With Arequipa explored we set off to the bus terminal to go to our next stop Huacachina. We went through their customs area and the douche bag took my half drank bottle of 2 quid rum (Ron in Spanish) much to my displeasure. Apparently he thought I was going to drink it on the bus or something. O well, 1 whole English pound down the drain. The annoying thing was that we were sat in a waiting area for an hour where I could see my former friend Ron just aroud the corner, and with the security guard leaving his post, I was super tempted to go and take what was rightfully mine back but was dissuaded by Jen.
Anyway, with an hour passing whilst being taunted by the sight of Ron on the other side of the glass panel, we were surprised to see our friends Rory and Fi who we had shared a cabin with us on the NaviMag boat back in Chile about a month ago. Funny how you bump into peope whilst travelling. We even saw another couple who were on the boat as well but we didn`t know them so well so just did the mandatory head nod and went about our ways. However with Rory and Fi now with us, we discovered we were going to the same hostel in Huacachina and agreed to share a taxi after the bus journey.
And share a taxi we did, which turned out to literally be the Peruvian equivalent of a Fiat Cinquecento and this is no easy task with 4 grown adults (if you can class Jen as one, don`t hurt me when you read this!) who all have 15k backpacks with them. So in we squished with 3 backpacks in the boot and I pulled the lucky straw with my backpack on my lap, with the other hand luggage squidged into any gaps we could find.
We finally got there anyway and strolled into our hostel which was pretty cool, a swimming pool as you first walked in, with a bar in the middle and a massive chill out area with sofas, seats, hammocks, beer garden-esc tables and brollies and all this with a view of the lake and massive sanddunes out back.
With us arriving too late to book any tours or do too much, we booked into the hostel (as it turned out we were in the same room as Rory and Fi) and grabbed some munch from a local restuarant aptly named ¨Huaca fuckin China¨ (excuse the language but that was genuinely the name of the place!). Following that we had a stroll around the town which was literally a small lake, with some buildings around it, surrounded by sanddunes, nothing more and nothing less.
We could see the sand buggies coming back down the dunes, which got us a bit excited as we had booked onto doing this ourselves the following day with Rory and Fi.
After a short sleep followed by some sunbathing and a beer we ventured out with Rory and Fi to see if we could book some quad biking as both us lads had got quite excited about the idea. However, upon searching around various tour agencies we found that there was only one American lady with just 2 quad bikes even though loads of places advertised quad biking day tours to the coast. Seems they all lied. With our tails between our legs, we purchased a few litre bottles of Pisco for the equivalent of a fiver each. and heading back to the hostel for a few cards games and leisurely drinks.
We took advantage of the hostel putting on a BBQ and got into the swing of some proper drinking games. The BBQ included some rum and coke and with no one else out of about 20 having a BBQ taking advantage of free drink, Rory and I kept going up and bringing back plastic cups of rum to our table. Must have had 3 quarters of the bottle to ourselves. As the night went on and we were getting progressively more drunk, it was evident that Rory was doing a little worse than the rest of us, so we gave him drinks of pure coke (no alcohol) for his drinking penalties which he never noticed!
A while late we joined up with a table of American travellers and played a massive game of ring of fire (as you do) and got to know everyone. They were pretty sound and one guy was called Sage (important info for this story!). One of the rounds of ring of fire was something called `I have never` whereby you say something and anyone who has done it must drink. It was my go and with a typical British dry humour I came out with `I have never been named after a herb` to which the Americans found hilarious and of course, poor old Sage was left to drink on his own.
Drinking games lasted all night and we eventually all slumped off to bed after a funny night. Later that night Jen and I woke up to some weird sounds coming from our hostel room. Turned out Rory was crawling around on the floor softly murminging his girlfriends name for help. Rory crawled his way to the bathroom as we had a shared on in our room, taking his pillow with him and spent a bit of time getting to know the toilet a bit better. Thinking he had just suffered the consequences of drinking the night before, we didn`t really think anything off it and went back to sleep. The next morning however, we bumped into Fi who told us that it wasn`t alcohol related and that Rory was actually quite sick (she is a doctor), so much so that they moved out of our shared room and into their own private, and also had to cancel the sandboarding which we would still go on.
Now just the two of us (other than all the other folk on the tour) we jumped onto our sand buggy ready for a day of falling over.
I wasn`t too impressed to see the seat belt system on board, which consisted off a belt conveniently placed between the crotch which had absolutely no give whatsoever. But strap in I did, hoping that there wouldn`t be any crashes otherwise they`d be no future jack juniors.
Onwards we went, taking it easy over the detereorating concrete roads, but as soon as we hit the sand, the driver uped the speed, but not before stopping for a snap of the town from the sand dune.
Getting over the first ridge, the driver let loose and rizzed the sand buggie around no end which was more fun that the sand boarding itself. He would get up to a blind drop, and then smash it down at a 60 degree angle or so leading Jen to grab my arm and almost cut the circulation off!
After 15 mins or so of what seemed like a rollercoaster ride, we arrived at our first sand boarding venue, which was literally a baby drop to get you used to it as most of us were complete beginners (other than our san pedro midnight sand boarding).
Obviously time for a few snaps before strapping into our sandboards......
.....the driver even let Jen sit in the drivers seat which she pounced on with the excitement of a 5 year old child. `mummy mummy, look at me`......that kinda thing! (Jack lies quite a bit on this blog if you hadnt noticed...does that sound like me?!)
Finally it was time to suit up, and we weren`t so excited to see that our sand boards were literally planks of wood with some velcro straps on them, not quite the equipment offered up on our first sand boarding experience.
With everyone strapped into their boards, we all looked at each other willing the others to go down first. Me and Jen obviously are bad ass at psyching others out as loads went before us and obviously fell over much to the amusement of everyone else. Inevitably we would fall over too, with the scene in the picture below all to common an occurance.
Jen`s velcro decided it wasn`t going to stick either so following a few attempts to fix it, she gave up and took the cheaters way out!
The bottom of the baby slope and we all trudged back to the buggy, bemused by our efforts.
Baby slope complete and with no one achieving any sense of confidence we were wizzed back off in the sand buggy to a bigger slope.
...with some incredible views along the way!
For some reason the guides mistakely had a sense of belief in us, or they just didn`t care! But either way, we arrived at our next slope, which was somewhat longer and steeper!
I tried to look confident for a piccy, luckily my newly adopted fringe was hiding my frowns, sunglasses hiding the terror in my eyes and the beard hiding the groan!
Still didn`t stop it from being beautiful though with the sun setting in.
This time it would be my velcro to give way and with my attempts to fix the situation on the side of the dune failing for 5 minutes, I gave up and lay flat on the board and body boarded down the rest of the dune.
With the sun light dying, we headed back down the dune with the lights on, racing other buggies out on the dunes. The driver stopped one last time at a viewpoint where we could see the small town lit up at night, highlighting the size of the place.
Job done we went back to the hostel and chilled, still no sign of the suffering Rory and carer Fi for the day. The next morning we got up and did see the two of them, Rory still looking rough and trying to convince us that the illness had nothing to do with alcohol.
Jen and I took one last stroll around town appreciated the unassuming beauty of the lake.
Still time for lunch in the hostel before leaving for our next stop, whereby we ordered some chicken and mushrooms in a sauce only to be given a plain piece of chicken with nothing else. Disappointing, and I`m not sure it was even worth mentioning but there we go.
Off we set on another bus journey to our next stop, Lima, which couldn`t be more different in it`s enormity to the quiet tranquility of little Haucachina.
No comments:
Post a Comment