An oasis and a board. A day of sandboarding in Huacachina, Peru!
We arrived into Ica from Arequipa by bus and hailed a taxi to drive us 20 minutes out to Huacachina. It’s a pretty random place. Have you ever seen those cartoons or movies where someone gets lost in the desert and start hallucinating and seeing mirages.. a tiny oasis in the distance – palm trees, watering hole, paradise and all? That’s Huacachina!
Random, right? There’s not much here – 2 hostels, 1 convenience store, a handful of touristy restaurants and a bunch of dune buggy tour companies. People come here for one thing, and that’s sandboarding (and dune buggying).
We boarded our buggy mid afternoon because we wanted to end our day on the dunes catching the sunset. If you ask me, the ride through the dunes was so much fun, we were bouncing off the walls, I didn’t even need to do any actual boarding.. but I did.
We were told 2-techniques: right side up, the normal way to board down a hill. And then belly down.. meaning lie on your belly and go head first using your feet as breaks. Whatever you do, don’t sit on your board, you’ll flip over for sure and eat it! I did.. lol
Gerard may have been better at boarding, but I had the most fun. Going down belly first is the best. The worst, face planting and getting sand in your eyes, nose, ears and mouth. It took me a good 3-days to wash all the sand out of my ears.
By now, 9-months into our trip, I’ve come to realized it’s the things I least expect, the things I’m least excited about that ends up being the most fun and rewarding experiences for me: Shark cage diving in Hawaii. Bungy jumping in New Zealand. Sleeping in the Thar Desert. And now this – sandboarding in Huacachina, Peru. FUN!!
We even chased the sun set..
