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Other entries in Huacachina

And when there was no crawdad...

Ter:

Walking up sand dunes is tiring work. If at all possible, in my life I would like to avoid being stranded in the desert. The dunes aside, it's hot and there is all this sand. Rather, as an alternative, use a dune buggy.

Huacachina is the only desert oasis in South America. She's jolly pretty and the locals from nearby towns come to bathe in her waters. The Gringos, on the other hand, come mainly to eat sand.

We headed out into the desert in our flash orange buggy, The Presidents of the United States of America ringing in our subconscious. (They're a band who sings a song called Dune Buggy for those that don't know.) Our very hung over driver raced us over the silica hills, Georgi whooping in my left ear as we bounced over another precipice and hurtled groundward.

We pulled up to the edge of a rather large dune and our driver announced, "Sandboarding, we practice here and then we go to the big dunes."

This one looked rather big to me.

My board waxed and my feet strapped in I hopped off the edge of the dune. I was sailing down like a pro. My legs were hunched just right, my balance was perfect. Suddenly I'm pitching forward, there is sand in my mouth, in my ear. My neck is being ripped back, my eyes are seeing sun one moment, sand the next, sun, sand, sun, sand. I'm lying at bottom of the hill eating desert with an assortment of body parts aching. The thrill of sandboarding.

Nothing for it but to do it again.

By the end of the day I was sandboaring pretty well and after a while even sand begins to taste like chicken.

Georgi:

I apparently worry too much. Just before we signed up for sandboarding, I expressed some concern about the fact that we were participating in a sport that could result in an injury so soon before the long-anticipated and rather expensive Inca Trail.

Ter scoffed. Nevertheless, I had hoped that my concern would resonate with him on some level and he'd be at least a little careful on the dunes

.

Everything seemed to be going very well. He was determined to try to go down the dunes standing up, rather than on his belly, but after witnessing his first tumble into the quite forgiving sand, I wasn't too worried about his attempts at mastery.

Hell, I even tried, and almost managed, to stand up on one of the gentler slopes myself.

"I'll go down on my tummy on the really big slopes," he told me reassuringly. Music to my ears.

We approached the biggest slope of the day. It could be done in two ways. By sliding down the left side, it was possible to meet up with another smaller dune halfway down. This broke the momentum of the enormous downward slope.

Feeling terribly brave, I went straight down on the right-hand side. My whole body absorbed the jolts as I hit little bumps in the sand. The air, filled with stinging granules, rushed into my face and I could actually feel the skin being pushed backwards from my nose in waves. What a rush!

Then I got very busy with getting myself out of the way, because sandboarders are a crazy bunch who don't seem to mind slamming into the back of you.

As I stood up with my board, I caught the expressions on the faces of the others in our group. I turned to look, in time to see Ter, airborne, spinning like an F1 car that had come off the track. He whirled into a sorry heap of sand and spluttering.

I tried to run towards him, but it's difficult to run when the ground beneath your feet slips away in a series of tiny hissing avalanches. The dune buggy got to him first, picked him up, and then, bloody hell, left me where I was.

When I finally did get to him, he was revealed to me as a dusty, bloody wreck, winded, bruised and grazed, but with nothing more wounded than his pride. After ascertaining that he hadn't tried to be a hero and stand up on the hugest slope ever, I was properly sympathetic.

We snuggled up on a dune to watch the sun set, and I solicitously kissed all his grazed bits. It was then that he let slip that while he hadn't stood up, he had decided to get his money's worth out of the slope, and instead of just sliding down like the rest of us, he'd taken a flying leap onto his board to try and get up as much speed as possible.

I was very cross. He didn't get any more kisses.

I'm sure that a hundred years ago, Huacachina was a little community of desert people who lived by the oasis and went about their daily business. Now, it's a bustling little tourist town where people only stay for two days at most.

We met a French couple who were having a look at the guesthouse we were staying in. "What is there to do here?" the girl asked me.

We explained about the dune buggy and the sand boarding.

"And nothing else?" she asked, evidently disappointed.

I'm not sure how she had ended up here expecting something more.

But it is a fantastic little place. There are lots of gringos on their way to or from Cuzco, so it's possible to get the low down on the Inca Trail, or make friends to bump into along the way.

And it's very strange to wake up in the morning and look out of the window at what looks a sky the colour of custard, which turns out to be a dune towering over the guesthouse.

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