Sand in Places Sand Shouldn't Be.

Following a brief foray into Lima, erm not much to report from there apart from a healthy spike in the souvineer trade and a boost to the postal service we continued our travels south to Ica and the tiny dessert oasis town of Huacachina.

Huacachina, a palm fringed lake surrounded by towering dunes whose express purpose it seems to be, through the bizzare practice of sand-boarding, of inserting sand into places you didn't know you had. But more on that later.

So after a little lounging by the pool (our expensive hotel turned out to be better value than we thought) we rented sand-board (think snow-board, but homemade) and headed for the dunes. Ok we got about 50m up before we realised the burning smell was our feet, cue hot-footing it (literally) back to get our shoes! We saw this process repeated a few times by a variety of grockles over the next day. You had to laugh...

Climbing sand dunes is hard! We stuck to the sun-baked nursery slopes for a quick trial run/fall/struggle back up the slope/sledge on the sand boards. Now this has potential, but they need to cut out the climbing back up bit.

Cue the main entertainment! Buggy time. Ok so we couldn't quite figure out what part of what was left before they welded on the big tubular roll-cage, squeezed in the bucket-seats, inserted a daft local driver (probably ex-bus driver) and threw 10 sandboards in the back. In case you're wondering no Stu didn't drive...

We'd love to share the crazy sand boarding stupidity which followed, but we've mostly got videos. The basic drift being take the gringo's to bigger and bigger dunes until they get scared/hurt. The guys (and some girls including the fearless Kaz) opted to stand up on the boards (freshly waxed with some pink gunk) and Stu decided to abandon the snow-boarding zig-zag aproach for the "point board down dune, don't scream" approach. Which works up to a point, that point being the cart-wheel head plant when the front of the board digs in. Hmmmm. Fortunately nothing hurt but his pride and, erm bum... Damn, should have eaten more cake!

Kaz performed excellently with her on-her-tummy approach to the biggies, ahh we always knew she was the brains of the operation!

Suffice to say a good time was had by all, and we're still finding sand...

Next stop Arequipa, south south south.

Love

Kaz and Stu

Meal of the week: Definately not the the 3 kilos of sand we probably injested.