It was awesome! Got to Ica around 7am this morning, slept so nicely on the bus, my cama seat was soooooo comfortable. We drank a carton of sangria and got silly watching She's the Man on the bus TV. Our destination in Ica was Huacachina, this resort thingy in the middle of the desert. It has a big artificial lake, or rather, it did, just a puddle now. We shopped around for tours and settled on a buggy and sand dune board trip for 30 soles each.
The buggy ride was excellent! Up and down massive hills, incredibly steep, really felt like we were free falling. Really theme park stuff, but in the desert. The desert is really strange, apparently 45km wide, and 200km long from Ica to Pisco and beyond. Stuff of the movies. The sand flows when the wind blows, and is soft and difficult to walk on. After the buggy ride, we did 5 slides down the sand dunes. I tried it on my feet like snowboarding a couple of times, then did it on my tummy. Now THAT was scary. You can´t really control the speed, and standing at the top of the dune, maybe 50-60m above the base, and you are just tipping over the edge of balance, and see all that sand rushing at your face so fast you barely have time to scream. But we screamed, a lot, very loudly. Other people did it on their stomach too but they tumbled and got hurt, one guy tumbled really badly, got a massive nose bleed and lost his watch.
In the afternoon we did a winery tour. Saw how pisco is made (fermentation and then distillation! different amounts of fermenting time for different liquors). Tried lots of lovely piscos and wines. Bought a bottle of Creme de Pisco (??), it kinda tastes like baileys, but has pisco, milk, sugar and figs in it. So fruity and creamy too. Very tasty.
We bused it into Lima in the afternoon, but there was a massive 5 car pile up on the highway, so the going was slow. When we got to Lima, I had a massive craving for cheap Chinese takeaway. And when we got to the hostel, voila! there was a cheap Chinese takeaway right next door.
