Yesterday we arrived in the desert and today we really experienced it.
After a late morning wake up, we started with what was maybe an eight mile run along the road from Huacachina towards Ica. We were each feeling sore from the heavy miles that we had logged in Lima, perhàps also from last night's climb. The hill that we hit along the road coming out of the oasis wasn't big, but was trying all the same. It was also the first real incline that we had run up since arriving in Peru.
The famous lagoon, which is featured in the back of Peru's 50 nueva-sole bill, was behind us. To our right, there was the massive sand dune we had climbed the night before with an even bigger dune rising up behind it.
The majesty of the road was short-lived however. As soon as we passed the billboard telling us we were leaving Huacachina, the houses closed in on either side of us. Terrifyingly, many had dogs lining the roofs to bark and snarl at us as we went by. We turned around at outskirts of Ica because the roads were getting choked by honking taxis and clean air killing busses. Dogs were everywhere. On the way back, we saw a kid chasing a group of his friends while dragging a dead rat on a string behind him. Lovely.
Going back, we tried to add distance to our run by exploring some sandy sideroads, but they all dead-ended amongst abandoned shacks, piles of debris and partly burned trash heaps. Also, we heard a distant pack of dogs barking in the distance that weren´t likely to be leashed or friendly. We were a bit discouraged, and turned back early.
On a more positive note, we had a real treat in store for us when we got back to the hostel: warm showers. It was nice to get clean without going to the brink of hypothermia in frigid water.
Refreshed, we sat down for a delicious and cheap outdoor breakfast at a place in town. I ordered tropical pancakes, which turned out to be a soft crepe decorated with a latticework of choclate sauce. It was filled with all manner of delicious fruit, most of which I couldn't recognize. To wash it down, a tasty glass of banana juice.
Outside meanwhile, we saw the sun (the sun!) come out of the clouds and into the blue sky, illuminating the palm treas and warming us in our seats.
So many wonders and luxuries here, and yet if not for the music, the experience could hardly have been called complete. No, it was not reggaetone playing over the outdoor soundsystem; it was "Total Eclipse of the Heart," it was the Titanic theme song! What could better complement the beauty of the morning sun than Beyonce's voice, cranked through your skull at top volume? Needless to say, that breakfast, the whole day that we shared, was something extra-special as a result.
After breakfast, we wandered around the palms by the oasis for a bit and then decided to go up the dune behind the town. We found it considerably easier going when we went up the ridgeline rather than attacking the slope directly as we had the night before.
At the top of the dune, we had a splendid view of the oasis, knew that we could run down to it in thirty seconds though it had taken half an hour to climb as far. Instead, we took funny pictures, including one of me pretending to die of thirst and some shots of Max and Ben leaping through the air and commiting suicide off the edge of the dune. You could afford to jump far and come down hard because the sand cushioned the impact.
The top of the dune offered us another incredible view of our surroundings. To the east lay Ica and the tall mountains beyond. There was a ramshackle town to the north, with a road leading out forever into the great nowhere. West was most impressive as we could see nothing but the blank face of the desert, row upon row of dunes receding until we saw the final, distant ridges of sand. An occassional dune buggy tore across the landscape with the din of its engine and screaming passengers. For all their bluster and noise, they were only blips against the vastness.
We had our own appointment with the buggies, but it was not until 4:00, several hours away. When we got off the dune, I felt exhillerated but unsatisfied by our adventure. As long as Huacachina and Ica were still visible, I couldn't feel as though I had experienced the desert to its fullest. I let Ben and Max went back to relax in the hostel, and began to walk westward, away from town. Using the compass I had with me, I took a bearing on the oasis so that I would know the general direction back if I became disoriented. This wasn't really necessary since I could always follow dune buggy tracks, but I felt safer taking extra precaution.
On the march out, I passed a second oasis, much smaller than Huacachina and also reeking of shit. I speculated as to whether this could be the final resting place for the all the tourist turds flushed out of town. If so, I can can say I made my own contribution to the ugly puddle and its awful reek.
I began climbing up the next hill, sweating and grunting up the rise as sand poured into my boots. In the great struggle, I could still hear the reggae pumping (with everything else)out of the oasis. As soon as I walked down the dune's other side however, the sand blocked everything, and the world became silent. I was in the trough between two massive waves of sand, where there was no visible sign of humanity.
I knew immediatly that my solitude wouldn´t be worth anything unless there were people I could show it off to. In that spirit, I whipped out the camera and mini tripod so that I could have photographic evidence. I set the timer and assumed my best lonesome desert wanderer pose--just in time for a dune buggy to fly in and fuck up the frame.
I made things worse when I thoughtlessly jammed my camera into my pocket, which was full of sand. Sand and cameras are not on good terms--a fact I grew to appreciate as I tried to get the lens to retract. I could still take pictures, but it now took far more time and profanity.
