Ica

We arrived in Ica just as the sun was beginning to set over the town. Soon into the journey, we had it confirmed we were headed to another fairly dry area (Almost everywhere so far had been either desert or a place with little to no rainfall). Whilst we had reserved a hotel in the area, when we arrived it seemed like they were only vaguely expecting us. The gate was locked, there was no obvious sign to know where the hotel even was, so we just shouted through the grills hoping for the best. Sure enough, a lady turned up, and after we explained that we did have a reservation started the process of making our room up. We’d reserved it several days before hand, not even the usual couple of hours we try and get away with, but either way we hung around in the reception for a good 15 minutes before we could go in.

Everything was absolutely fine until about 4am, when suddenly I was rudely awoken by Diana. In a confused and tired state, I heard her telling me something about an earthquake, which was when I noticed that the entire room was shaking. Strangely I think I could slept straight through it, as it was almost no different to sleeping on a bus. About a minute later it died down and everything was back to it’s normal, stationary self, and we realised that we’d forgotten all the free earthquake training we’d received whilst in Japan a year before hand. Confident everything had ceased being possessed, we headed back to sleep.

The following morning we had a chance to see our surroundings, which consisted mostly of mountains. At first I thought they were covered in snow, but looking closer it was clearly sand, which made a lot more sense in this environment. Heading down to breakfast, we were greeted by a lady who’s emotions were very hard to judge. On the one hand, she was answering all our questions (in the quickest, most complicated Spanish we’ve had to try and deduce) and bringing us breakfast, however, it seemed that where she was from, smiles were extortionately expensive. As such, anything we asked was responded to in a way that we felt helped, but we’d also insulted her family at the same time. Either way, she gave us information on where we could find tour agencies for nearby stuff (and advice on how we could do it cheaper), and half an hour later even brought us a card for a tour agency in town, so we couldn’t have upset her too much.

Sandy mountain, Charlieeee...

We headed to town to see what excursions we could book. The one we were interested in for the next day was backtracking a little, heading back towards Lima and the coast to see ‘Las Islas Ballestas’, a group of islands off the coast Peru from a town called Pisco (unsure if it’s a relation to the alcohol!). These apparently have a similar ecosystem to the island we saw in Ecuador, except this was just to see around them, there was no getting off the boat. Another option was to include the nearby national park in the area, so we figured we’d make a day of it. For the afternoon we planned to visit a little town from Ica called Huacachina, a place famous for it’s lagoon and sand dunes, and the more popular place for tourists to stay than Ica. There we’d try out the main activity for the area, sand boarding and sand buggies over the dunes.

Firstly we headed back to the hotel to drop of the bits we didn’t need, as we heard that sand got everywhere. When we arrived, we were greeted by the woman with no emotion, and we asked her if we could get breakfast for 6am the next morning as the excursion left around 7. She asked if we booked through the company who’s card she gave us, to which we responded no and she asked us for the receipt. She then proceeded to look disgusted at the receipt, told us it was too expensive, and a whole load of other Spanish we weren’t entirely sure of, although I’m suspicious it wasn’t Spanish at all but an ancient Incan curse. Hopefully our first born will still have the regular number of legs. Either way, we told her we would still be wanting breakfast at 6, and headed up to get our stuff ready.

Armed in the knowledge that we could arrange the sand related activities on the spot once we got to Huacachina, we jumped in a mototaxi to see what the area offered. It’s safe to say, it offered sand. Lots of sand. It also offered tourist tat and a number of expensive restaurants all focused around the lagoon, which we also found out was man made as we could even see the pipe where the water was being pumped in. We didn’t go in to find out if there was a huge pond liner at the bottom, but it all reeked of foul play.

Booking the sand trips was easy, as the whole area was surrounded in tour agencies. We opted for the two hour option, where you’re taken into the middle of a desert, plonked at the top of sand dunes, and given a board to so you can shoot to the bottom, either standing or laying down. After a significant traffic jam, something you don’t really expect in a desert of nothing but endless sand but the result of so many of these buggies going out all at the same time to try and catch sunset during the two hour stint, we were off.

The trip to the first dune was fairly calm, at least, as calm as offroading on sand in a cage on wheels can be. Once we arrived, we had a few moments to take in some of the views of the desert before we grabbed a board and walked along to the slope. One by one people were given the option of standing or laying on the board, the guide would use a candle on the bottom to make it waxy, showed us how to get into position and pushed us down. Once at the bottom, we walked over to another dune, however nobody really gave any instruction so we weren’t quite sure on what we were doing here. Diana and I just carried on, giving standing on the board a go and finding out that the wax definitely did seem to make a difference, as half the time we just stopped.

