Rare Adventures

Category: Peru

Adventures in Huacachina: Sand Dunes and Thrills

Our first sight of Huacachina came soon after we arrived in Ica, we turned up a back road that wound up the sand dunes, then we came over the hill in the coach and there it was, the most stunning and unbelievable view of a beautiful oasis surrounded by the sand dunes the size of real mountains, it was like an image of heaven in a desolate, hell like landscape.

We made our way to our hotel, which was like any seaside hotel on the Med, so a swim was in order. As we got over our trip, we started to notice lines of ants crawling along the ridges of the distant and dunes, more investigation led to the discovery that these were some form of monster trucks.

This part of our South of Lima adventure was called something vague like “Fun in the sand dunes”, as we watched the little dots moving around the full potential of the fun started to take shape.

We met up with our fellow adventures and walked up the dunes to find our truck. Our new companions were Dawn and Reg from Scotland, a couple of doctors on a 6 month world tour with lots of great stories to share along with Bettina, an amazing young lady who worked for the United Nations refugee council.

As we walked up the path we started to hear the roar of the trucks in the boarding zone. We also watched the convoys of trucks coming back down the sand dunes over gravity defying drops and almost vertical climbs back up the dunes.

The afternoon promised a lot of fun, as we also had sand boarding included in the itinerary, hardly ideal for a bloke with a trapped nerve in his back!

Monster dune trucks

The first sight of the truck was amazing, in truth it wasn’t a truck, it was a giant V8 engine attached to a tube framework with seats. It was an incredibly powerful beast and the absence of any real exhaust system meant the noise was more akin to that of an aircraft.

Once we were all aboard, the engine fired up and off we went with engine roaring and sand being sprayed off the wheels as we followed a convoy of similar mechanical beasts up the dunes.

For the next hour we were on a roller coaster through the dunes, as we headed for the peaks. The climbs got steeper, the drops got bigger and the screaming in the truck got louder as our madman driver launched us off the tops of ridges.

The best way to describe the experience is that it was like being live in a Mad Max movie. It was one of the most exciting things I’ve ever done, my adrenalin was in overdrive willing the truck to go faster and fly higher!

Hope you enjoy the video of the sand buggy rides and it brings it to life for you.

Sand boarding for beginners

Eventually we pulled up to stretch our legs, and then discovered this wasn’t a break, it was the start of the sand boarding as we were stood on the top of a ridge. Boards were unloaded from the truck and we stood there looking at the drop, this meant decision time.

My trapped nerve was still an issue, but was definitely on the mend, but the Inca Trail trek was only a week away, so a wise person would have chosen not to go headfirst down a sand mountain, like Dawn and Reg. Not being a wise person, I grabbed the board, carefully knelt down gently, laid on the board and flew down the hill and gingerly stood up at the bottom, no damage done.

Back into the truck and off we went to our next stop with lots more roaring engines, flying off ridges and to avoid trucks coming from other angles. Eventually it took us to the high point of the tour, with an outstanding vista from one of the high points of the region. It was then that we realised there was another reason for reaching this high point of the region, it was the next sandboard opportunity.

Sand boarding for the deranged

After a climb along a ridge, we were faced with a downhill run that was at least 2 km long. There was no reason in the world for a sensible person with a trapped nerve in their back to go headfirst down this hill. However, the constant excitement of the racing trucks had my adrenaline pumping and the next thing I was looking down the mountain, in the company of my young companions. Before I knew it, I was having one of the most exciting runs of my life, going over 50mph headfirst down a sand mountain.

I hope you enjoy the video of our sand boarding and it brings it to life for you.

The truck collected us in the valley below and took us off to another remote part of the sand dunes to watch the incredible sunset over the dunes. At this remote location we all found places on the dunes to settle and just watch the vastness and desolated scene across the desert, providing a fabulous counterbalance to the adrenaline junkie events of the afternoon.

