Huacachina, Perú

A dessert oasis in South America. Imagine seeing pure sand surrounding you, then a beautiful lake in the middle with palm trees around. Paddle boarding and sand boarding in one place. Who would have thought it exists! 

After some wine tasting in Ica, we headed over to the town of Huacachina, a backpacker’s adventure paradise in Peru. I first read about this town from Lonely Planet and was very curious. I didn’t grow up in the snow and had no experience with skiing or snow boarding and figured I probably won’t be able to make it there. But one good thing about my 2 month Peru trip is that I left 3 weeks unplanned and waited til I was in Peru to decide what I was going to do the rest of my stay. I had two days to spare before I fly out of Lima which was just enough time to squeeze in this trip.

I arrived at Huacachina at around 1 pm then had a few hours to walk around town before the dune buggy rides. I didn’t know what to expect. Who would have thought these rides can give you the same feeling as riding a roller coaster? When our driver stopped atop the small hill, everyone got out and took photos. Then the driver took out the sand boards. Now how am I supposed to do it? Apparently nobody also knew, so everybody rode face down on their stomachs. Watching everyone else do it gave me the courage to try it out. So I did it. Then our driver took us to another hill, this time, higher. So I did it again. And again. And again.

One of the best memories I had with this trip was also when we were on our way back to the oasis – The sun was about to set, being on the hill and seeing the natural oasis in the middle of vast sand dunes was pretty amazing.