CHAPTER 25
I had never really believed in oases. You know, the kind that you see in the movies: swaying palms and crystal blue water glimmering in the distance through the rippling heat waves over the desert. I guess on some level I knew they had to exist, but it just seemed so made up. The desert south of Lima was as dry and barren as any we had seen, yet we had been told that it contained one of these unnatural phenomena. How could one small place be blessed with fresh water and cool shade in this endless expanse of burning sand dunes?
We came to the city of Ica, an oasis of another kind: supermarkets and gas stations, and a huge modern 3 story shopping mall- unbelievable by comparison to what we had already seen in Peru, and also because it was all in the middle of nowhere- quite literally hundreds of miles from the closest town. Why anyone lives there is still a mystery to me. There was probably some big mining interest that keeps them all employed and the town alive, but they might as well live on the moon- that is how remote it felt. Never the less, we stocked up on water and food, and even took a few hours to browse through the shops at the mall on our own, to buy small Christmas presents for each other. Being together 24 hours a day, for the past 6 months, hadn’t lent itself to discreet gift buying- and since Christmas was only a week away, we decided that this might be the only chance we would have if we wanted any surprises to open from each other on Christmas morning. This unexpected shopping foray set us back a few hours, and by the time we had loaded everything into the truck and found the road out of town it was turning dusk. After a few miles through increasingly poor suburbs we were about to give up and head back- oasis or not, for fear of robbery this was not a place we wanted to be at night- when the road took an abrupt turn over a small sandy hill… I was shocked by what I saw! Laid out in the valley in front of us, between two mountainous sand dunes, was a shimmering oasis, the lake turned red by the low sun, and surrounded by tall palm trees and clusters of small, neat buildings. We couldn’t believe it- it was just like the movies!
The oasis of Huacachina turned out to be primarily a tourist haven. A fancy hotel sat prestigiously at one end of the lake, and a wide boardwalk, with antique looking lamps every dozen feet circled the perimeter of the water. Rot-iron benches let you sit and relax, and perform one of our favorite traveling activities- people watching. Vacationing families from Lima strolled along, trying to keep their kids under control, while backpackers from all over the world toiled under their heavy packs on the way to find a hostel. We saw one family, the parents, a child, and a grandmother, who were obviously from the States, and after chatting for awhile it turns out that they were from Grand Lake- which is a small mountain town just west of our home towns in Colorado. Kacey’s family actually owns a cabin there, and she spent a lot of her childhood playing on the shores of Grand Lake with her siblings. What a small world!
Surrounding the lake are some hotels and restaurants, and in what seemed to be a bit newer development in the history of the oasis, quite a few backpacker hostels. We found an empty lot next to one of these, asked the proprietor for permission to park there for the night, and set up camp. The backpackers have started coming to Huacachina for a good reason, and that is why we were there too… the mountains of sand that tower over the oasis are prime sand boarding hills and the best way to get to the top is by dune buggy. In the morning, we signed up with an adventure company to go on a sand dune tour, and were soon loaded into the back of a very homemade looking vehicle. Our driver, Pablo, helped us strap into the full body harness seatbelts, and warned us that we might want to take off our hats. He slammed on the gas pedal and we went rocketing down the street, wheels screeching, exhaust roaring, towards the dunes at the end of town. A visible path led up into the dunes, but after a short distance it disappeared and Pablo chose his own rout through the expanse of sand, weaving among the sandy hills and literally flying off the tops of dunes. We were going extremely fast, the sand peppered our exposed faces like stinging needles, our sun glasses giving the only protection. It felt like a video game, the kind where you recklessly smash down the road, never releasing the gas button on the control pad, and when you crash you magically get flipped back over to continue your rampage of terror. Except there would be no magical restart for us, and more than once I felt like we were surely about to role. But Pablo had been doing this for years, and knew just how far to push the buggy without inviting disaster. We finally came to a stop at the crest of a large dune, where another buggy was also unloading its passengers. The two buggy drivers pulled five sand boards from their vehicles- ¾ inch thick plywood boards in the shape of snowboards, with Velcro straps for your shoes. We used pieces of an old candle to wax down our boards, and then Kacey and I, and the three guys from the other buggy, took turns trying to board down the hill- to no great success. Kacey was the only one who made it down in a respectable fashion, still on her feet, and the four of us guys quietly walked back up the hill after being so blatantly shown up by a girl. Sandy and bruised from our tumbling attempts (sand is not nearly as soft or forgiving as snow), the guides told us that this was just the practice hill, and that if we wanted they would take us to the real hill. We all clambered back into the small roll cages of our buggies, and off we went again, flying over the smooth sand like rockets.
