Profile
Blog
Photos
Videos
On our first full day in Huacachina we treated ourselves to a "Bananas Breakfast" which was ridiculously cheap and consisted of a banana pancake smothered in chocolate (Laura´s) and a massive fruit salad covered in yoghurt and granola with tea and rolls and jam (Carrie´s)! This was because we were so hungry with anticipation of our dune buggy and sand boarding tour! We strapped ourselves into the back of a four-wheeled, open-engined, roll-caged nine seater jeep only to find that sat next to Carrie on the backseat was the petrol that was being siphoned into the vehicle out of a large milk carton. It started well, we left the hostel and were practically straight out on to the sand and were in amongst the miles of sand mountains and desert (we later found out the spray in our faces was the water from the radiatior). We were given various opportunites to use the sandboards down ridiculously high dunes, we just had one small issue. We were a board short! It wasn´t too bad however, we were four girls and one guy and a girl was happy to sit out each time....not Carrie. We learnt the hard way, we were dropped at the top of a mountain and given a board, there´s only one way to get down! Well, actually there are two and whilst Laura opted for the lying on your front option, "never boarded before" Carrie went for the standing up! Our sand boarding experience ended rather painfully and minus some skin but all in all, it was pretty cool. Our dune buggy experience was exhilarating to say the least, especially when we were seeing sand followed by sky, followed by sand, followed by sky, but excruciating painful. Word to the wise, don`t sit at the back of a dune buggy!
Our lazy start from the previous day turned into an extremely early start the next day. We were up at 6 to go to the Islas Ballestas where we spent two hours on a speedboat and saw a strange candelabra etched into the sand of the mainland. This was followed by penguins, pelicans, sea lions, dolphins and hundreds of other birds all of whom hang their bums off the side of the rocks ready to poo on you. We had to wear hoods! Crazily, their poo is actually collected and sold every three years! The second part of our trip was a tour of a traditional and an industrial pisco winery. We were given a taste of every form of pisco at the first winery and a couple at the second, and this was all before midday! Needless to say, we didn´t like any of it.
In the afternoon, after hours of persuasion, Carrie managed to get Laura to scale the mountain behind the hostel. A power nap was needed and not allowed so Laura only got three quarters of the way and happily watched Carrie climb the rest. Running back down it took no time at all, especially in comparison to how long it took to get up there!
- comments