Sand Everywhere, And We Mean Everywhere!

We think we had our first rip-off experience at breakfast this morning, how thrilling - not! Seems like we ordered off one menu and when it came to paying the bill, we were overcharged and then shown a different menu. We were both sure our meals were s.6.50 each, but apparently they were s.8.50. Hmm, the difference amounted to about 65p, but it's the principle dagnammit! We were only cheered up when a man offered us some English publications - we turned our noses up at The Guardian (how dare he! Jim doesn't even have a beard or own hessian sandals) but Caroline, the classy girl she is, was quite excited to be offered a copy of Heat magazine!

Our virgin voyage on Cruz del Sur turned out to be a surprisingly pleasant way to spend five hours. The seats recline into 'semi-camas' and there are pull-down leg flaps too - woo! Our endearingly camp, all-singing, all-dancing 'steward' ironically turned out to be called Eduardo del Campo! Turns out he had a predeliction for Celine Dion, but luckily once we set off the soundtrack was replaced by films in English. We even had a hot airline-style meal which was actually very tasty - we could get used to this!

Jumping into a taxi with a French couple we'd met, we were whizzed off down an unmarked, pitch-black road. Luckily, the end of the road revealed the oasis that is Huacachina and not the taxi driver's knife-wielding, bloodthirsty accomplice and we pulled up at a hostel we'd made reservations at. The Hostal Rocha can at best be described as 'basic', but they had rooms which we haggled down to a decent price so we stayed put. Had a bit of an altercation with the owner however, when we kind of agreed to a sandboarding tour then saw a better outfit down the road and wanted to change our minds. To avoid being murdered in our beds, we relented and he put his big stick away.

The next day dawned bright and sunny and seeing as nothing exciting had happened yet, Jim decided to get locked in the bathroom in his pants. Luckily, there was a large gap through which Caroline could pass him some clothes. Unluckily, it wasn't big enough for Jim to climb through. After Caroline had finished laughing and taking pictures, we tried several different methods of opening the door - turning the doorknob slowly, quickly and rattling it in sheer desperation. As all good stories go, just as Caroline triple locked the bedroom door behind her to go and get help, Jim managed to escape the bathroom only to find himself trapped in the bedroom and faced with the dilemma of either looking a bit sheepish when help arrived or locking himself back in the bathroom. He went for Option A and we both ended up looking a bit silly. Not as silly as the bloke who was busy sitting on the toilet in our new bathroom when we switched to a new room though. We think he worked at the hostel, but he quickly ran away so we never actually solved that one.

Deciding it was safer to be out in the open and away from toilets and bathrooms of any description, we finally got to see where we were staying. Huacachina is a small collection of bars, restaurants and hostels grouped around a murky green oasis famed for its supposedly curative properties. Neither of us fancied skimming away the scum floating on the top to test this theory. That said, the sand dunes surrounding the small town are awesome in their sheer humungousness, so we grabbed a couple of sandboards and set off to practice/fall over. It's quite hard to wade through fine sand in 85 degree heat at midday, so we didn't get very far, but we did discover the following: Caroline's ankles are the only thing velcro does not secure to; Jim is quite good at going from right to left for any length of time, but cannot go the other way for any length of time.

As four o' clock rolled round, we felt confident of impending injury and were strangely quite excited at the prospect. Our transportation was a dune buggy kitted out with padded seats and (phew!) big seatbelts. These were soon proved necessary when our driver, Jamie, started throwing the vehicle off massive dunes at high speed. We're not quite sure how they know which way to go as it was literally sand as far as the eye can see, but we arrived at a practice 'slope' fairly shortly and, after our boards were liberally coated with what looked like squeezy cheese but was in fact go faster sludge, we were off! We soon discovered that going down on your stomach is a lot faster and easier than standing up and graduated from 'mild' to 'massive' dunes in no time. The last dune was unspeakably HUGE and the guy who went first was literally a speck in the distance when he got to the bottom. Some adventurous types went further up the dune and our drivers' shouts of encouragement suddenly turned into shouts of 'imbecil', 'idiota' and 'hospital'. Turns out that we weren't supposed to go further up as you pick up too much speed going down on your stomach and four people had injured themselves severely enough to, er, die doing this! Jim and I stayed further down and Jim managed a good run before coming off at the bottom and getting some serious sand in his pants and ears. I started halfway down and nearly ran someone over, but all in all, it was a great trip and only moderately life-threatening. Hurrah!