The desert oasis

 

We arrived in Ica after an hour long bus journey from Pisco and decided to head to Haucachina in the desert, after being told about a nice lil hostal there. Sand dunes surround the little touristy village with lots of restaurants and hostals sitting next to the oasis. We wanted to book a tour into the desert for some dune buggying and sandboarding and bargained down to a price of 40 soles each (6.50 or so). After some lounging around in the sun and climbing of stupidly high sand dunes we headed out by buggy at around 4pm. The dunes were steep steep steep and the dune buggy ride was extreme to say the least, he sent us flying around in our seats and jumping over many dunes before telling us in Spanish how to sandboard. Everyone fell over lots in what was a little slope (actually really big) and then we headed to more dunes. The buggy ride was like a rollercoaster without a track, an incredible experience alone! We soon got the hang of the sandboarding and began going down long steep dunes. I had a few high profile crashes and Sarah managed to stand up for quite a while too! By the end we went to the highest slope around and all stood on the edge refusing to go down, death looked a real possibililty! Sarah decided to go down headfirst, a much faster way and followed after my attempt. I managed a long fast sandboard down with two big crashes en route, flipping over a couple of times on the second occasion! My face got plastered with sand from the crashes, we felt like we had been in a car crash the next day! 

 

Free vino and the prison cell

 

As we are on a budget we went for the cheap room that looked like a jail cell, white walls and bars over the windows, no door on our toilet either but atleast it was cheap! The next day, after attemping to walk to the vinyard but being told by locals we couldn´t go through one area because it was too dangerous, we got a taxi and a free tour around the vinyard! We didn´t understand a word of it as it was in Spanish but made the most of the free wine tasting (I got given double sized glasses compared to Sarah for some reason). We also tried the spirit that goes into making pisco sours, absolutely disgusting however, don´t touch the stuff!