Ica & Huacachina

When we arrived in Ica, we quickly realized that it was quite an ugly city. Aside from constantly being approached about "tours", the drivers made it as difficult as possible to cross the streets. After looking left and right (at the pedestrian crossing!) several times, we sprinted every time because the next honking car was never far away. With this impression, we arrived at our hotel, which effortlessly fit into the picture. The name could have given it away, but we were somewhat surprised when we ended up in this little piece of Russia. At the "reception" stood Victor with a few words of Spanish, a bad mood, surrounded by Matryoshka dolls, and in the background, a Russian football game of Euro2020 was playing on YouTube. Our room was functional but not nice, after finding the second black hair in the bed linen, we unpacked our sleeping bags as a protective layer 😄 Well, for just under 14 euros per night for two people, you can't complain. So we quickly left our room and wanted to explore Ica - in short: it could have been saved. The city remained unattractive, very crowded, and the cuisine was below average.

For the next day, we planned to walk to Huacachina, an "oasis" in the desert. You can take one of the various tour operators or conveniently take a tuk-tuk-like taxi there, but we felt like moving a bit and walked about 45 minutes from our hotel. The first impression here was also far from enthusiasm. It was cloudy, the houses around the oasis, which also did not display inviting water, were ugly, and besides us, there were only annoying tour operators who approached forcefully. Somewhat disillusioned, we leaned against the railing when a tour guy sneaked up from behind and offered us a sand buggy tour with sandboarding - we didn't have anything else to do anyway, and for 10 euros per person, you couldn't go wrong. Until the tour started, we spent the time in a nice restaurant with vegan food, and by now the sun was out, which earned the whole place a few extra points. We also walked up one of the high sand dunes, from which we had a nice view of the desert - unfortunately, Ica and another city were also in sight, so the "oasis" was not really isolated in the middle of the desert, but quite close to civilization. Nevertheless, we made the best of it and enjoyed the view of the dunes. In the afternoon, the tour started. We raced over the dunes at breakneck speed, which was quite fun, and in between, we stopped to slide on the sand with snowboards. In the end, the slope was so steep that only one person was allowed to go down at a time, and Jana let Philip go first, who zoomed down the dune with high speed. So we had a reconciling, beautiful ending in the golden sunset in the desert. After dinner, we went back to the hotel. In the end, despite everything, we had a great time and some funny stories to tell. We were also glad that the stopover saved us a long bus ride to our next destination.

Now we continue during the day to the capital city Lima.