After we had climbed all over the trcucks for photos, and climbed up the sand dunes, we headed back to the truck park and the end of the adrenaline experience, but it wasn’t the end of the day.

We walked back down to the town for the evening BBQ and a few beers with our fellow adventurers but we had no idea how much mayhem was about to follow us as we headed for the bar to celebrate our adventures.

07/01/2026
A crazy night in Huacachina

Some memorable nights come about after a well laid plan, and others come about spontaneously, and after 4 hours overdosing on adrenaline I was ready for a beer or two and whatever would follow.

The scene was set when we settled in the bar overlooking the oasis, with our Scottish chums Dawn and Reg from the dune buggy. The first beer arrived and was gone in a flash, on to the next one and Dawn started to tell us about an obnoxious, misogynous chap called Dave who was from London, he had clearly got up her nose but apart from that we were getting along just fine with tales of mountain biking and then time for another beer.

Suddenly, the atmosphere changed, Dawn started hissing and then said, “there he Is, Dave from London”, as a chap walked along the balcony and took up a seat near us. To our disbelief, it was “John from Raynes Park”, or Dogbite John as we were calling him. Admittedly he seemed to have his faults but there were daggers looks flying between Dawn and John. This which was a bit awkward as he moved over to talk to us, I decided it was time to have another beer and focus on mountain biking with Reg.

Wooksie pointed out there must be a mistake, as he was called John not Dave, but Dawn had made her mind up and put up the barriers. So, we drank up and headed on to the next big event, the BBQ, which involved lots of lovely foot and lots of Pisco Sours, this evening was really beginning to escalate.

Then our Scouser chums Helen and Glenn appeared and joined in the evolving party spirit that was driven by adrenaline overdoses, free beer and now a bottomless jug of Pisco Sours, along with some young people who thought we were younger than we were.

Poor old John was excluded from the fun, so my wife Wooksie, being a truly lovely person went over and kept John company, Dawn continued her hate session and I got to know the young people as we;; as Glenn and Helen.

When the free beer and Pisco Sours ran out, most people of a certain age retire to bed. So we bid farewell to Dawn and Reg from Scotland along with Dog bite John and I decided to test the water with our new Scouser chums about going on to a later bar.

To be fair, they took no persuading at all so we headed to the infamous “Wild Rover” bar. our coach was due to leave at 6am, but 1 more drink wasn’t going to hurt us, what was the worst thing that could happen anyway (there was the problem right there, that is my out of control mantra).

Wild Rover bar

When we entered the bar there was some strange formalities, like I had to prove my age and my identify, which took at bit of time but it was immediately obvious that this place was built for fun and young party people, and luckily for them we had arrived!

Things started quite slowly with a bit too much Abba for my liking but the young people seemed to be enjoying themselves so I put up with the music and joined in. The more we talked (or by now shouted) at Glenn and Helen the more we realised we had loads in common and the night accelerated even further when we discovered that a jug of Pisco Sour was an amazingly good investment, so we bought two jugs just in case they ran out of jugs.

Wooksie was now picking up a head of steam as well, normally she is quite reserved but clearly the company of Helen was encouraging her, then Bettina from the dune buggy arrived and things seemed to take off even further.

An unfortunate incident was thankfully avoided. Wooksie, who was happily dancing to the music and singing along when she headed to what she thought was the dance floor. Thankfully someone noticed that the aforesaid dancefloor was actually a swimming pool and disaster was avoided when she was ushered in another direction.

Meanwhile, the DJ had now decided to insert some karaoke into the evening mix and there were now young people on stage singing along to the tracks. Glenn and I were moving closer and closer to the stage as we were singing along with increasing enthusiasm and picking up momentum, After “Blue Monday”, Joy Division was just too much for us to take, we couldn’t control ourselves any longer, grabbed the mikes and gave the young people a great version of “Love will tear us apart”, to be honest we didn’t need the microphones.

