Huacachina & Canyon de Los Perdidos

Huacachina, located just 15 minutes away from its much bigger neighbour, Ica, is not a town of particular note. For it’s not the buildings that make this place special. While the architecture is the usual everyday affair, the town square is not. It’s home to the only natural oasis in South America. 

We arrived after a few hours of driving, having left the capital behind us and spent the previous night on the silent beach of Puerto Viejo, just south of Lima. After the bustle of the city, it had been the perfect antidote to park directly on the beach and have it all to ourselves except for a few surfers way down the beach. I was also pleasantly surprised when we didn’t get stuck in the soft sand the following morning and were able to drive straight out and continue south.

After a couple more hours, we passed through Ica, and then back out again into the desert. As we drove into a huge sandy valley, the only sign that we were about to go somewhere popular was the suspiciously good tarmac road. As we pulled in we were accosted by many sign waving people. Everyone wanted to sell you something, whether it was a tour, a parking spot, or a meal. We drove past them all to park on a quieter back street and explore the tiny town at our leisure. 

The oasis itself looks like the village pond. You can even hire a pedalo and it wouldn’t take you long to paddle around it.

The appeal here is exploring the huge dunes that surround you on every side. Countless tour agencies prowled the streets, offering sand boarding and dune buggy tours. We went to see what deal we could get. We could have probably got things very cheap as the tours left in an hour and they tried to fill the last few spots, but we decided we’d rather go tomorrow. It seemed that it cost about £8 per person to go for a two hour tour of the dunes in a buggy. This included sandboarding and stopping up in the dunes to watch the sunset. There was no shortage of agencies offering this and we decided we’d book something in the morning to get the best price. 

For the remainder of the current day, we went to have a cocktail in the bar opposite where we had parked and ask if we could camp on the street outside. One very strong cocktail later, with our accomodation sorted we stumbled out onto the dunes themselves. You have to pay a small dune entry fee in order to slowly make your way to the top. It’s tough going on the soft sand in the afternoon heat, but as we slowly climbed higher we started to get the most fantastic views. The peak of every dune around us had a little group of people, positioned for sunset watching the swarms of dune buggies racing around in the valley below.. We made it up just in time, and it was definitely worth the trek. 

The next morning, we awoke to a rather sombre day. It drizzled slightly and remained stubbornly cloudy all morning. We held off booking a tour, not wanting to go if the weather was going to be like that. Then, at midday, someone flicked a switch and the clouds scattered. Perhaps this is why all the tours only go in the afternoon, it seems to be a pattern on this coast to have cloudy mornings. Now things were looking up, we went and got ourselves a space on one of the tours for that afternoon. At just £6 per person, it seemed like a steal. 

The tours all leave at around 4pm and so we hung about outside the office, waiting for our guide. It’s a short walk up a more gentle dune to get to the dune buggies. We paid the dune entrance fee again and walked up to find our buggy. Nestled at the foot of the dunes, is the dune buggy parking.

Soon we were allocated a buggy and piled in with the other 8 people in our group. Our rather miserable looking driver checked the tyre pressures, and then we were off. While he may not have looked the most enthusiastic, his driving certainly was. We leapt across the dunes, being thrown all over the place. It’s a good job there were some chunky seatbelts in place as you really did need them. The buggy scaled the dunes effortlessly, before plunging down the other side, and we set off out into the desert.

After a little drive, he took us to the top of a particular dune and stopped. The driver, now turned photographer, invited us to climb up on the buggy for some photos.

Then it was time to sandboard. We were given boards that looked very much like snowboards but instead of having places to put your feet they had straps for you to hold onto as you lay on them flat and plummeted down the dune head first. We got to go down a couple of different dunes, before the boards we packed away and we drove on. 

Once again, we enthusiastically ploughed through the desert. The ride was horribly uncomfortable, especially when we went over the larger of the lumps and the rear wheels completely parted company with the floor, but it was so fun I didn’t mind that my spine was forcibly rearranged. Now we headed to the prime spot where we would be watching the sunset. Our little group perched on the ridge of a particularly large dune, and gazed out across the desert as the colours softened and bathed everything around us in the red glow of sunset. 

Now that the sun had disappeared and taken both its light but more importantly its warmth, it was time to head back. The temperature dropped significantly as we raced back to the starting point and our driver deposited us back on the lower dunes again, with just enough daylight to make it back down to the town. It had been an excellent two hours of fun, though I suspected I would be slightly crippled the next day. 

While dune buggies maybe the main attraction here, agencies also offer trips to other nearby attractions. You can fly over the Nazca Lines, or take a trip out to Canon de Los Perdidos, both a short distance away. Having the car, we had little need for tours and despite the warnings from the local guide (who clearly hadn’t filled up his trip quota) about how we wouldn’t be able to get to the Canyon of the Lost without ourselves getting lost on the way, that was the direction we headed in the following morning. 

There were multiple way points marked on iOverlander and recommendations of how to get to this canyon as none of the mapping apps showed the road. For the first time, we tried Wikiloc. This is an app where people can record their drives and you can then follow them like a sat nav. People had recommended this as being the best way to get there and so we downloaded a route and set off. It all went well until we had a disagreement as to whether to follow the very specific instructions on a waymark on iOverlander or the route marked. Firstly, we tried following the instructions, but ended up as a rather lumpy river bed that definitely didn’t look like a road. We retraced our steps and continued on again, following the sat nav. I was suspicious of the route he had taken. It looked like he’d got to a point and simply driven off the road, straight over the dunes. Something another poster had warned about, as it wasn’t possible without 4x4. 

We kept on, arguing about what to do. The good thing was that despite being in the middle of nowhere, we still had the internet. This meant we could download a different route on Wikiloc that looked a bit more likely and we could also access satellite images of the area. It was a surprisingly good dirt road that we continued on, but I wasn't convinced about the turning. It didn’t look like there were any other roads out here, but the sat nav confidently told us a turning was coming up. To my surprise, it was actually correct. A large sand pile marked the turning and a very faint track continued out into the desert on the left. Up till this point, the roads had been good but now we drove over some rather aggressive washboard as we headed out on the final section. At least it looked like we were actually going the right way now, as the sun was beginning to set and we didn’t want to be trying to find the way in the dark. With the last of the night we arrived the GPS co-ordinates that marked the parking for the camping. Tomorrow, we could explore. 

Night in the canon was utter, glorious silence. A rare commodity. We awoke refreshed and spent a peaceful morning catching up on some paperwork. One other car arrived the whole day and it looked like despite it being the weekend we were going to pretty much have it to ourselves. We decided we would spend one more night of our precious schedule here, a quiet camping spot on a Saturday night can be a hard thing to find. With an afternoon left, we went to see the canon itself. Firstly I made use of the river at the bottom to catch up on a bit of washing, then we walked down the other dry river bed into the canyon. 

I can only imagine what this must look like in the rainy season as we rounded the bend and saw the narrow walls of the slot canyon, sculpted by years of raging water. We stopped at the pool at the bottom, right now the river was dry and only a small pool of green water remained. We admired the bowl carved out by the river and imagined how it must be with water shooting over the edge and creating a whirlpool where we currently stood. It was only a small canyon, but impressive nevertheless. 

As it was pretty hard to walk down any further, we headed back up to the van and went to enjoy a view of the whole thing from the other end. With the sun setting and the only two cars that had visited today long gone, we knew we were in for another peaceful night and Lexi too, seemd relaxed.