We took an hour to rest up and eat a burger then off we went in the buggy - a 9 seater with heavy tubular rollbars. We chose the centre seats for stability and also got a handrail / panic bar. The V8 started up, with little effort at muffling the noise. The driver was an old Spaniard with no Inglese who threw the buggy around the streets in a manner which left us wondering what he would do out in the desert.
Huacacina is a very small village built around an oasis of maybe 50m in diameter. There are a handful of stalls around the perimeter and a fair few hotels and hostels behind that. Then it is desert - HUGE towering sand dunes poised to engulf the whole place from all sides.We sat and burbled at the foot of one dune and then with a neanderthal roar we just powered up the face.
Free in the desert the driver raced across flat bits between the dunes, up the faces, twirled 180 degrees tilted at an impossibly steep angle and then raced down again. He hurtled towards the knife edges of dunes and we sat there with no idea of what might be on the other side - sometimes a flat plateau, other times a sheer drop. OHMYGOD he cant be thinking of going down there . . thank heaven he turned and skimmed across the lip but then ooooooh SHUGARRRRRRRRRRRR he went straight down anyway.
Just for variety he would head up the face of a dune at an angle and then flip over the edge and then ricochet off at an angle. We never felt like toppling over although if he had stalled near the top of one of those monsters we would have rolled all the way down. We were all strapped in with a crude form of shoulder harness but he didnt bother at all.
A viewpoint
After about half an hour we pulled up at the top of a very high dune. There were a cascade of 3 steps going down from there, which made a good beginners school for sandboarding. A couple of people managed it standing up but most set off bellyboarding. J did all 3 without squealing at all. Then it was time to move on to the next 3 slopes. The driver signalled that the sun was almost down and there would only be time to do one - but it was a cracker - VERY steep and VERY tall. J positively flew down and earned spontaneous applause from the youngsters at the bottom.
The BIG drop
We sat at the tip of a dune that had 3 edges and watched the sun set. There is nothing quite as quiet as a desert. It was just ranges of monstrous sand dunes as far as the eye could see in every direction and not one blade of grass anywhere.
The sun dipped down without any spectacular effects and a calm settled. We stayed only a few minutes and then headed back. We were expecting a nice easy run back to the oasis - Piggs ass! Non tranquillo! The old fella seemed demented and threw the buggy round inside the walls of a punchbowl shape, then off across the desert into a series of almost vertical drops with a stomach churning bounce off the bottom - all in all it was like a roller coaster with no rails. Just when we were getting confident of surviving until tomorrow.
And then it was all over. We stopped at the head of the last dune overlooking the oasis for photos, and then ground sedately down the slope. Once on tar, it was back to wheelspins and skids back to the hostel. A really excellent experience for $20 a head with the room thrown in.
We tipped him but he seemed much happier that we had dragged him in for a photo at the top of one of the dunes. A really nice old chap, despite not having a word of English. He coaxed J onto the sandboard with just the right mix of encouragement and not taking no for an answer and send her off on the final death-defying descent.
We werent really hungry but nibbled at plates of spag and then fell into bed with a cool breeze drifting across between our two windows. The hotel owner had taken our details and said he would have Cruz Del Sur tickets for us back to Paracas by 9am.
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