Huacachina Oasis

I didn't sleep well last night. Maybe it was the two sodas I drank at the priority pass lounge. In the morning I filled water, dumped the gray water and the cassette and paid Carlos for this work. He charged me 1000 soles which is around $270 but I made a mistake and thought it was closer to $370 and gave him $400. Oh well. I took the removed parts with me and we drove to the grocery store in town to stock up.

Our refrigerator has built up a lot of frost in the freezer so we were thawing it out last night. 

We tackled the slow Lima traffic to leave town which took around two hours and then joined the pan American highway heading south. There were beach vacation spots that looked like beach clubs with pools and parking and grass. The waves looked big and no one was in the water. There were housing developments advertised but not many fully built developments. Most were unfinished and sad. We stopped for lunch at a modern pricy place but they were out of most of the menu items. The kids had mini burgers and chicken tenders and I had a pesto chicken sandwich which I am embarrassed to say was delicious especially since I am not a big sandwich person. 

We continued on and then headed in land to the massive sand dunes near Ica. The traffic at 5 pm approaching the Huacachina oasis was bonkers but slowing the tourist vans moved out of my way so I could get to the campground. Christine walked ahead to make sure they had room for us. 

The Ecocamp Huacachina was pretty cool. It had a large cement pad with three overlanding vehicles and one German BMW GS. There was a nice pool and the sand dunes soared right behind the campground. The bathrooms and showers and kitchen were clean. It was only $13 to camp.

The manager told us to walk up the dunes behind the camp to avoid paying the entrance fee. I am not sure but I guess the trails on the dunes are maintained by a group of people that want to collect the entrance fees. We just hiked straight up the dunes barefoot and it was pretty tiring. The Internet says the dunes are 1500 ft high. I don't think so. Maybe 800 ft high.

But the view was fantastic and the massive dunes kept going on and on. There were dune buggies loaded with tourists taking off and blaring up the dunes. The kids were super fast and hiked to the top easily. They raced down the dunes and climbed back up. Christine and I waited halfway for them to hike back up and down. 

After the sunset we headed down and made dinner. It was nice to shower and use the camp kitchen for washing the dishes to save our own filtered water.

We went to bed later than usual. The kids had a blast sneaking around the campground with their walkie talkies and collecting tree seed pods.