Huacachina

Huacachina

We have been driving again for a long time with a bus to the next destination. We drove through the desert in Peru. The village was called Huacachina and it was an oasis in the middle of the desert. The bus journey took about 5 hours. We traveled with a great bus company. It was like a business class flight in a bus. There was a TV in front of each seat, comfortable leather seats and a service with snacks.

We drove to the last street to Huacachina, there was nothing else around. Suddenly, the oasis appeared in a sand dune basin. A pretty spectacular view. We found a great hotel. Brand new 4-bed room including bathroom (not self-evident). There was also a pool, which was very valuable in this hot desert where it can quickly get up to 35 degrees.

It all cost 20 Francs, including one activity per day. In the evening, we even got a free barbecue with cold beer. The night was quite hot in those rooms.

But luckily, I received a mosquito net from my sister for the trip. I built it on the door of the room so we could leave the door open and let in the fresh, cool wind. But when the other two drunk guys from our room came back around midnight (we were sleeping), they somehow broke the construction and the net fell to the floor. The “all you can drink” mosquito bar was opened and I got about 20-30 bites. The fight began. It was a lesson for me to forget this when there are others in the room.

The next day we spent relaxing by the pool. Sunbathing, eating, drinking and just enjoying ourselves. We loved it. At 4:00 PM, we went on the first tour. We drove through the desert in a beach buggy, loaded with sandboards. We built the vehicle ourselves.

Muriel asked the driver before departure if it was dangerous (she was a bit scared). He replied very casually, “No, not really, but if we do somersaults, it can be a bit dangerous”! Muriel looked at him and remained silent. I laughed next to her, thinking about doing some somersaults.

We started driving and he was driving cautiously. Until we were away from the people and couldn't see the village anymore, he then pressed the pedal. He kept braking and we went down several meters into the hole. We had no idea where this was going, it was as if he had a secret pocket. We were even more shocked when suddenly we went down again. At some point, we stopped and had to get off on a high dune. He unloaded the wooden planks and said, “Now you can go down with these”! He quickly showed us how. You could either take a snowboard or something smaller like a snowboard. Just a board with a Velcro strap. I took the wooden board, apparently it's faster. I lay flat on it, headfirst, and then slid down into the hole. It was surprisingly fast. But it was still too slow for me. So I increased the size of the wooden board a bit more. There were three dunes in a row, from there he unloaded us to go to the next dune. The dunes kept getting higher and higher. We went to the next one, and then the last one. The first one was already quite a bit higher than the highest from the last group. He just said, "the last one is huge"! I grabbed a different board hoping it would be faster than the last one. And it was faster, even much faster. I had to go first and it was amazing, pure adrenaline rush.

From there, the guide screwed down where we had to go for the last dune. We arrived there and I tell you, excuse my language but it was a damn big dune. Twice as high as the others. It was about 150 meters high and at a 40-degree angle. We lay side by side in third position and then started to run. 3, 2, 1, and go. We zoomed down centimeters apart like crazy. I have no idea how, but the one who won shot off like a rocket. I had no chance but still came in second by a long way. I think we reached a speed of around 60 km/h. Just before we hit the compression before going uphill again, there was a brutal wave on the ground and it almost threw me off the board. That was really cool, I filmed everything with the GoPro. Afterwards, we went back to the city on a crazy ride and returned to the hostel.

The next day we took the opportunity to swim, sunbathe, Muriel worked on her photos, and I wrote the blog and sorted all the GoPro videos and started editing some of them. In the evening, we climbed up the sand dunes (the highest one) to watch the sunset and take photos. However, it was too cloudy. But we were still amazed at how beautiful this looked from those dunes at night.

We took some amazing photos.

This is the city of Ica, about 10 minutes away from Huacachina.. On the last day, we woke up early in the morning. We climbed the dunes and were all alone. It was very steep. One step forward and 1 1/2 steps back....

We tried to take photos of the sunrise.

We waited and waited, but there were too many clouds again.

The pictures turned out cool anyway, even without the sunrise.

 Well, at least we could enjoy breakfast early.

Around noon, we went back to the bus station and headed north. We went to Mancora, the Caribbean of Peru. In the meantime, we made a stopover in Trujillo.

Next Stop: Trujillo & Mancora

See you soon

Ernesto and Muriel