Hey everyone, gotta tell you about an amazing little trip to the desert this past weekend! Mika (another Fogarty Scholar) and I felt like getting out of Lima this past weekend, so we threw out the idea to our posse and scraped together a last minute trip to Ica and Huacachina, two desert towns just a few hours south of Lima.
Such a perfect break from the hustle and bustle of Lima. Though Ica still has some of the features of its noisy and sprawling older sibling, there's still the somehow relaxing presence of enormous sand dunes surrounding the city. Huacachina is a smaller town, a tiny oasis couched between the vast expanse of pure desert. The wineries are excellent, plus Huacachina is home to a number of party hostels (where naturally all of the post-army Israelis flock to).
And then there's the desert-- just dune after dune of nothing but pure fine sand. Literally nothing. The Negev in Israel was an enjoyable experience with camels, etc., but there was so much scrub brush and rocks and variations in the landscape to really feel like the desert you've always dreamed about. Huacachina is like that-- just endless nothingness, and after every sand dune there's more nothing. But that nothing is in itself something-- something actually really exhilarating and inviting and even cleansing about it. I felt immediately swallowed up in it, and even though it was the middle of the day, it was nice to lay down on a comfortable dune and rest. Then dune-buggying and sandboarding sent us flying through the desert, sand sticking to the sweat on our bodies. Follow that with a dip in the ice cold pool and shower at the nearby hostel, and suddenly your skin is like new!
After that, there's even more stories... but they'll come soon. gotta run to work!
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