Ica and Huacachina

We got a flight from Cuzco to Lima because all the buses to Arequipa had sold out.  From Lima we headed south to Ica by bus which took about 4.5 hours and cost roughly $35. After the night of no sleep at the awful Wild Rover hostel in Cuzco,  we thought we’d treat ourselves to somewhere a bit nicer. I found Villa Jazmin on TripAdvisor and it looked just the ticket. I contacted them asking them if we could do a deal on price, didn’t hear back from them, so emailed again saying we were on route and we were just going to rock up and hope for the best. The owner Mozes was really nice and did the room for half the standard price, about $55. We must have looked a bit ropey and he felt sorry for us.

Ica itself is a small town and not the most attractive. This is largely due to the 2007 earthquake, where the city suffered extensive damage. Up to 80% of the buildings were damaged. Huacachina, the main tourist pull for the area, is a tiny nearby desert village with a  population of 115. It has a small natural oasis called, for some reason,  the “Oasis of America”.

Tourists come here to see the desert and participate in the various desert activities such as sand buggying and sand boarding. Which is exactly why we went. Hippy travellers also come for the white witches that originate from this area. Theres loads of that kind of thing here in Peru, spiritual retreats, Shamans, healing classes, frog licking hallucinogens etc for all those hippies trying to escape the reality of their real lives or whatever other more conceivable reason they give.

For our first evening we just chilled in the pool, got room service and watched a film with Diane Keaton about the first American Family to be filmed as reality TV.

The next day we took a cab to Huacachina to go sand buggying. We`d read about a place called Bananas Adventures and thought we`d head there to book our buggy trip, but the service was so utterly horrendous that we couldn’t face booking a tour with them. The woman behind the bar took 30 mins to get me a Coke out of the fridge which was right next to her.  Not promising. So we headed to a place that my friend Pete had recommended called Casa de Arena and we asked for Alfredo, as Pete advised. Turned out this was a good call because Alfredo drove like a crazy Mother Fker!

We wasted time before the buggy tour by hiring the noisiest, most unoiled pedalo that ever existed and inelegantly boating around the lake.

After that we were taken up and away across the sand dunes by Alfredo, who drove like a mad man. Veering out of his way to try and hit any person who happened to be standing around. Driving at speed up and over dunes of ridiculous heights. It was like the Nemesis but on sand.

At the top of some high dunes he stopped his buggy and got out some boards, like snow boards but a bit more rustic. From there we either had to slide down the dune on our bellies (on the boards) or sand board down.

One of the dunes we boarded down, you can see people (little specs) going down

This proved to be quite entertaining as I completely wiped out, rolling over and over, practically cartwheeling  with my face in the sand, getting sand burn on my shoulder and legs. Pads wiped out quite spectacularly from a standing position, smashing his face in to the sand and his sun glasses in to his skin. Ooph.

That day, my laptop died and I wanted to cry. All my photos are stored on there and it just wouldn’t boot up. I lasted about 24 hours and then went in to Ica and bought a new one.

We spent one final day in Ica, lounging around by the pool and at about 8pm we got a 12 hour bus to Arequipa, where it is cold and mountainy.

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