A desert mirage?

And overnight onwards south..

Con nuestra maneja marieka!

A recent addition to transport options (since we hit Peru) are "BusCama"s - literally BusBeds - the business class section on the bottom floor of the bus.. For around USD6 more, you can upgrade (if you get in early enough) and get the full leather seat, loads of room, dinner and breakfast, and the chance to sleep! So Trujillo-Lima gave us our first taste of this luxury. And i ain't going back! On advice (albeit contradictory) we cut straight through Lima, and traveled on to Ica.

I want to stretch the truth and say that Ica is home to the world's largest sand dunes, but apparently that sort of behavior is frowned upon these days.. So, home to nearly the largest sand dunes in the world, Ica is a tourist's paradise. Or rather Huacachina is a tourist's paradise. A desert oasis, 20 mins from Ica, surrounded by massive dunes, the place is somewhat surreal.. A bit less amazing is that the lagoon at the oasis is actually dry, and so the city council top it up with a truckload of water every day, in order to keep the tourists coming!

Lost on the moon...

Huacachina saw the arrival of Frances and Jonathan from NZ, our travelmates for the next wee bit, and so as an introduction to the continent: Sandboarding!!! This is mad. Involves Dune buggying with a madman driver around, up, over and down dunes (sometimes becoming one with the dune, and requiring a push from other buggys and/or passengers), before arriving at an interesting spot to launch oneself down a near-vertical slope on a waxed snowboard-shaped device.. unfortunately the thrill is so much that keeping one's mouth closed is quite impossible, and therefore a mouth full of sand results. Deciding some rip-off sunglasses were required in order not to damage our regular (in my case also rip-off) sunglasses, we opted for PINK. Four of us in pink glasses flying down dunes with little regard for control, let alone safety, was a sight to see! According to Alexis, our driver, guys in pink glasses had to be mareka (Latin American slang for gay - unfortunate if your name's Mareka!), and so proceeded to hassle us for the duration of the trip, before accepting both mine and Jonathon's at the end of the trip -"for you and your friend"...

Our moon buggy

Being as it is, in the middle of the desert, there isn't a lot more to do in Huanchaco, so overnight it was to our next stop...