At this point, we noticed a disturbance at the bar, to our amazement one of the bar staff was now walking along the bar pouring free tequila down punters throats. It was just like the scene from Coyote Ugly, amazingly I’d always wanted to do that. The young people were a bit tentative in their indulgence so Glenn and I hustled our way to the front to have copious amounts of tequila poured down our throats whilst Wooksie looked upon with horror.

By 3am, the best of the evening had been had, then we remembered that we had a bus to catch in 3 hours, it had completely slipped our memory, Wooksie was having a lovely time with the cool people near the bar, Glenn and I were still telling stories and becoming friends for life.

Turning the music off didn’t quell our enthusiasm and eventually we were politely ushered from the establishment and sent on our way home. We wandered the streets wondering where we lived and eventually, we found our hotel and got our heads down by 4am.

Breakfast started at 530am and unfortunately it turned out the kitchen was right beside our bedroom, and the preparation started at 5am. So our was curtailed after about an hour by the sound of clanking pans.

It’s always amazed me how much damage one hour’s sleep can be to your physical state, I went to bed at 4am very happy and when I was awoken at 5am to the sound of banging pots, I felt like a dead rat had crawled into my head, farted a lot, had thrown up before dying on my tongue.

At 5.45 we gathered all our gear together, grabbed a drink and some fruit and headed for the rendezvous for the coach to see the Nazca lines, which was only 4 hours away in a minibus.

Dawn and Reg were waiting for us, with big smiles on their faces and were happy to share what a great nights sleep they had enjoyed and asked us how our night had gone.

I think our eyes told the story, but it was time to head on to one of our big events of the holiday, the Nazca lines.

06/01/2026
Dancing horses, cunning guinea pigs and fun in Paracas

If you are planning a trip to Peru and you read no further, make a note of these words “Peru Hop” and research them.

We travelled a lot as a family but had kept to English speaking countries outside of Europe, so Peru was a new challenge for us. My research highlighted a couple of new things, like Tripadvisor and Trustpilot as we didn’t have smart phones back in the day, so life was a lot easier.

I was looking for some adventure south of Lima and into the northern reaches of the Atacama desert, we were also keen to visit the mysteries Nasca Lines and Tripadvisor threw up the perfect solution, courtesy of Peru Hop, we had a 3 day trip that took to Paracas, Huacachina and then off to Nasca for a flight over the ancient drawings in the desert, it also included various cultural experiences along the way, so it seemed idea.

I mention PeruHop here, because if we had known about them then we would have followed a different itinerary. Basically, they run a scheduled bus service around the main cities and attractions in Peru, linked with their own hotels and you can chop and change your plans online. Our daughter used them this year and found them great, but we took a difficult path.

Regular readers will know that I don’t have much luck with the weather. Lima gets about 1 cm of rain a year and when we were picked up at 6am for the trip, the bus had the windscreen wipers on, I truly am a rain bringer!

After battling through the traffic, we headed out of town, it wasn’t long before poverty of the country became evident as we headed south. The buildings were at best ramshackle and stretched out along the highway until we were out into dry arid desert plains that run alongside the Pan American Highway running south.

The landscape confirmed what I was expecting, miles and miles of nothing, other than hills on one side, a plain out to the sea on the other side and remote clusters of destitute communities.

Dancing Horses of Peru

The highlight of the first day was to be the Dancing Horses of Peru at one of the stops, We were all grateful to get off the bus for the show which seemed to happen at their equivalent of a motorway service station. After a cup of coffee, we headed for the arena to see the silky skills of the rider and the agility of the horses.

Out came the horse and rider, they both bowed to the audience, then the horse ran around in circle a couple of times, the rider waved his hat, it then turned around an ran off. That was the famous Dancing Horses of Peru, and I have to admit it was a tad underwhelming, maybe the running around in circles horses would be a better description.