At the top of an enormous mountain of sand, we got out and gingerly looked over the edge. The slope was a ridiculous 45 degrees, and there was no way of telling how far it went because of the lack of perspective in this completely barren environment. One of the Australians from the other buggy took his turn first- but this time the guide had him lay face down on the board, holding the Velcro straps with his hands, and with his legs out in a “v” shape behind him. Pablo told him to dig his feet into the sand to slow down, and to keep his knees and elbows in or they would get burned from friction. He glanced back at his companions with an uncertain look on his face, but before he could object, the guide pushed him over the edge. In seconds he was flying down the hill at terminal velocity, yelling at the top of his lungs, a huge plume of sand in his wake caused by his feet dragging, trying to frantically slow himself. His decent seemed to last for minuets, and when he came to a bumpy stop in the valley below, he looked no bigger than an ant. He rolled off the side of his board and didn’t move for a few seconds, but then stood up and yelled in victory. At the top of the hill, we all were wide eyed with excitement and jostled for position to be next. Again Kacey showed up the boys, and went flying 100 yards further along the bottom of the valley because she weighed so much less than the rest of us. By the end of the day, we were all thoroughly coated in a fine layer of sand and our pockets and shoes were filled with the stuff. Kacey and I were lamenting about this situation and the fact that we had no way of showering off at our camp site, when the Australians overheard us, and invited us to their hostel to take a dip in the pool and rinse off our grimy outer coating. We couldn’t pass this up, and spent the rest of the day hanging out with some truly delightful travelers- the Aussies and their international group of friends.
Huacachina had been an adventure, but Christmas was approaching, and we had made plans to meet up with my mom in Cusco, Peru for the holidays. Most people fly to Cusco, but those who don’t, usually take the bus- a 30 hour marathon trip from Lima across half of Peru. We had already stocked up on provisions in Ica, and were eager to put this long journey behind us. The only notable site between Huacachina and our destination was the famous Nazca Lines. These are strange patterns and lines, some miles long, drawn in the boulder strewn desert near the city of Nazca. The patterns are so large that they are unperceivable from ground level. In fact, no one in modern times even knew they existed until someone flying over in a plane spotted them in 1939. The portion of the PanAmerican highway we were on actually cuts right through a few of the designs, not out of indifference, but because in the 1920’s when they constructed the road, they simply didn’t know the lines existed. All of this begs the question: why would the ancient indians who constructed these monolithic designs do so if they would never be able to visualize the end result? Some theories suggest that they were used for astronomical purposes; others contend that they were for communication with the gods. The farthest stretching explanation is that the patterns designated landing spots for ancient alien spaceships.
Unwilling to put down the $100 USD per person to take a flying tour over the desert in a small plane, we opted to pay $0.50 cents to climb the three story viewing tower at a pull off on the side of the highway. We would only be able to see two out of the dozens of designs, but we decided to save the others to view when we are rich enough one day to return and fly over them in our own private plane. At the top of the tower we could distinctly see the two drawings nearby: the Hands and the Tree. They were rather large, a few football fields in size, but in my mind would only take a few days of work to make. The things that impressed me far more were the long, impeccably straight geometric lines, which stretched as far as you could see into the distance, some running parallel to each other, some intersecting or converging at seemingly random locations. These would have taken an army of workers, led by intelligent architects and engineers, many months to construct- and would even be difficult to achieve such precision using modern surveying equipment and construction techniques. What surprised me most was that contrary to what I had imagined, the lines and designs were constructed by clearing paths through the field of small boulders that cover the desert, rather than gathering and piling rocks in a line to make the patterns. The rocks covering the surface are a dark grayish black, but the soil underneath is a light chalky tan, thus creating the high contrast between the cleared lines and the rocky canvas they are drawn on.
We were both bewildered by these strange designs in this uninhabitable desert, and I still can’t imagine a practical reason for their construction. We didn’t want to get a headache thinking about it though, so we left the theories to the astronomers and the UFO fanatics, and headed east, over the Andes, to the fabled Inca capital of Cusco.
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