Desert Oasis–A French (Canadian) Invasion
Gina. Huacachina, Peru
Huacachina is beautiful. It´s an incredibly small little resort type town that is literally a desert oasis. There are towering sandunes all around the little green lake that the handful of restaurants, hotels, and dune buggy rental places surround. Huacachina is just outside of Ica, which is South of Lima. It tooks us about 5 hours by bus to get here. The bus was more comfortable than a plane… it was also pretty expensive. We chose Cruz del Sur mostly because there is no central bus station in Lima, so in order to compare bus prices we would have had to take a taxi into bad areas of town, jumping from company to company before settling on a ticket. In retrospect, we should have asked our very nice taxi driver Juan since he was usually outside of our hostel and was very friendly. But oh well. It was 55 soles a piece, which is roughly $20. So not so bad for getting out of Lima–two days there was definitely enough.
So far we haven´t done much in Huacachina. We got here yesterday afternoon and have literally just been lying around. I had a bit of an upset stomach yesterday. On the upside I wasn´t hungry at all, so I didn´t spend and money on food until dinner time! Our hostel is nice. We chose Hostal Rocha. There are only about 4 budget hostels. Ours is in the mid-range of price. We shopped around yesterday and found another place that was cheaper but no one was staying there. So we decided to pay a few dollars extra to have company and to enjoy the nice backyard area.
On the topic of company, so far both our hostel in Lima and the one here have not had any native English speakers! But there are a lot of French Canadians, which is sort of good for me since I speak more French than Spanish. It makes me feel a little more comfortable to at least have a language that I sort of understand.
We´re debating whether or not to take a dune buggy ride. They last about 2 hours and generally include sand boarding down the dunes. They´re a little expensive and so we´re wrestling with the whole is it worth it for the experience thing. Since Peru is our first country, and this is only our first week, I think both of us are concerned about our money holding out. We´re doing really well, though. We´ve been under our daily budget every day since we´ve been here, and that´s with using a very conservative exchange rate ($1=2.50 soles). In reality we´re getting more soles than that for our dollar, but it just makes for easier conversions in our heads (really Steve´s head. I´m the literature major).
We´re definitely still figuring things out. Making little mistakes and getting a little frustrated. There´s a lot of pressure on Steve since he knows a little Spanish, but I´m learning pretty quickly. I need to catch up because I´m much more inclined to bargaining which is a necessary evil around here.
Huacachina is expensive. Since it´s pretty isolated (a short taxi ride from Ica for 5 soles) and there aren´t really any residents, they charge a little more for food in the restaurants. The big kicker is that there is no grocery store. So, you have to buy water at the expensive little mini marts and food from the restaurants. Our hostel has a kitchen that we can use, which is awesome, but we didn´t bring food with us to cook since we assumed there would be some sort of a grocery store. Oh well. If we were staying longer we would just take a taxi to Ica and stock up. But we´re planning on leaving here on Monday. In the meantime we just sleep late and only eat 2 meals! The perks of being lazy.
I´m off now to walk around on the dunes. I´ve uploaded a handful of photos. It´s pretty slow going, and this internet cafe is kind of expensive and I´ve been here for 2 hours! (We spent an 1.5 hours doing internet research on bus companies… it´s difficult. I think talking to people is the way to go. We´ll see how that works out!) I have a bunch more to upload, and I´m sure I´ll take tons on the dunes. So I´ll keep uploading when I can.
This is a complete side note, but I just want to voice my frustration at the fact that the buttons on the keyboards in Peru are in different places. I´m usually a very fast typer, but this is seriously cramping my style! I guess it should be said that it´s only the punctuation buttons that are off… so it´s not that bad. I feel better…
Tags: Cruz del sur, Huacachina, Peru
montarsig
Gina, the monkey got you! Your worse fears come true! 🙂
It is very strange seeing pictures of you in another country……while you are still there! But I love it.
mom
Hey Gina & Stephen,
Don’t scrimp on water! Drink more than you feel you want and have more available than you think you’ll use – and take advantage of all opportunities to pee!
Hope you took the sandboarding tour – no sense going somewhere & not experiencing what’s there!
Might it make sense to use Lima as a “base camp” if things are generally cheaper & more available there – including travel from one destination to another?
OK, enough armchair2ndguessing. Stay well & enjoy the experiences!