Huacachina & Nazca

Huacachina

I actually started from Lima a few days before, but I managed to pick up some food poisoning (once again on this trip) so had to stop back at Pisco for a few days to recover. On the 6th July I loaded the bike up with everything, for the very first time, and wobbled South on the Panamericana, 80km to Huacachina. Despite my best efforts to reduce to a minimum the amount of stuff I had, there was obviously too much ! I had tried, and failed, to find proper motorbike panniers in Lima (in Españole: “Alforjas”). I had decided to experiment with just strapping my backpack to the back rack of the bike, pizza bike style !, surprisingly, this seemed to actually be OK (and saved me the expense of sending my pack all the way back to Europe !).

The beautiful dunes of Huacachina.....

Huacachina is an old Peruvian oasis resort, gloriously set amoung enormous sand dunes, very scenic. It has typical resort hotels (pools, bars & music) and a nice selection of quiet old ones (I stay at one of these). I decide to stay an extra day to get the oil changed on the bike and go "dune buggying". I doubted that the Lima garage had in fact changed the oil, despite my placing a new bottle in the mechanic´s hand !. Next day I found my doubts were correct, the bike was on it´s first oil for over a 1000km !, not a very good run-in ! But, I had a very decent (and free) wine tour at a large Tacna vinyard.


The "dune buggying" was a lot more scary than I thought it would be, like being on a roller coaster without the security of rails ! Sandboarding was fantastic fun, when the board is "waxed" it really flies down the sand. I went down on my belly, some tried to stand up, but sand is not the same as snow !, they could not obviously get much of an "edge". Lying down was faster and more fun.

Next day I headed towards the famous Nazca lines. This was an eye opener for me as despite being only a 144km trip it was long and hard. The road started to deteriorate a little (from Lima to Ica it was like a European "express" road) and I had a constant head wind. At Nazca there is a steel tower to view the lines, the patterns were very difficult to distinguish from the tower, they are very faint but can tell how spookily straight they are. Overhead was the constant drone of light aircraft on tourist viewing trips. I´d opted not to go on one as I´d met a couple who said they could not see anything !!  I thought looking at photos (taken in perfect conditions) would be more interesting (and less nerve wracking !).

More of "oasis" Huacachina....

Nazca desert (taken from the steel tower), no "lines" visible...

Sandboarding down the mega dunes - look closely !  with "surf wax" you really get up to a good speed !!!