Guinea Pig Tombola

On to the next event, the Guinea Pig Tombola. To us Guinea Pigs are cuddly, things we keep as pets, whereas in Peru they have a status marginally above a chicken as they are part of their diet.

The tombola was basically a ring, with a dozen gates in the walls. The game involved the guinea pig being put in a box, around a couple of times, then it was released from the box with the intention being that it would escape the ring through a random gate. I suspect gambling was involved in this in the real world with wagers being places on the gate, So a bit more like roulette than tombola.

So, the game began and the guinea pig duly escaped through a gate, it was rounded up, put back in the box and released again. To our surprise it looked around and headed directly for the same gate. Bearing in mind guinea pigs are regarded as food, this little fella had worked out how to survive, because he/she had worked out that if it went through that gate it didn’t get eaten, or it had noticed that its mates had gone out the other gates and were never seen again, whatever the reason, we were impressed by the guinea pigs cunning and were all willing to bet on the next roll of the guinea pig but we were ushered back on the bus.

More hours driving through thewasteland until we turned off down a small road heading towards the sea . After a lot of bumping around, we came across Paracas, which was quite a surprise.

Introducing Pisco Sours

Paracas was paradise in the middle of nowhere. Apparently, it was once a fishing port but had managed to find a way of surviving by running boat trips out to some remote islands it had cleverly called Little Galapagos. This set our imaginations flying and we were looking forward to the boat ride the next morning to sea weird and wonderful creatures.

However, our cultural events for the day were not over. We checked into our hotel (Wooksie insisted on the 3* not the hostel) and headed off to learn how to make Pisco Sours, the famous Peruvian cocktail that got it’s name from the big town up the coast, obviously Pisco.

The demonstration was very good, mixing a variety of ingredients including egg whites, and pisco, which is basically a form of tequila. To be fair we hadn’t paid too much attention on the detailed finer points of the recipe, and I had certainly focused on quantity rather than quality, unfortunately the kindly locals left us to amuse ourselves with the ingredients.

Obviously, this had consequences, mostly on our vision and ability to walk straight, so we set up shop in one of their little waterfront bars, sobered up by drinking beer and having a chilled late afternoon in the sun.

Meet John from Raynes Park

The next passenger onto to the coach in Lima was a rather irritating Brit called John. Seat was wrong, he didn’t have this or didn’t know about that,and generally was a General Moan a Lot. So we decided to give him a wide berth, and chatted to other people instead.

We made it back to the hotel, showered and headed out looking for food and settled on a little BBQ fish place that looked idea and ordered our food. We then settled down reflecting on our day when we were interrupted by an English voice engaging us in conversation, disappointingly it was John.

He was keen to us that the restaurant owners were lovely and kind people. Earlier that afternoon he had stopped in for a snack and been attacked by the pet dog, which was quite a terrifying beast that was sitting in the corner of the restaurant staring at us. If ever there was a need to be tested for tetanus or even rabies, that dog was it.

Having had his hand savaged the owners had helpfully bandaged him up and gave him a meal half price. We then realised that John was one of those Brits that wanders the world, doesn’t like foreigners, survives situations despite their own incompetence, and this wasn’t the end of John in our world, he kept reappearing.

So, we retired back to our hotel as soon as we could offload John, looked out of our bedroom window over the Pacific in the distance, but also over a group of youngsters in the square outside. We The discovered that Peru also had chavs and ill behaved teenagers, and they spent most of the night outside our hotel racing their mopeds and tusk tuks with the exhaust pipes drilled.

Eventually jet lag and exhaustion took over and we got in a couple of hours kip before waking at 5am for our next cultural experience, the early morning trip to Little Galapagos.

30/12/2025
Rediscovering Freedom: Our Adventure to Peru

As the last offspring left the nest, it was time to enjoy our new freedom and start travelling to far flung lands again.

23 years earlier we had completed our last pre kids adventure trekking and rafting in Nepal, Next on our list was the Inca Trail in Peru, but fate intervened and child number one was on the way, and that trip was put on ice.

