Huacachina

After our trip to Pisco we left on a two hour bus and taxi ride to the desert oasis of Huacachina, the taxi ride being ten minutes from the larger town of Ica.  Even though we only passed trough ica i feel i should say something about it as Huacachina is sort of an extension of the town, much like the rest of Peru Ica is like a building site teeming with vibrancey and life. I recently found out that in bolivia there is a hefty tax you have to pay on completion of a building project so the people had the bright idea of never finishing buildings, i think this may be true of Peru too. Everything is half done.  Ica is famous for its wine making, which me and jess sampled, it is rich sweet wine leaning towards a port in flavour and viscosity, but a little lighter. Bit too sweet for us.  So Huacachina was amazing, set in the desert a little tourist town has been set up around a life giving oasis lagoon. The story goes that a Paruvian Princess dropped her mirror in the sand of the desert and it grew into the oasis.  Up until the forties it was a holiday retreat for the rich elite of Peru who built spanish colonial style buildings all around the lake.  Today it is one of the tourist hot spots in Peru attracting people from all over the world as well as hoards of locals picnic-ing in the sun.  The fact that there is a huge lagoon with supposed healing properties, surrounded by lush sand dunes and palm trees in a place where it only rains one day a year (which happen while we were there) makes it ideal for doing nothing and just enjoying. The highlight for me was dune buggying which was terrifyingly fun. 
 To put it into perspective, the highest dune in the world is in this desert and the people that take you out drive around at ridiculous speeds jumping off huge dunes, which you cant see off the edge of until your hurtling down the side of a vertical mountain practically towards jagged rocks! It was so much fun (and i got a good vid of jess's screaming as she almost poo-ed herself.)
- Lyndon

.) while out in the dunes we also went sand boarding, body boarding at first but then trying to stand up and go down which wasn't easy but was amazing.