Huacachina – A Desert Oasis

 November 10^th, 2021

At the flight park near the end of the season, a good friend Bryan asked me where I planned to go in Peru and I really had no idea yet, apart from the obvious Machu Picchu.  I was too busy winding up the flight school to have time to plan but one evening he did a quick search on YouTube about paragliding in Peru and a video of someone flying in Huacachina came up.  The place looked a bit surreal, a stereotypical oasis in the desert.  I remember thinking that I’ve got to go there…

 

And now I’m there.  It was only an hour and a half bus ride from Paracas and the bus was fairly full with an American tour group from Florida in their 40s-60s.  I sat near the back of the bus which was where the “naughty group” was with their illicit gin cocktails.  They were fun but sadly your stereotypical American tourists who hardly tried to speak Spanish, weren’t wearing masks and were flagrantly skirting the rules.

 Some distant sand dunes on the bus ride to Huacachina:

In the YouTube video it looked like this oasis was in the middle of the desert but that was hardly the case.  It was a mere 5-7 minute drive from the small city of Ica.  Nonetheless, it was an interesting looking place.  In the centre was a small lake measuring around 100-150 meters long and 50-70 meters wide.  There was a Malecon running around three of the four sides and a variety of buildings, primarily hotels, shops and restaurants, surrounding it.  The Peru Hop guide was kind and escorted me to Banana’s Adventure Hostel while carrying my small backpack, me lugging my massive paraglider bag.  The side street we walked down was probably the ugliest bit around the oasis but I hardly noticed.

 

I checked into my hostel and had to prepay for my four nights there which was a bit different but what seemed stranger was that it was a shared key, with a large wooden banana attached to it, between me and my three roommates.  So anytime I wanted to go back to the room, which was a couple storeys up, I first had to check whether the key was at the front desk and otherwise hope that the room was open.  Luckily, only once in my stay did I have to go hunting for my key.  It didn’t seem very efficient for anyone, including the front desk staff.

 The view from the top floor of the hostel across the oasis:

That's a big sand dune!

The view of the hostel lounge and bar from my floor:

My back was quite sore from the previous day’s kite surfing lessons in Paracas so I decided to take it easy for my first day in Huacachina.  I hung out at the hostel by the pool bar and met a 55 year old bald tattooed man named Hans from Holland who now works and lives in Switzerland.  We had actually met briefly the night before in the Kokopelli hostel in Paracas where he borrowed an iPhone charging cable from me as his had broken.   He was in the same predicament again and I offered my cable once more.  It’s amazing how dependent we have become on our technology for travelling.  We talked about how it was more of an adventure backpacking 25-30 years ago when one carried around a Lonely Planet guidebook as your only source of information as to where to stay, where to eat and what to see.  You actually had to talk to the locals too!

The bar at the Banana's hostel:

The following morning, I went for a walk about and immediately ran into Hans who was doing the same.  He walked ahead but I jokingly yelled out for him to slow down as he was going to run out of things to do for the day.  Most backpackers only spend one or two night in Huacachina as there isn’t a whole lot to do.  The main activities are dune buggying, sand boarding (which can be done on the same 1 or 2 hour tour on the dune buggy) and hiking up a sand dune to watch he sunset.  I was going to be a long termer…staying for a whole 4 nights as I had hoped to get some paragliding in too.

I believe this is a Black-Crowned Night Heron:

It took less than half an hour of meandering to venture around the small lake of dark green water.  There were signs forbidding swimming, but I think the colour was enough to put you off of the idea.  On the opposite side of the hostel, built in below the Malecon, were 20-30 doors side by side.  The odd door was open or broken in and it looked like a tiny changeroom inside.  Perhaps the lake water was a little more appealing in days gone by…

The many obsolete changerooms:

I ran into my three Swiss kiteboarding buddies from Paracas: Julian, Oscar and Yves at this bar on the Malecon.  We enjoyed a beer as the owner tried to set up Yves with his sister!

If you have good eyes, you should be able to see a guy sandboard down this dune.  Probably took him half an hour to hike up...and all of 11 seconds to come down!

Pretty awesome views everywhere: