Adventures in Huacachina

I'm still catching up on my blog posts because I have been so busy lately! Two weekend ago, I traveled to Huacachina which is near the city of Ica in southern Peru about 5 hours from Lima with some friends. I had heard about and seen pictures of it and I dreamed of going because it is a gorgeous desert filled with enormous dunes that look almost like the Savanna desert! Its a landscape completely different from anything I had ever experienced! Not surprisingly, the Oasis has become a backpackers paradise filled with cheap hostels, bars and sand buggy tours. We arrived and I was really strange for me to all of a sudden be surrounded by tourists and...white people! Anyways, let me backtrack. The first thing that we did when we arrived in Ica was visit a local vineyard that is well known for their sweet wine and Pisco. Pisco is a hard alcohol which is made from distilled fermented grapes and is used to make the delicious pisco sour- Peru's most famous and strong drink! Although the vineyard is a total tourist trap (we left with quite a bit of alcohol....I even bought I little bottle of pisco so I can prepare a pisco sour for some lucky friends) it was actually really interesting to go on the tour to see the places that were used traditionally to make the pisco- included a giant terrace where people stamped on the grapes to create the juice and the giant pots that they used to ferment the grapes (which were actually originally used by the Inkas to ferment chincha- corn alcohol and then we adapted by the Spaniards.) After learning about the process, we of course had to try some of the wine and pisco. Boy is it strong- pisco is something like 45% alcohol so it certainly warms up your belly. The pisco sour is pisco blended with lime juice, simple syrup, ice and egg whites which makes it foamy. It is kind of like Peru's version of the Margarita.

Soon we set off for Huacachina and I very quickly found myself buckled into a sand buggy (like a giant four wheel quad) about to have one of the the most terrifyingly amazing experiences of my life. Thank god I didn't realize what I was getting myself into (and I was still feeling a little warm from that pisco) or I never would have consented. We drove out on to the giant sand dunes and before I knew it, we were tearing across the sand, mounting the summits of the dunes and then tearing down the sides at crazy speeds. I have never screamed so much in my life. Our driver was an older man with a big smile, a warm heart and a love of making girls scream. We stopped at the stop of one dune to take in the incredible view and I breathed a sign of relief- I think I finally understand why people do crazy things for the adrenaline rush...I was never so aware that I was ALIVE! All around us were beautifully sculpted dunes as far as the eye could see and the sand I stroked with my hands was extremely soft and perfectly rippled. Before I knew it, we were off again and then we stopped at the top of a dune and our driver started getting out the sand boards which are similar to snowboards. He informed us we were going to ride down this massive dune on our stomachs and I freaked out. I have always been terrified of heights and snowboarding and basically everything. However, our driver, who by then had informed me that people call him "sonrisa" (smile) would not take no for an answer. He coaxed me to lie down on the board, use my legs as breaks and told me "si se peude Sarita!" (you can do it!) and gave me a push down the dune. I screammmmmmeeedddd for the entire 30 seconds or however long it was that I zipped down the dune. Then I reached the bottom and realized for the second time that day- wow, I'm alive and that was terrifyingly fun! I jumped to my feet with a big smile on my face and Smile gave me a huge thumbs up. There were so much sand in my shoes I could hardly walk. I am still finding sand in my clothes to this day. As we headed back to civilization, the wind whipped trough my hair, I crunched on sand in my mouth and I continued to scream for dear life. But the sun was setting over the top of the gorgeous dunes, I was in the company of amazing friends and I had found a Peruvian father- Smile had given me that push that I needed to accomplish something I never dreamed of ever doing.