October 2, 2008. We awake in a beautiful desert oasis nestled among palm trees and hammocks. Towering sand dunes fill in on all sides. We take our time getting up. The kitchen is at our command. Soup for me and my tummy. Pancakes with fresh fruit, bathed in chocolate for Nate. Fair? I think not!
Intrigued, we head down to the water’s edge to do a perimeter walk. Scout out potential lunch places. The weather is flawless and the sun glistens off of the water. We make friends with Jamie and Daniel back at the Banana Hostel and end up talking so long that we almost don’t make it to Ica. I bargain with the cab driver for a speedy ATM and grocery run and we’re back in Huacachina before we know it!
A comfortable lunch (with an ice cream scoop for dessert?!) and we get ready for… SANDBOARDING! I am so excited and have no idea what to expect. I have gone snow boarding on a couple occasions, but sandboarding?!
4:30pm arrives and we coat ourselves with suntan lotion. Nate and I claim the two front seats of the dune buggy. Click. Buckle our seat belts. And off we go! The driver puts the buggy in gear and floors the gas pedal. We fly out of the little town and into the great wide desert sand. We climb up a dune and cruise down the other side of it! It’s like a wild rollercoaster ride. The driver grins as we gasp wide-eyed and plummet into the sand valleys. Not a journey for the faint of heart, but rather a journey for the adrenaline junkie.
We pull up onto the top of a hill and file out of the buggy. The view is spectacular! Rolling sand dunes with pockets of green hidden away. But here’s the fun part… we are each handed a board and a candle. We “wax” down our boards with the candles, strap them to our feet and try to make it down the hill.I try it lying down first. Clutching to the straps, I fly down the hill, going much faster than I had expected. What a rush!
For the next hill I get a little braver. I strap the board to my feet and cautiously peer over the edge. Here goes nothing! I make it down, slow at first, steadying myself with my hand. Whew!
Third hill, I am more confident, but still scared out of my mind.
The fourth hill was the last practice hill. Nate was the second to last person to come down. Jamie, our friend from the hostel, was the last. All eyes were on him as he started his descent. He went straight down. He picked up speed, but stayed crouched down to steady himself. As he stood up a little, the board caught in the sand. We watched as if it were in slow motion as Jamie fell, hitting his head, and summersalting over and over. When he came to a stop, he lay there face down in the sand. Panicked we all sprinted towards him. He regained consciousness and could respond to questions, but he was clearly in shock. A kind nurse steadied him as we waited for him to recover. What a scary moment! He ended up being able to walk back to the buggy, but we were all still worried. He had been going so fast and hit his head so hard! We all feared long term damage.
We hopped in the dune buggy and set out for the longest and most awesome hill yet. After Jamie’s incident, we all decided to tackle this one laying down. This hill was so steep that there was a part of it we couldn’t see over the edge. It’s terrifying to put your confidence in an activity that you can’t see. 
And it was so scary! But so much fun! We were going so fast down that hill and the only brakes we had were our feet behind us. I tried to brake so hard, but I still ended up going the farthest! What a fun day!
We started our drive back as the sun was setting. We bounced in and out of the dunes. The driver kept pushing the buggy, faster and faster! And around tight corners. It was so fun and so beautiful!
We had a lot to talk about that night. Poor Jamie was still recovering from his fall. Nate and I cooked up a mean soup before heading over to the next hostel to watch the second half of the Vice-Presidential debate. It was a little painful to watch. After hanging out with the other passengers on the dune buggy ride, we retired to our bungaloo.
October 3, 2008. Which also happened to be my 23rd birthday.
Nate let me sleep in! I woke up to more soup. Soup soup soup.
The laguna of Huacachina is featured on the back of the 20 soles bill, so we decided to climb up one of the sand dunes for the view. Sand walking is tough. For every step you take, your foot slides down half a step. Step, slide, step, slide. 
We finally got to the top and had a wonderful 360 degree view. We saw the laguna of Huacachina below us, Ica 5 km away, and sand sand sand extending in all directions after that. It was beautiful!
We ran back down the dune taking giant steps!
Quickly packed and headed to Ica. Bought our tickets to Nazca and sat in the waiting room munching on animal crackers and watching bad TV. As we boarded the bus, the security guard told us to hold our bags on our laps, not under the seat and not overhead. Gotcha. We’ve had this routine before gracias a Latacunga. Apparently the successful culprits passed on their knowledge. But we’re not falling for it this time.
We arrived in Nazca and convinced a pretty pricey hotel to watch our bags until our night bus. Then we set off walking. Goal: get to the mirador to see the Nazca lines.
Nazca lines? They’re actually pretty cool. They are a network of over 800 lines, 300 geometric figures (geoglyphs) and some 70 animal and plant drawings (biomorphs) drawn over 500 sq km of desert. They are huge pictures carved into the earth and can only be appreciated from the sky. No one really knows what they were used for or what inspired the Nazca people to sculpt them over 1500 years ago (before technology was invented to view them!).Flights, however, were beyond our meager budget. At $60 per person for a half an hour flight, we figured that that money would be better off spent elsewhere. We opted for the mirador, a 30 foot tower in the desert 30km outside of town, from which you could see maybe three figures.
We had been told that a taxi to the mirador would be 60 soles, so when the taxi driver quoted 40 soles, we jumped in. But then the driver did something strange. He called over a person who sells phone calls. He made a call and said something along the lines of “I have two tourists. I’m taking them to the mirador.” Nate and I looked at each other. We had heard of taxi drivers taking tourists to the middle of nowhere or a deserted part of town and then a group of people would come out of nowhere and mug them. We were carrying not only our computers, but our wallets, our camera and our passports. Everything that was valuable or important.
As we started driving out of Nazca, I nervously struck up a conversation with the driver. My reason being that if he got to know us, he’d be less likely to hurt or steal from us. The conversation was awesome. We told him about us (what we studied in school, where we were from, about our trip) and he told us about himself (about his wife and children, about Peru, and about himself).
We pulled up to the mirador and I was still a little nervous. We were in the middle of the desert. But the driver had delivered on his promise to take us to the mirador and there were some vendors selling trinkets, so we weren’t all alone. The view itself was less than spectacular, but I’m sure we would have regretted not coming. On the way back into town, a man at the mirador asked if he could share the ride with us. At first I was uneasy about it, but then figured that it’d be safer with more people. The whole ride back we gave the man Chinese lessons.
Lunch! They forgot our mate de coca, but otherwise it was good. Our overnight bus left at 8pm, so until then we wasted time sitting in the Plaza de Armas, interneting, and buying a huge box of donuts (it was my birthday afterall). The donuts ended up being less than desirable, so we ended up giving them out to people on the street. People were skeptical, quizzical, and then thankful for the free treats.
As the sun set the only thought on my mind was: Cusco here we come!
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