been much more interesting.

The trip ended with watching the sunset in the dessert. The temperature difference between day and night or dusk and dawn was immense, as soon as the sun dropped, everything cooled down immediately. It was a peaceful sight, with the wind on my face and the sand in my ears and eyes. It was close to paradise.

I left the next morning to Nazca, for more heat and dread. The road there was windy and treacherous. The large double decker bus felt clumsy as it somehow turned around narrow corners weaving through the desert mountains. I was looking forward to Nazca, the inexplicable Nazca lines sat there, carved forever into the dessert floor forming shapes of animals and other beings. It was going to be fun, or so I thought.