The last of our offsprings was heading to university so we decided it was time for us to get back on the road again. Now that we had our freedom back the destination was easy, Peru here we come.

After some research, which included the BBC TV series “Race across the World“, we came up with an itinerary. Contacted a few trekking agencies and settled on Alpaca Expeditions tours out of Cusco, there was a 6 week lead so by mid-August we were booked up and ready for the off in late September.

It was at this moment that I had a closer look at the Inca Trekking route and discovered it was VERY steep and at high altitude. This hadn’t really registered 23 years ago, so every weekend we were out doing at least 20km walks up and down any hills we could find around Bristol, with plenty in Wales and in the Mendips.

Our training culminated in a trek up Mt Snowden, the highest mountain in the UK, we dropped our youngest off at Liverpool University, gave him a hug and a wave, and headed off to north Wales for the trek armed with all our new gear and our cockapoo Tess for company.

The trek up Snowden was roughly the same as the toughest day on the Inca Trail but without the altitude. It was quite tough but manageable, even Tess the Dog started to look a bit tired on the way back down.

We headed for our hotel, had a nice meal and went to bed. At this point things took an unexpected turn, I woke up in the night in agony, it later transpired that I had trapped a nerve in my back, probably on the steep decline at the end, and not to be left out, Tess the Dog threw up in the hotel room, probably a bit of exhaustion.

So, the last few days before departure to Peru were spent in the physio going through untold pain with the manipulation, followed by sleepless nights, and more pain.

It was difficult to know the true source of the pain, was it my back or was it the physio. By the time we headed to the airport my walking had improved from a shuffle to a limp but still not a lot of hope for climbing a mountain, but we had a couple of weeks in Peru before the trek so there was hope.

We flew to Lima via Madrid with Air Europe airlines, which seemed to be quite a new low cost airline and they were very good. We upgraded to business class to give my back a chance and by some freaky miracle, lying a bit awkward on the flatbed seemed to do my back the world of good, though it is never fun arriving in a county at 2.30am.

We had 3 days allocated to Lima to recover and look around and it was probably more than we needed. Thanks to Business Class we didn’t need the recovery day and were up and walking around by mid-morning.

Lima is a typical third world capital city, heavily congested with clapped out vehicles, mad people on motorbikes and packed buses, all the guidebooks send tourists to Miraflores as the epicentre of fun, and to be honest it was quite a nice place to chill out on the first afternoon.

There are lots of restaurants and you can generally get buy speaking English, there are Irish bars and wandering bands of minstrels playing Peruvian music, and you will be faced by your first deep fried guinea pig which is a bit disturbing.

After an hour or so sitting around it was time to test my back a bit more and do some more exploring and we discovered a very spectacular waterfront. Lima is built on a cliff top overlooking the Pacific Ocean, so technically this was our first glimpse of the South Pacific.

The lower level has the motorway running beside it but there was a pier with a loverly bar overlooking the rocky beach and the local surfers enjoying the waves, I noted their thick wetsuits from bar and decided the water was no place for a bloke with a bad back.

We headed back to Miraflores to test the Peruvian food for dinner and a pint in the Irish Bar before heading back for a good night’s kip. Next day we were beginning to regret having an extra day in Lima, then we decided to take a tour bus to fill the day up and see the city. This turned out to be a very good idea, as there was a lot of good stuff to see and the bus was really the only way to see it.

The city is spread out but we discovered that the muddy hill behind our hotel was actually an ancient pyramid that had only been discovered 25 years ago, up to that moment the local kids had used it for dirt bike riding.

The tour took us around to the main square of government builds which was very attractive, and over the coming weeks we discovered that pretty every city in Peru had one of these. Our fist ancient monetary and some sites of some bad moments between the people and their government which litters their history.

So that was our trip to Lima, a good start but now the real fun begins.

29/12/2025