Sandboarding and getting wasted at Ica

"Let not the sands of time get in your lunch."
~National Lampoon, "Deteriorata"

Tuesday, September 23rd Wednesday, September 24th 2008

The night bus landed me in Lima at around 5:30 in the morning. I met Oded there and together we boarded another bus who took us to the coastal town of Ica. We immediately proceeded by taxi and foot to the Huacachina desert oasis and settled in a small hotel called "Casa de Arena". This was quite a change of scenery from Huaraz. The cold, business like atmosphere was replaced by girls in bikinis bathing by the poolside in the hot afternoon sun, when looking up instead of mountains all I saw were huge sand dunes and the general feeling was of an ocean resort. I read a little by the pool and put my head down when it got a little colder. When I woke up it was just in time to climb a huge sand dune to watch the sunset over the sea of sand surrounding us to the sound music performed by two friendly Kiwi girls. While it took almost 30 minutes to climb to the top of the dune I run down, or more accurately jumped down, in under two minutes feeling great with the soft sand under my feet and the wind in my hair. We ate at a very disappointing all-you-can-eat barbecue and played pool on a badly shaped table until it was time to say good night..

The next day started at 10:00 with a sandboarding tour. I boarded I weird buggy that once was some kind of Toyota truck and the driver took us for a roller coaster ride in the dunes around the small oasis. The ride was fun and the view of the seemingly endless sea of dunes was amazing. After about 20 minutes the buggy stopped at the top of a big dune and I was handed a sandboard and a candle to wax it. I took the first ride laying on my stomach enjoying the thrill of racing down the almost vertical slope on a thin plywood board. I tried the next one standing up, but it was not as fun since concentrating on keeping your balance took the edge from the ride. We continued like that for another two hours trying to survive taller and steeper dunes and enjoying the buggy roller coaster in between. When we returned to the hotel after 12:00 we still felt the adrenaline but we were also hungry as hell.

After launch I had some free time and decided to go on a winery tour instead of spending it by the pool, to learn how the local drink called Pisco is being made. In my time in Peru I learned to love their national cocktail "Pisco Sour" so I thought that this kind of education might be useful. A short round local driver called Tony picked Oded and myself up at around 16:30. We first drove to a more touristic location where an English speaking guide run us through the steps of making Pisco (basically it´s distilled young wine). The brewery itself was old but it does not look active - they probably moved to a more modern facility and kept the old one for the tourists. After the tour we were invited to try the local products of wine, Pisco and local delicacies. We tried everything and I was a little tipsy as I sat back in Tony´s BMW. We were than taken to anther location off the beaten path were our driver became our guide. Tony first run us through the facilities which were still active and than took us to the main attraction: the storage hall. Try to imagine a big stone room with no windows filled with big ceramic jars and all kinds of things you expect to find in a museum: weapons from pre and post colonial time, stuffed animals from the Amazons, mummies from Nazca and various other weird and eccentric stuff from around Peru. Tony concentrated on the ceramic jars though and ignored the rest. Every jar contained different kind of wine or Pisco and Tony handed us small plastic cups and started walking us through the room opening different jars and filling our cups with an hollow cane made specifically for that purpose. We tried between 20 to 30 different types of grape alcohol in different stages and tastes with Tony explaining us for what its good for and what is the correct way to taste it. Considering that Pisco is 43% alcohol it is quite understandable why I don´t remember a lot from the tour. I do remember that we got back to the hotel where I fell asleep still in my clothes...