Huacachina, Day 1

I arrived in Ica early this morning and immediately took a taxi to Huacachina, a tiny little resort town 4km out of Ica. It`s a desert oasis complete with palm trees, a lagoon, and dozens of tourist-ready hostels and hotels. For just S/10 a night I`m sleeping in the dorm room of a hostel with a nice swimming pool, pool-side bar with restaurant service, dune buggy rides, and sand boarding.

I went dune buggy riding later this morning and it was so fun! There were 6 of us plus the driver in this buggy with bright red tumbler bars (I forget what the proper name for them is... spoilers?). We went for less than the promised 2 hours because one girl turned out not to like the wild ride, which I was a bit irked about. Why go on a dune buggy through the desert if you don`t like ride-type things? Other than that it was a great time though. We raced through the desert, reaching the top of a sand dune and plummetted down the other side. It was like a roller coaster at times!

We also stopped a few times for sand-boarding, which was pretty exhausting but also a lot of fun. We got on these boogie boards, same size as a snowboard, waxed with this weird kerosine-smelling orange liquid, and made our best attempts at going down the steep steep hills. Going down with feet strapped on was pretty difficult - it was hard to stay upright and hard to get an edge so we ended up falling over every 2 seconds.

The bigger thrill was actually to go down on my stomach, gripping the front foot straps. You go so fast down the dunes this way. I actually hurt my arm the first time cuz I let if off the board accidentally. I have a wicked sand burn and even after a shower and a swim in the pool I`ve got sand lodged into my skin. The last hill I went down I hit a nasty bump, banged my pelvic bone, and got the wind knocked out of me. For a few minutes I was completely debilitated, though laughing a bit at the same time, and was on my back in pain. Once I got my wind back it was all good though and we all had a lot fun racing up and down the dunes.

The swim in the pool this afternoon was nice - the first time I`ve been in a pool since I`ve been away. Once I was out reading a book on one of the reclining chairs though I got way too hot - I`m not much of a sitting-by-the-pool person.

I had a nap a little later on (didn`t sleep much on the night bus) and chilled at the pool-side bar with some people I`d met earlier in Arequipa. It`s nice to talk to them, but now that I`ve done the one exciting thing you can do here and have just the lagoon and the pool, I`ve come to the conclusion that I will move on tomorrow. When I was walking around early this morning I couldn`t help but noting that this is the kind of place you should share with someone: no one should be alone in a place so beautiful.

And so tomorrow I will head to Ica briefly once again, from there catch a bus to Lima, and onto Huaraz on the same day if possible.