Sand, sand, everywhere

I spent a day yesterday in my urban paradise (I went to the movies! At a movie theater! Saw Batman. v. creepy.), and took off this morning for the desert. By early afternoon, I had arrived in Huacachina, a small oasis in the desert.

It´s exactly what you expect an oasis to look like: Nothing but sand dunes for miles and miles, and then there, out of nowhere, is a lagoon, surrounded by palm trees. The weather is perfect. I was worried for awhile that the misty fog of Lima would follow me all the way out here, but about 20 minutes down the road, we hit blue sky and sunshine. The highlight of Huacachina: dune buggys and sandboarding.

Late this afternoon, I boarded a dune buggy with 7 other people. We were strapped in as if we were in a car seat, and for good reason. The driver drove fast. Really fast. It was like a roller coaster on sand. It was awesome. I was quite annoyed with the girl in the back who kept screaming for the driver to stop and to slow down. I wanted to ask her why she bothered to come. Seriously, she didn´t do much sand boarding either, so I´m not sure what she was doing there.

Anyway, sand boarding is the same concept as snow boarding, only on huge sand dunes. Now, I have never been snow boarding before, but I´m sure if I really wanted to I could be good at it. I was not very good at sand boarding. You know when you go to the beach, how you get sand in various places? Imagine that, only five times as much sand in three times as many places. I´m pretty sure I had half the desert in/on me. I ate sand. I dumped more sand out of my boots than I thought possible. I have sand in my ears, behind my ears, on every inch of skin, in my pants, in my underwear... you get the picture. I spent more time riding down on my bum than I did standing up (and I wasn´t the only one). It was actually when I seemed to be doing the best and had been on my feet for quite awhile that I wiped out the hardest. I have a bit of a welt on the back of my calf where I whacked myself with my board. I´m fine, though, thanks for asking. The last hill was way too steep for my better judgement. Sandboarding is softer than snowboarding, but this would be testing it. I didn´t really want to cut my travels short with a broken apendage, so I rode the board like a sled, but even that built up some scary speeds, so I slowed myself down with my foot, causing sand to go flying into my face. This may not sound like a fun time, but I promise it was.

We rode back to the hostal in the sunset light. There was not a single part of me that was not covered in sand, including my face, which was a sight. Unfortunately, my luxury hostal does not have hot water. I´m pretty sure I´ll be discovering sand in various places for weeks to come. Totally worth it.