Huacachina

We’re down to our last full day in Paracas (which also means our last full day in Peru). We’ve decided the rough ride over the Nazca Lines just isn’t worth the risk for Sammy, so instead hire a driver for the day to take us to Huacachina. This is s small town about an hour’s drive from Paracas known as THE place for dune buggies and sandboarding (we’ve been told the highest sand dune in the world is near there, but I have no idea whether that is true or not). Sam really wants to stay and work on math sheets instead, but bad parents that we are, we drag him away.

Despite being a desert, there is apparently a fair amount of water flowing beneath the surface, and by tapping into this, the area around Huacachina has developed into the prime agriculture area in the region. One of the crops they grow is grapes, which they turn into wine and the Pisco that the area is famous for. We stop for a quick tour of one of the wineries (neither of us are big wine drinkers, but you can’t go to Napa and not stop for a few tastings so it seems like the right thing to do). It’s definitely an old school operation, complete with actual people stomping grapes with their bare feet. I’m sure there’s a very good reason you don’t see this method used much anymore, but it makes for a great presentation.

With that out of the way, we cover the last few miles to Huacachina and set out to find a buggy tour. Just looking at the dunes that surround the town it’s clear they play at a much higher level here (some people hiking up one of the ridges gives some context of the size), so we’re pleasantly surprised to find the tours are a third the price of the one we took in Paracas (or more likely, we got suckered into paying way over market there).

Since I covered dune buggying and sandboarding in an earlier post, there isn’t really anything new I can add, other than to say that here it is much, much, much better. Everything we do is super-sized compared to Paracas (that’s small specs are Sam and I at the bottom of one of the runs), which in some ways was probably a good thing, as the scale here would have been a whole lot more daunting had we not previously confirmed that going head first down a wall of sand did not necessarily equal pain.

By the time we are done, Sam looks like a giant sugar cookie, a sure sign he has had a great day. As a bonus, we actually do get to see the sunset this time (and it was definitely worth it).

We return to Paracas right on time for dinner. As we’ve become regulars now at the old chicken and fires stand, we have to say goodbye to the old couple that run it. It is the end of quite the few weeks in Peru (did we really see all those things in so little time?), but we’re very excited for our next stop in the Galapagos.