We left Sunday afternoon for Ica, Peru via Cruz de Sur (again!). Like I mentioned, we met a guy named Silvestre from L.A. at the bus station and he had a reservation at a hostel in a town near Ica named Huacahina that we heard a lot about and we thinking about staying in because it's supposed to be a lot cheaper. So we figured we might as well share a taxi when we got to the stop in Ica and save some money. When we got to Ica, we met another girl named Sarah from California who needed to find a hostel too. So all four of us rode together out to Huacachina and we figured we could check out the prices of Silvestre's hostel first. Well, when we got there Silvestre ended up talking to the guy at the front desk and making reservations for the 3 of us girls which was super, super helpful because he's fluent in Spanish and the 3 of us are, well... NOT!
The other Sarah, Paris, and I all shared a room with bunkbeds in this funky hostel. It had hammocks out in the courtyard, lots of plants, a unique little restaurant, and pool. Yeah, we had lines of ants going up the wall... and yeah, our duct-taped together shower almost burnt me to death with scorching hot water spraying out in every direction imaginable all over the bathroom the first time I turned it on... and yeah, the bed sagged in the middle so I had to change sleeping positions all night... but hey! the sheets were clean :), the door had a bolt on it, and there were 3 of us there together with Silvestre not far away!
I forgot to mention that in the taxi on the way, the guy driving asked Silvestre what kinds of plans we had for the next day. Paris had seen some beautiful wine vinyards in Ica that she wanted to visit, so Silvestre mentioned that. So Silvestre was able to work out a deal with the taxi driver so that he could drive us around the next day to the different vineyards and wait for us, and we'd pay him directly instead of paying some middle man to arrange a tour. (This taxi driver was recommended by someone Silvestre knew, I guess I should add... so he had already made sure we were in safe hands).
So the next day we left the hostel around 10:30 am and went to 2 different vineyards. They were gorgeous!!! And both had free wine tasting (and by wine TASTING, I mean, 10 or more half glasses of wine at each place!). Since I'm not a big wine person, I mostly passed mine off to whoever finished their glass first, so we had this funny game of musical wine glasses being passed around ;) I mostly enjoyed eating the fresh grapes right off the vines :)
At the second vineyard, after another many rounds of musical wine glasses once again, we ate lunch at their restaurant and then headed back to the hostel where I got to take a nap for an hour in a really comfortable hammock in the shade :) It's a tough life, right Myriam? But somebody's gotta do it!!!
Post-napping we headed out for a jeep buggie tour arranged by our hostel. The 4 of us joined up with about 6 others from another hostel down the street who were all in the Israeli military. I'm not making this up people! (I felt like I just had to add that in...). As soon as we got into the dune buggie it dawned on me that this wouldn't be some kind of leisurely tour around the desert... this was going to be INTENSE!!! The dune buggies were like giant cages with some serious roller coaster over'the'shouler seatbelt straps. INTENSE!!! The guys who drive the dune buggies are some serious adrenaline junkies, which reminds me, if YOU happen to be an adrenaline junkie, going to Ica-Huacachina for sandboarding and dunebuggies would definitely be up your alley!
We rode... no, FLEW... in the dune buggies up, down, and around the biggest sand dunes you've ever seen! We'd literally get to the top and the driver would just fly straight over the cliff in these things, getting airborne, and then plumet to the bottom. It was pretty scary actually, I'm not gonna lie. Lol. Even the other Sarah, who is a big time adventurer, up for anything type of person, was gripping onto her seatbelt trying not to freak out. It's funny actually because a girl we met at South American Explorers told us she visited Ica and went sandboarding but she was too chicken to do the dunebuggies, and I was thinking 'what? it's only riding around in a car. what's so scary about that?' Well, as I now know, there's A LOT to be scared about! ;) But it was crazy fun too! Then at a couple different giant sand dunes, he'd park the dunebuggy and wax up our sandboards with a candle. He said we would start with the 'little' hills, but when I saw the 'little one' I was thinking, 'you CAN'T be serious! I'm gonna DIE going down this thing!' We all did our first sandboarding run down the 'not so small' hill laying down on the sandboards face first gripping onto the foot straps with our hands. It took me a while to get up the guts to actually do it, but I did it and it was awesome.
Then he took us to a bigger hill, and bigger, and bigger, until the last one which looked like we would literally plumet to our DEATH if we went down it... but hey! I survived! I stood up on the board some, and laid down some... and was clenching my teeth going down that last hill because it was just GIGANTIC. All the men flew down it and all the women, even the girls in the Israeli army, just stayed up at the top for what felt like forever saying (in Spanish), 'there's GOT to be another way down this hill! can't the dunebuggy just come pick us up? This is nuts!!' But we all did it... very, very slowly... and even if I can round up a picture of this for you to see, I'm positive it won't do it justice to show you how scary it looks from the top looking down! Lucas & my brother would LOVE it!!!
When we got back to the hostel, we had sand everywhere! In our hair, eyes, armpits...everywhere! We looked so dirty it was like we hadn't bathed in months! So we all went and jumped in the swimming pool just to cleanse ourselves, which didn't work completely because Paris was still finding sand on herself a few days ago which was about a week later!
That night the 4 of us found a cute restaurant overlooking the lagoon in Huacachina, which sounds impressive, but actually EVERY restaurant and shop overlooks the lagoon because they just built everything around it, and apparently it's a trekker-tourist heaven because there's just hostel after hostel and every restaurant serves American and European food. I admit, I was really excited about eating pizza! I'm in Peru and I don't eat fish people! Give me a break... I need some pizza or something!
The next morning we woke up bright and early to head to the bus station again ready for our next destination... Nasca, Peru! (to be continued!)
