Huacachina is a tiny oasis town an hour away from the Pacific coast. The town is a scattering of small hotels and restaurants around a blue-green lagoon with the place entirely surrounded by huge sand dunes. A rendering of the town is featured on Peru´s 50 soles banknote. In times gone by it was a retreat for the rich from Lima, but they now go elsewhere, and the town has slid back into obscurity.
You come here to enjoy the unique desert surroundings, and whilst you are here you can take a dune buggy up into the dunes, and if the mood takes you, indulge in sandboarding back down again. I set out to climb the dunes that backed onto the hotel - it is strength sapping exercise, two steps up and you slide one step back - easier by dune buggy
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| Huacachina Oasis | We stayed at Huacachinero Hotel which backed directly out onto the dunes. It had a resident parrot | ||
We had a half day trip to the Ballestas Islands, a group of small islands near the town of Paracas. The islands are mainly barren rock, covered in a copious layer of guano from the millions of birds nesting there. The islands are an important sanctuary for among others the aptly names guanay guano bird, the blue-footed booby and the tendril. There are also Humboldt Penguins and two varieties of seals (fur seals and sea lions)
The tour entailed getting up at the crack of dawn, and then being driven by a driver who seemed hell bent on killing us as he overtook other traffic on the one hour drive to the town of Paracas. From here the tour boats left for the2 hour trip to the islands. A sea fog meant that no boats could leave harbour, and the tour operator got quite agitated at the thought of not being able to run the boat and thus having to refund money. Eventually after a couple of hours we got under way
On the way to the islands, on the Paracas Peninsula, we saw El Candelabra, a large-scale Geoglyph whose origins are not known. The islands themselves are a amalgam of smell from the guano, noise from the sea lions, and whirling birds filling the skies.
The islands are off limits to tourists, so we could not land, but the boat gets you to a few feet of the wild life. The only time anyone goes onto the island is to collect the huge amount of droppings that collect on the islands every 7 years. Otherwise the animals are left to themselves, and can just admire the daily visits from tourist boats.
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| El jefe looking worried, at the thought that the boats would not run, but as the fog started to lift, we headed out to sea. The Candelabra. | |||
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| The islands are quite small, and are volcanic in origin. The sea has eroded a number of arches and that is what "Ballestas" means. | |||
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| We saw the resident sea lions, penguins, pelicans, and sea birds .. and an awful lot of guano. So much guano that nothing can grow. | |||
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| This contraption is used to load boats with guano during the "harvest". Local fishermen. Then back to the mainland. | |||
Back to Huacachina for a second night, a stroll round the lagoon and dinner in a pleasant restaurant by the water.
The next day before heading back to the bus station for our leg up to Nasca, we took a trip onto the dunes in a "dune buggy". This was a great beast of a thing that roared and snarled as it lifted us high onto the dunes where we could appreciate the extent of the dune field which stretched in all directions for miles. The trip comes complete with acrobatics as they jump you over dune crests and round steep corners.
An interesting spectacle was a second oasis, Orovilca, that is disappearing back into the desert, as the dropping water table has dried out the lagoon that existed here only a few years ago, and it will not be long before the trees die out too. It is a sort of "ghost oasis" today.
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| The 50 soles banknote has an etching of the lagoon, and this was our attempt to capture the two vistas on the one photo. | |||
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| Chris was a bit doubtful about taking a dune buggy, but agreed afterwards that it was a necessary part of any visit here. | |||
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| One roars up and down dunes in stomach churning manoeuvres. We saw another oasis that is disappearing due to a dropping water table | |||
After the excitement of the dune buggy, it was back to Ica bus station and the short ride to Nasca