The South Coast

We spent last night in Huacachina, it is a true oasis in the middle of incredible sand dunes. It is the only oasis in all of the Americas, and it is so beautiful! The dunes continue on as far as the eyes can see, I have never seen so much sand and I cannot even describe what it was like to be in the middle of it all. The winds mostly came from the west, so the dunes have more gentle slopes on the western sides and then with a lip they become much steeper going down the other side. The wind will pick up and pull the sand over the tops of the dunes, sometimes creating mini tornadoes and gentle avalanches. It was like a complete mountain range, but all made of sand. There were varying colors of the sand, but they were all very soft colors and blended into each other. It{s incredible to think that the dunes don{t shift and cover the little town of Huacachina and dry up the laguna. It is so beautiful when we were out there at sunset yesterday, when the temperature dropped rapidly (it{s a desert) and the shadows and angles of the dunes became more and more apparent.
We went out in these dune buggies that were metal frames painted bright orange with seat belts that must have been used when they first invented airplanes. We drove all over the dunes at about 130 km per hour because any slower and we would have sunk into the sand--it was not tightly packed at all since they are constantly shifting. Our driver would take us to the top of a peak on one side and then we would go down on the other, just like a rollercoaster. It was so incredible, the best ride I{ve ever been on. Some of the dunes were so steep that you almost couldn{t see the ground below you when we went down! We drove all around these dunes, and then stopped at very steep ones and we got to snowboard down them. It was so much fun, but much different than being on snow because of all the sand that came down the mountain with you, weighing down your board. The sand was so warm and moved with you almost as though it were liquid or pancake batter...it was so fun!!! We snowboarded down a few times and then also went down head-first on our stomachs, which was really cool! Luckily we made it out with only a little sand here and there, but we saw a few people take major spills, James Bond villan style.
On Thursday, before arriving in Huacachina, we were in Pisco and we took a boat out to the Islas Ballestas which are a little bit off shore of Paracas National Reserve. We saw the Candelabra, a large candle-stick shaped pattern on the sides of one of the islands that no one knows who made, but it can be seen from very far away. We saw lots of animals: cormorants, Peruvian boobies (although no blue-footed ones), red headed turkey vultures, penguins (amazing that far north), and many many lobos marinos (sea lions). The islas have long been used to extract guano, and there was a lot of it. And, wow, does fishmeal smell awful--the Pisco-Paracas area has many factories to produce it.
Right now we are in Nasca, and we got to see some of the Nasca lines, which are these incredible patterns made in the middle of the arid desert by the Nasca people, who lived in Peru around 200bc-600ad. The lines are amazing because they are so big--they can only really be appreciated by air (although we didn{t spring for the airline trip, we just looked at them from a tower on the side of the Panamericana). The Nasca people made these figures in the shapes of animals (spiders, lizards, fish, whales, monkeys), and also they made geometric figures and also just very long lines that researchers think were used in astrology. All the patterns were made by removing the layer of sun-baked darker stones from the desert, leaving whiter stones beneath that outline the patterns. This was really cool to see. This morning we saw many mummies and pottery in the Regional museum in Ica. Some of the earlier Peruvian cultures were able to do a form of brain surgery where they removed part of the skull to alleviate the pressure on the brain, and we saw skulls of the people who lived long enough for the bone to partially grow back over the missing piece. Very cool.
We are off to Arequipa tonight, another long night bus but we{ll arrive in the morning and have a few days of exploring before heading up to Cuzco to do the Inca Trail and Machu Picchu. We are following the political situation in Bolivia because there have been a lot of road blocks and social unrest and that{s our next stop, we should be there in about two weeks.
Hope all is well!!