After a while,we were herded back into the vehicle and driven to a far bigger and steeper dune. We weren’t going to try and stand on this one. I have no idea what speed we did down there, but being under an inch from the ground made it feel insanely fast. It also curved to the left which made me convinced I’d be rolling down a good 50% of it, but no, we did survive it. Hoorah!

At this point, we realised that the buggy that had brought us here had vanished. This did mean we were in the middle of a desert with no transport, but at least our guide was here too so he would be able to sort it out. Except he walked off after a few minutes around a dune and we were just leftthere to sit and wait. I suspect this was the ‘sunset’ aspect of the trip, except there was far too much cloud for that to bean exciting experience, so it ended up just sitting around waiting for another buggy to arrive. I got bored so walked over to a smaller dune and carried on rolling down it and getting thoroughly coated in sand like an excitable puppy, and after a while the guide came back, still without a buggy though. Then one pulled up, and we all popped on our seatbelt harnesses, expecting a similar journey back to the one here.

Oooh no. Our buggy driver was none other than Peruvian Colin McRay, who proceeded to drive up and down each dune at full speed, literally taking off at points, taking 90 degree turns whilst going up dunes so as to throw us down the other side of them. I pushed the thought out of my mind that, should any tyre end up dug into the sand, we’d be rolling down the dunes, and just imagined it as a rollercoaster ride, which it basically was, but without any of the health and safety. Once everyone was sufficiently scrambled, we pulled up to see the view over Huacachina with the sun down, before we were taken back to where we started, only now running on adrenaline and coated in a thick layer of sand. We had a traditional Peruvian meal (thai red curry) and headed back to town.

The next morning we got up for breakfast with the lady who loved to hate us. We received the food with only the slight feeling of discontent, when we were asked again what time we’d be picked up. We told her and headed outside to be ready for when they arrived. At this point she popped outside to look with us, pointing at a random van asking if it was that one. I told her no, but she said I should ask anyway and went upstairs. I didn’t ask, they were loading vegetables in the back, it seemed highly unlikely that we’d been confused for two sacks of touristic potatoes. Moments later, she was poking her head out the window still keeping watch, ready to call them if they weren’t arriving. I still couldn’t work out if she liked us and was being a concerned mother figure making sure we got off safely, or just wanted to be sure we left her premises. Either way, eventually we were picked up by a tourist vehicle rather than a grocer and off we went to the harbour.

We merged with a couple of other groups and then found ourselves herded into a boat, and given life jackets to wear. After a brief explanation of what was going on, and a talk on safety, we headed towards the islands, where in the distance looked like a huge oil slick on the surface of the water. It was only when we got closer that we realised that this was actually tens of thousands of birds, apparently all meeting together at this time to eat. I’d suggest the fish should probably relocate.

Eventually we make it to the first island. Lots of birds I didn’t know, penguins and poo. Apparently the poo is valuable, which seems odd (and I don’t think anyone told the birds that because they weren’t being vary careful with it) and so one of the islands had some sort of factory on it to handle it. They weren’t doing a very good job, there was poo all over the place. After a bit, we saw some lines carved into the rock, which, as all good mysteries are, was possibly caused by aliens (but more likely earlier tribes). Nobody knew, so aliens are of course a likelihood. We carried on around the islands, where we saw sea lions, along with more penguins, birds and poo. I’m sure there were some other facts here, but it was mostly those.

After returning to shore, we took a bus to a nearby view point over the town, then off to the national park. Here was very dry and dusty, with a number of beaches, cliffs and views. There’s not a lot more I can really say about it, so have some pictures, and an assurance that the restaurants near the beach we went to were not the cheapest meal we’ve ever had, but we did get a free shotglass of pisco sour, a fairly tasty meal, and the fun game of trying to keep seagulls at bay as we ate it. Diana went to the toilet and came back with a guilty face, it turned out they charged her a fortune to enter, but whilst in the toilet she found some abandoned money, slightly more than she’d paid to get in. I’ve married a dirty criminal. That said, she spent the next hour looking shifty, so I don’t think she’ll make it to the status of great train robber or anything.

We’d booked an overnight bus to Cusco the next day, so we spent most of our day just relaxing in a coffee shop in the main square and working out plans going forward. We’d checked out of our room and asked the lady if we could store our bags somewhere, she gave us a small sonnets worth of Spanish which I equated to be we could leave them next to a wall. Hours later when we were ready to leave, we told her we were going (she had to unlock the door to let us out), and thanked us for staying and gave us a smile. We had no idea what was going on, but it appeared we hadn’t completely insulted her with our presence after all. Yippee!

Hasta luego, Ica!