Huacachina & Nasca: Dunes, airplanes and skulls

We had heard that the best buggy rides and sandboarding would be in Huacachina. Therefore we decided to go to a small oasis in the middle of sand dunes near to the town Ica. It was not a long bus ride from Paracas, only a bit over an hour. Huacachina is a pretty interesting place – a small lake surrounded by a few streets and amazing sand dunes in every direction.

Huacachina

We stayed at Desert Nights Ecocamp, which was a bit different compared to our usual hostels. :) Everyone slept in large tents. It was fun, but the problem is lack of sound isolation of course :p We woke up every morning around 6 – 6.30am due to other people making noise. But other than that, the place was great. The showers were clean, pool was nice, drinks delicious and they even had a barbeque every evening for an OK price. We had first thought we would only stay there for one night, but the place looked nice so we booked a second night. We had already booked everything in Nasca, but managed to move transportations, hostel booking and Nasca flights with one day. But then, after we had changed everything and paid the second night at Ecocamp, the receptionist told us that they had made a double booking and that they don’t have the tent for us for the second night! They offered a camping tent (a really small one) for us for free. Well, that did not do for us – we couldn’t even fit our luggage in such :p Well, the hostel managed to put two friends into the same tent and we got to stay there for the second night too, pfiuf!

Tents covered with roofs protecting from the sun 

Pool, breakfast, lunch, dinner & drink area

We had booked a buggy and sandboarding tour for our first day. The buggy tour was crazy! We drove for maybe 45 minutes all together with a crazy speed up and down the sand dunes. At two points we got to try sandboarding. Markus and I were a bit disappointed because it was sandgliding with one’s stomach on the board. We were hoping that we could do it standing up.

We were really glad we had our Buffy's with us - the amount of sand was rather huge :p

Well, we saw some people with actual snowboards and boots so we knew that was possible. We rented boards and boots for the next day and tried sandboarding. Edda is not an experienced snowboarder, so it was a bit intimidating at first but she got a few slides in the end :D Markus went for the steeper hills and even managed to jump at some point with the board. It was pretty exhausting – walking with the boots in soft sand dunes and sandboarding is much stickier than snowboarding, too :p

Markus doing some proper sandboarding :D

Edda felt she was going really fast, but after she saw the video... well, not so fast :p

We also hiked two times on the top of a sand dune to see the views. It was quite amazing and surreal to see the surroundings! Especially during sunset people gathered up on the dunes and watched how different shadows formed on the dunes and how beautiful the light was. We had to leave the dunes right after sunset because when the sun wasn't up, it was really cold!

After Huacachina we took a bus ride with Oltursa to Nasca. Nasca lines was one point on our bucket list so we headed there for one night. Nasca is a rather small city too (or the center is at least), but it had many restaurants, hostels/hotels and small kiosks. We stayed at Yamaya Hospedaje. The location was good – close to main bus station and close to restaurants. It was nothing special, but a good place for a one-night-stay.

 Entrance to the hotel

We had booked the Nasca lines with Aero Paracas and we were picked up from our hostel at 8am. We came to the airport and it was a total chaos there. All different agencies trying to figure out who is going next, people are weighted (some had to have their backpacks on, some had to take them off – don’t understand why), copies of our passports were taken and then suddenly people disappeared and we still had not received our passports. Well, anyhow, we made it to the flight. We were both really looking forward to it – it should be something quite spectacular to see the “drawings” on the ground. Nasca lines are over 2000 years old and no-one knows why they are made. Some of them are just lines, but some are pictures of different animals or people! Well, the plane had to turn to each side every time so that the passengers could see the figures. This is something that Edda’s stomach couldn’t take and she felt like she would throw up and/or faint and she was covered in cold sweat. Not really what we were looking for when paying around 80$ each. Edda felt miserable the entire day after that. Ush. Luckily Markus didn’t have the same problem and he could see all the pictures and took great photos of them too.

The astronaut 

The colibri

In the afternoon, we took a tour including two Nasca lines from the ground (on a bit higher level), Inka ruins, over 2000 years old aqueducts and mummies (Chauchilla cementery). For Edda it was nice to see some more of the lines ;) The aqueducts were also interesting and Markus found the mummies fascinating. It was a bit weird to see mummies, skulls and bones from real people in grave holes. The guide told interesting things about the graves e.g. when Inkas sacrificed babies they cut the head off to give it to the gods and a fake head of cotton was made to the baby when it was buried. It was interesting to see and hear how the aqueducts were built and how they work. It is a very intelligent watering system the Inkas managed to build.

Inka ruins

Jumping around in the aqueducts :D

After we had seen what Nasca had to offer, we took a night bus to Arequipa. We took our tickets at Tepsa, because they were the only ones that had seats next to each other left. The bus was good, with 160 degrees-seats and blankets. They had advertised that they would have WiFi but that did not really work. :( We arrived in Arequipa around 8.45am. Edda was not feeling well because of the serpentine road, but we knew we had to continue. There was still a long bus ride in a not-so-modern bus to Cabanaconde. :O