Huacachina, the coolest resort ever

Well, the bus journey to Ica wasn't great.  It was quite a small bus, with not much legroom at the best of times.  Nikki and I, however, were lucky enough to be allocated seats behind two of the of the most spoilt princesses I have ever come across!  They sat down on the clearly crowded bus, hair, makeup and nails done, and straight away slid their seats back as far as they would go.  We couldn't believe it.  One of them even pushed a little more when Nikki's bag prevented her from lying back fully.  For the next 5 hours they proceeded to tie their straightened hair back a million times, demand a mobile phone from their mother, and bitch at anyone who walked in front of the tele while a film was on.  We were both ready to knock them out.

The drive to Ica was very different to what we had seen before - it was along the coast, but for miles and miles all that could be seen in any any direction was sand.  Every so often a small collection of houses appeared, although how people were living in the areas I don't understand.

Anyway, drama over and we arrived at Ica.  From there, we jumped in a tuk-tuk (like a motor-scooter with a backseat cab built around it) to Huacachina, which was about 10 minutes down the road.  I'm not sure, but I imagine the resort was built around the lagoon there.  Again I can't be sure, but I'm fairly certain it was for one reason only - sand dunes.  The tiny resort is surrounded by enourmous sand dunes.  And our almost sole reason for coming here was to go sandboarding.

We arrived at our intended hostel, and they showed us a nice big triple room with a balcony, for the equivalent of about 2 pounds 50 each, so we took it.  We were only in the hostel 5 minutes when the guy told us that we could join a trip that was leaving in 10 minutes for the dunes.  It sounded good, but we hadn't eaten since breakfast, so he told us we could grab a bite to eat, and go out in a 4-seater buggy after that.  It all seemed a bit pushy like Mrs Annoying, but we didn't have very much time here, so it suited us perfectly.  We checked in, adn a quick more in depth inspection of our room revealed a fairly manky bathroom, and a room attached which contained a number of caged parrots and maquaws.  How unusual.

Downstairs, we got some cheap, really good lunch, and set off on our dune buggy.

I reckon our driver had cards on himself as some class of F1 or rally driver.  He was bombing it over the dunes, tearing up and down the hills while cornering madly.  It was absolutely ace.  We were flying around for about a half hour, until we stopped at the top of a hill.  "Oh my god, he doesn't expect us to board down that, does he?"  There was a group of guys beside us looking worriedly down a slope that was slightly less steep that ours.  Our guide asked who wanted to go first.  It was a bit like the skiing last January - no one really wanted to go first, so I thought to myself 'Well I don't have a clue what I'm doing, why don't I go first?'  And so I lay down with my belly on the board, gripped the holds, and out guide pushed me off between his feet.  And I was flying.  It was brilliant, and so much fun.  I was sliding down the sand at what seemed like an incredible speed, and nothing and no one could stop me.  I loved it.  I eventually reached the bottom, rolled over, and started laughing.  I gave the guys a thumbs up, and with that Nikki was hurtling towards me.  And it was really impressive to watch from below.  Unfortunately Rick's camera was full of sand from the buggy, so we couldn't get any photos of us boarding, which was a pity.  We emptied the sand out of our shoes, got back in the buggy, and went tearing round the dunes again.  It was so much fun.  It was so weird also, there was absolutely nothing around except sand, absolutely everywhere.  We got out and did a few more slopes, each one getting progressively steeper and higher.  The strange thing about watching from the top of the dune is that when someone's sliding down, it's almost completely silent, apary from a very faint swooshing noise. 

After a bit more driving around, we stopped to watch the sunset, which was pretty impressive.  We had one or two more goes down the dunes, we headed back to Huacachina, with a brief stop to admire the view of the lagoon from above.

Back at the hostel, we called into the bar, had a beer and chatted an English couple.  We headed out for some dinner, and had the nicest Italian food that you could expect to come out of a microwave.  We had a good laugh with the waiter - after asking him the time, we weren't sure if we had understood correctly, so Rick discreetly asked another waitress, who went straight to our guy and asked him.  For the rest of the meal he gave up 2 minute updates on the time.

We headed back to the hostel, and sat at the bar for a while, playing jenga with the girl who worked there and her friend, and doing free shots of pisco sours if we lost.  We headed into Ica to a nightclub they recommended to us, but I was so tired we ended up going home after about an hour.  Nikki and Rick went back down to the hostel bar, but I was very happy to be tucked up in bed.

I was even happier that I had gone to bed early the next morning.  At about 5am, the three of us were woken by the most insane screeching noise.  It was so loud, and relentless.  It turned out that it was waking up time for the maquaws in the room next door.  We couldn´t believe it, we were so mad.  We were trying to decide whether we should go downstairs and demand another room, or just refuse to pay for the one we had, when someone went into the bird room and took them out.  So we turned over in our uncomfortable beds (made all the worse by the fact that the pain in my chest was becoming increasingly intense) and went back to sleep.  I guess you get what you pay for.

We got up a few hours later, checked out, and headed to the bus station.  Five hours later, we were back in Lima!

Click here for all the Huacachina photos.