Huacachina

It’s now one week since we got to Peru and it feels like a month already.  In the best possible way.  We have done SO MUCH, been to so many places, seen so many things, and met so many people.  And we’re still right at the beginning!

Huacachina is an oasis in the middle of the desert.  A teeny village with a population of 100 and about the same number of tourists, with people coming and going every day.  Legend has it the lake was formed from the tears of a beautiful woman, in a love story gone wrong, and she now lives in the lake as a mermaid.

You can walk round the entire village in 10 minutes, it’s very charming.  But what makes this village special is the fact there are Everest-sized sand dunes around you in every direction, and after those dunes are more, and more, and they go on as far as the eye can see.

The main thing to do here is dune buggying, which I would do again in a heartbeat.  You’re strapped in, with a handful of other excited tourists, to a large buggy with huge wheels and open sides and - in our case - a handsome and disconcertingly young crazy man tries to kill you by driving at speed off the top of the dunes… it’s like a rollercoaster but way more fun.  Then you have some respite with stops built in to go sandboarding, i.e. snowboarding in the sand.  Although only the pros are allowed to stand up; the rest of us all lay flat on our bellies and went careering head first down the dunes.  Sometimes nailing the slope perfectly, other times tumbling down in a ball of flying sand!  (Which I am STILL getting out of my nose and ears.)

We added an extra night onto our stay here so we could fully soak up the desert sunshine, and having snuck into the pool in our new friend’s hostel we spent an entire day doing absolutely nothing.  Glorious!  Followed by a rooftop pisco sour (only one though after dancing until the early hours in the “party” hostel the night before).  By this point our group had grown to six, including someone from round the corner from us in London…

And now we have bid goodbye to them and to the desert, and I write this on the coach to Nazca!

Love Melissa and Jeremy x