We took our first South American bus from Lima to Ica and then a short rickshaw (sp?) ride from the bus station to arrive at our hotel in Huacachina. The town is a tiny oasis in the middle of the desert... basically a lake with few hotels and restaurants on the banks all surrounded by huge sand dunes that span the whole perimiter.
Being in the desert it was warm and a good opportunity to laze by the pool, read and relax. I had a quick dip in the pool, despite the questionable water even if Mel wasnt game.
The second morning there was a power AND water outage in the whole town.. typical Peru. We took a sand buggy and sand boarding tour and went cruising into the desert with our crazy driver. Every time he saw a bump or dip he would gun the buggy and laugh as we bounced around in the back! We stopped at a few big hills to do sand baording or tobogganing.. i learned that sand boarding is quite different to snow boarding.. especially if you dont use a full candle stick of wax on the board each run. Needless to say there were plently of falls but at least the sand doesnt hurt as much as ice. Our final run was a tobaggan only... supposedly too steep to board and there had been broken collar bones and other assorted injuries in the past. No worries. We each had two runs, the first went smoothly but I had a big stack and my second run. Luckily Mel was on hand to catch it on video and upload it to facebook.
That night we climbed to the top of the sand dunes... very slowly. Walking uphill on sand is extremely tiring. The view at sunset was spectacular and very worth it.
The following day we went on a wine tour of Ica... this consisted of paying a cab driver a few dollars to drive us to the wineries and ask the staff to give us some free samples. The local speciality is pisco, which is very nice when made into pisco sour but more like paint thinner when drank by itself. Awful, awful stuff. We ended up buying one bottle of wine from a strange winery where the owner kept relics of stuffed animals, old clocks and war time guns and memorabilia with his wine barrels. After purchasing the wine the owner informed us that by drinking it we would definately have twins. We gave the wine away two weeks later to unsuspecting victims. (Hope you enjoyed it Ben and Clare!)
That afternoon we hired a paddle boat and cruised around the lake for a while following the ducks. It was really warm and almost tempting to go for a swim in the lake, but the murky brown colour convinced us it might be a bad idea.
The town was deprived of tourists during our stay so we had another relatively quiet night on the pisco sours and then headed to the bus station towards Arequipa.
Being in the desert it was warm and a good opportunity to laze by the pool, read and relax. I had a quick dip in the pool, despite the questionable water even if Mel wasnt game.
The second morning there was a power AND water outage in the whole town.. typical Peru. We took a sand buggy and sand boarding tour and went cruising into the desert with our crazy driver. Every time he saw a bump or dip he would gun the buggy and laugh as we bounced around in the back! We stopped at a few big hills to do sand baording or tobogganing.. i learned that sand boarding is quite different to snow boarding.. especially if you dont use a full candle stick of wax on the board each run. Needless to say there were plently of falls but at least the sand doesnt hurt as much as ice. Our final run was a tobaggan only... supposedly too steep to board and there had been broken collar bones and other assorted injuries in the past. No worries. We each had two runs, the first went smoothly but I had a big stack and my second run. Luckily Mel was on hand to catch it on video and upload it to facebook.
That night we climbed to the top of the sand dunes... very slowly. Walking uphill on sand is extremely tiring. The view at sunset was spectacular and very worth it.
The following day we went on a wine tour of Ica... this consisted of paying a cab driver a few dollars to drive us to the wineries and ask the staff to give us some free samples. The local speciality is pisco, which is very nice when made into pisco sour but more like paint thinner when drank by itself. Awful, awful stuff. We ended up buying one bottle of wine from a strange winery where the owner kept relics of stuffed animals, old clocks and war time guns and memorabilia with his wine barrels. After purchasing the wine the owner informed us that by drinking it we would definately have twins. We gave the wine away two weeks later to unsuspecting victims. (Hope you enjoyed it Ben and Clare!)
That afternoon we hired a paddle boat and cruised around the lake for a while following the ducks. It was really warm and almost tempting to go for a swim in the lake, but the murky brown colour convinced us it might be a bad idea.
The town was deprived of tourists during our stay so we had another relatively quiet night on the pisco sours and then headed to the bus station towards Arequipa.
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