Huacachina, Peru – July 17th – 18th, 2017

A Tale of 2 Perspectives, Round 2:

Andy

After arriving in Huacachina, we immediately went to find our hotel to drop off our bags and deposit Dani into her bed to rest. As is usually the case when you are desperate for something, things did not go smoothly. Our hotel was overbooked and subsequently scrambled to find us other accommodations. Thankfully, their sister hotel had availability, so we were whisked over to our new digs. Turns out it was the swanky luxo-camp spot in town with a pool, glamp-ish tent, and bar! It only took an extra 15 minutes to check in and they didn’t up our fee either. Sweet!

The eco-camp in Huacachina.

Poor Dani rested while Matt and I walked around and soaked in the surroundings: a small oasis town ringed around a pond with palm trees surrounded by enormous sand dunes, pretty freaking cool! After a quick tour of the town, we made our way to the meet up location for a dune buggy tour. We boarded our dune buggy which didn’t have the look of a functioning vehicle – it was beat up and rusty, the seats were torn, it was missing some seatbelts, and it generally had the feeling of a very used and abused piece of crap. Not surprisingly, the driver took the loaded buggy (which did start, to our surprise) to the entrance of the dunes, stopped, and told everyone they needed to pay the entrance fee…sure we did. We had all already paid the required fees through PeruHop. Some of us (Matt and I included) were resolved to not pay the scam while others didn’t seem to care or didn’t know better so they paid up. Eventually, after many other buggies past us, we got going again and off we went into the enormous dunes.

Photos from around Huacachina.

The driver was hell-bent on going as fast as he could in the screaming machine. Just driving on empty sand dunes, this meant the whole buggy was bouncing all over the place, catching air, and spraying sand everywhere. It was awesome! I should also mention that Matt and I were in the last row, so about 3 feet aft of the rear axle. This meant that we had the wildest ride! Unfortunately, our neighbor’s seatbelt didn’t work and kept coming undone in the bumpiest parts so they kept flying out of their seat and into the roof of the buggy. It was actually a little scary, but the rollercoaster of a ride was exhilarating and thankfully our seatbelts worked fine.

We stopped at a few sand dunes to try our hand at sandboarding. Most people were not as dumb as me and simply sat on the boards down the pretty short hills. I approached it just like snowboarding though, because, why not. Unfortunately, the boards had no edges and no control, so of course I fell. But I fell on my ass, and I fell so hard that I felt it for the next month. Seriously. Ouch! Sand turns out to be much much much harder than snow. My ass pain made the ride back to the oasis a bit rough, but it was still fun.

The next morning, we enjoyed the delicious breakfast at the sweet glamping hotel and relaxed for a few hours. Dani was feeling a bit better thankfully, so we all managed to climb one of the nearby dunes and soak in the views. Naturally, Matt and I raced down the hill (Matt won) while bounding like astronauts on the moon. I seriously felt like a kid in Huacachina, it was great!

Dani

Huacachina was incredible and unique, although less so from a sick bed in a tent. To be fair, my stomach seemed to be on an upward trend, but after not eating for almost 3 days, my energy level was low – too low for hiking up sand dunes. Alas, when we arrived, Andy and Matt went out to ride dune buggies and sandboard down the fine sand mountains, while I laid in a tent. I did venture out to dinner and even ate a little something, so that was a good sign. The next morning, I felt strong enough to sluggishly walk up the dunes and watch the guys race down. It was disappointing that nobody fell… how rude of them to deprive me of a good laugh. Before leaving town, we stopped at a pisco tour where we learned about how they make pisco. It was pretty interesting – and hey! I actually got to participate! Little did I know that the “upward trend” with my stomach was really just a speedbump before a sharp downturn into the gastro abyss… 

Pisco Tour where we learned about the process (which is essentially wine distillation), tried some samples (well, me less so), and were shown the some local handicrafts (look closely at the bottom-left photo).