Huacanchina – sand boarding

Huacachina - a town of 200 inhabitants in the desert

After Huanchaco, we went back to Lima for a night and had another Lucha's sandwich and chips (plus a McDonald's) before we took the coach to Huacachina. Huacachina is an oasis in the desert with big sand dunes all around it where you can do sand boarding and sand buggying. We arrived at our hostel late at night due to a delayed bus and it was closed. Luckily that taxi driver had the number of the owner and rang him to let us in. I didn't particularly like the hostel. I found the staff and the travellers there quite unfriendly (mostly British and English speakers) and it wasn't very good value for money. Nevertheless, there was a pool and some hammocks, and we also got a cheap deal on the sand boarding. We spent the day chilling out in the sun and walking around the little town by the lake of 200 people. Then, at 4.30pm, we got in a sand buggy with some others, and went sand boarding. The sand buggy was really scary. It was just a little cage and you were all strapped in with seatbelts like you get on a roller coaster. The guide drove like a maniac over the dunes and the dunes are very high. He drove us up some really steep ones and then straight down the other side. I can't express how steep these dunes were, but everyone was screaming. One Kiwi was telling me not to worry because the buggies was designed to be able to roll so if it flipped, we wouldn’t die. Nevertheless, I was still scared, having had to sign a death waiver before we set off that gave us all of the accountability should we be injured or killed!

He drove us to the top of a really steep dune and then showed us how to lie on our stomachs on the boards and go down the dune like sledging down a hill. One by one, we shot down this dune. I took a bit of coaxing to go down as it was really fast and steep and I had heard some horror stories about sand boarding. Two Canadian snowboarder girls decided to go down stood up as they had proper snowboarding boots.

After doing two hills like this, he drove us to a hill that wasn't as steep, where we all had practice going down stood up, like you would on a snowboard. Then, onto the last grand finale hill, the highest yet, where he dropped us at the top and told us to meet him at the bottom. We looked over the edge and it was almost vertical. Everyone was too scared to go down without him at the top to set us off. But Jemma, taking the initiative, decided to go first and whistled down this sheer drop to the bottom. After that, we all had no choice but to do the same. I was happy to have finished at the end – I can't say sand boarding is something I would ever want to repeat. However, the buggy ride back in the dark after sunset was excellent and like a roller coaster and because I had got over my fear of the buggy flipping, I could really enjoy it. (The buggy thankfully never flipped, by the way).