Southern Exposure

Sunday, February 8

We ate a breakfast of yogurt and fruit from the convenience store and were happy to leave Playa Hermosa behind. The ride continued down the desert coast, which was the home to all of Lima’s suburban beaches. It was mile after mile of playas and unusually for us, we didn’t feel any compulsion at all to hit the beach.

Further south, the ride through the Peruvian desert continued. At one point the freeway had cut a huge ‘V’ through either a hill covered in sand or a sand dune. The Panamerican finally turned in from the sea, heading southeast. The temperature increased correspondingly with the distance from the sea, and we were soon feeling quite hot in our riding gear.

We passed through the town of Pisco, home of the famous pisco wine used in pisco sours. Between Pisco and Ica we rode through desert that was being cultivated. I can only infer the water used for the crops is coming from underground as the surface is pure desert. Pisco must be a variety of grape that enjoys rooting in sand. It’s a strange site to see people farming in the desert.

A few miles outside of Ica, we stopped for gas, and our quick stop turned into an extended stay. Inna was overheating, so we parked in the shade and bought some water and gatorade type drinks. The gas station attendant was very friendly, and he gave us a bushel of fresh grapes. It was harvest time so the grapes were right off the vine and delicious. He told me so many things about the region and wild stories about witches and people wandering out of the desert it was hugely frustrating that at most I could only understand half of what he was saying as he spoke rapidly. I’m sure I missed out on some great tales.

It was still early afternoon, and we made the decision to go to Huacachina, a desert oasis a few miles outside of Ica rather than push on towards Nasca. Huacachina was famous for its vast desert sand dunes, and we were keen to try our luck at sand boarding. The dunes would be our reward for all of the boring desert stretches.

We found a hostel to stay at, and it was our first ‘party’ hostel of the trip. It was full of young latinos and europeans, all lounging around a welcome site, a swimming pool. We signed up for the afternoon’s dune buggy ride and dune boarding session and hit the pool as fast as possible. We felt a little out of place clomping through in our riding gear, but the pool felt just right.

At 4:30 we gathered out front and got into the orange dune buggies. Each buggy sat 8 people plus the driver, and Inna and I settled into the back row. The driver headed through the town and stopped so we could all pay an access path at the edge of the dunes. It was our first good look at the dunes, and they were massive. Neither of us had ever been near anything like it.

I was expecting the driver to drive fast and loose immediately, to give us a good show and a proper ‘scare’. I hadn’t expected our driver to be crazy. From our parking spot he rocketed us up the side of the dune, the buggy leaning downhill. He yanked the wheel and the buggy did huge sliding arcs through the sand. Everyone in the car was screaming from fear and joy. He was clearly driving more recklessly than the other drivers, often coming perilously close to running into other buggies. It was awesome.

I attempted to take a video with the camera. It was impossible to aim the camera and I quickly gave up out of fear of losing it. I couldn’t even keep my sunglasses on as the driver took jumps over the edge of dunes and made huge power slides up the sides of the hills.

The buggies were made of huge tubular steel, and a naked V-8 was parked in the very front. The seats were very spartan, and the seat belt was a ‘V’ coming down over both shoulders to a clasp between the legs. We quickly discovered the importance of having the seat belt as tight as physically possible. The engine had no muffle and was a straight pipe coming out the side. With the roar of an unmuffled engine in a bare metal car flying across the desert, all we needed was a huge angry masked man driving to complete the Mad Max feel. Priceless.

We finally took a break from zooming around the desert to do some dune boarding. I was feeling confident from my years of snowboarding, but Inna had only snowboarded once. The boards themselves were very crude planks of wood with velcro straps, and we were each given part of a candlestick to use to wax the boards. The first dunes we tried were not very high and to get a feel for the sand we road them down on like sleds.

The first dunes were in a series of three steps, so at the bottom of the first one you had a short walk and were at the top of the next dune. I made my first standing run in proper boarding style on the 2nd dune and it felt very similar to snowboarding. The sand was slower than snow, but it was harder to make a turn. Without obstacles you didn’t really need to turn anyways. I quickly learned the importance of the wax – it was necessary before every run if you didn’t want to stall halfway down.

Inna made her first run like a pro. Unlike many of the others, she got the hang of it quickly and never fell once the entire afternoon. We made a few runs, with the driver bringing us back to the top once we reached the bottom of the 3 dunes. For our next step, he took us on another brief but crazy ride to a set of much, much taller dunes. He had really mastered the power slide into parking next to the other buggies.

These dunes were quite high and a little intimidating. Inna went for the sledding approach while I attempted to board it. Inna flew down the hill at warp speed, while the boarding was disappointing. The wax seemed to burn off halfway through the hill and I couldn’t even reach the bottom.

We made a big hike up the next sand dune, which had an even longer and steeper run down. After the disappointment of the previous run, I liberally applied wax and decided to go sledding, as it seemed like a much faster descent. It was fantastic! With a consistent wide open surface, you just point the board downhill and hang on. By the time I reached the bottom of the hill I must have been going 50 mph, sand flying all around my body. Inna had mad skills and seemed to go even faster, beating everyone else’s runoff distance considerably.

The sun was setting, so we were back in the buggy to see the sunset. We were expecting to stop to take in the view, but our crazy driver was enjoying himself too much. We flew over the dunes with the nice views but never stopped. He grew bolder and bolder, coming within feet of other buggies. For a finale, he took a huge jump over the top of a dune, with the buggy airborne for seconds, and managed to catch the landing slope perfectly. Even when we were back in town he was still rallying through the streets. Best driver ever!

We hit the showers to try and remove our full body covering of sand. The hostel was having a big all you can drink and eat bbq that night, but we passed. We were planning on a very early departure for Nasca. We ate a quiet dinner at another hostel, toured the lagoon after dark, and made an effort to get some sleep over the noise of our hostel turned discoteca. This was the 2nd night in a row of loud music but it’s easy to sleep when you’re exhausted.