Despite the setback, I pressed on along the quest for greater solitude. After I crested a second dune, I looked out and saw a virgin slope of untrammelled sand before me. It was perhaps three acres of perfect smooth, strirated by alternating light and dark ripples.
Seeing such natural perfection and harmony, the only appropriate human reaction is to defile it utterly. I stepped boldly upon that empty dune and then ran down its slope with arms flailing, boots filling with the hot sand.
There is a tiny wonder that occurs each time one disturbs the dunes which is difficult to describe here. Along slopes, the desert has a skin, a brittle surface shell above the looser sand beneath that behabes as a liquid. Each step triggers shockwaves that go uphill and break this surface into tiny pieces in a phenomenon which looks like icebergs calving off from a glacier.
The surface continues to break away for three to five feet above the footprint and the loose sand beneath streams down, filling the hapless trekkers' boots. The small avalanch then tumbles past where the foot came down to descend another ten or twenty feet like a slow moving avalanche. The rush of sand is audible as a soft hiss.
Each step I took triggered its own mini landslide for about twenty feet down the slope. The lighter colored sand that I disturbed contrasted sharply with the darker sand at the surface, making the proof of my presence all the more obvious. When I had walked a good mile away from the slope, I could sill look back and see the stark line of my descent, vivid like a scar slashed across a pretty face.
After I had contemplated the destruction my boots had caused and thought about the further damage caused by dune buggies such as the one that I would ride later. I felt self-conscious and felt bit guilty.
That was another remarkable quality of the desert: it's hard not to think about yourself while out there. In other environments such as cities and forests, the traveller is only one detail in a sea of chaotic images and patterns, whether these are the billboards and advertisements of the urban jungle or else the whorls and swoops of branches in the woods. Here, however, the land around is an empty page. The traveller is a single mote of static upon a blank screen. When there is nothing to see except the graceful contours of the desert, a human being sticks out like a sore thumb. I thought about how we define our own identities in comparison to our environments whether we are a student at a school, a drinker at a bar etc. The desert emptiness, contrasts the self against the infinite and nothingness. The fact of one's own existence assumes a new significance because it is so unique to everything else.
Okay, so now I'm spiralling dangerously close to the bullshit point of no return. I'll pull myself back from the brink a little by saying that I didn´t get any spiritual revelations. There were no angels, burning wheels or voices from above. Maybe after a week, I would have hallucinated my spirit animal and acheived oneness with the universe. No such luck. At the least, it was refreshing to shed all the audio and visual distractions of everyday life and just look at a lot of sand.
I could have mentioned earlier, that the desert also had a bit of a litter probblem. The desolation was actually interrupted by migratory plastic bags, bottles and other bits of litter left by careless people. Considering how empty the land was, this trash was a painful, visible contrast against the environment.
To alleviate some of my guilt regarding the impact that I was made as a visitor, I picked a plastic bag out of the sand. As I walked back, I filled it with all of the easily accessible junk that I could find. When I got to town, I took the full bag and stuffed it into a trash can. Of course they'd probably just empty that can into one of the shallow landfills that we'd run through earlier. Then the trash would blow back right where I took it from. I tried at least.
Okay, enough of that philosophy-stuff. I was getting worried too! Dune Buggies! Sand Boards! Xtreme sports in your face!
Our dune buggy trip was noisy, scary as hell and pretty damn fun. We got buckled in, digital cameras were sealed in ziplocked bags and those not cool enough to be wearing shades received special glasses so that the whirling grit would not fly into their eyeballs. Our ride was a hulking behemoth, forged out of cast-iron bars into an intimidating shark shape. Ten of us could fit inside, including the driver who attacked the dunes with a zeal for increasing our screams and hollers. The buggy roared like a chainsaw, farting great clouds of diesel smoke as it flew. We sailed to the top of one dune, perhaps 75 feet tall and stopped.
The driver pàssed us our sandboards, fun toys that are much like snowboards, only adapted for regular shoes. The idea is that with enough wax, you can go down the side of the dune, and pretty damn fast.
Everyone stood on top, eyeing the slope and weighing rewards and consequences. The reward is that you could be the first brave enough to make the descent, show everyone how fearless you are; the consequences that you'll probably just fall on your ass, get hurt and look stupid. There will be plenty of people ready to take pictures too.
A guy with a tatoo of the state of Wisconsin on his bicep was the first to go. Equipped with snowboarding experience and a specialized board that had boots, he made it down without difficulty. I watched a couple of others go before I decided to try my luck.
Steering was not a skill that I had, so I went for a straight vertical descent. I made it about halfway down before eating sand. I got up and managed to surf the rest of the way down--almost a victory. Then I fell again.
On their first attempts, both Max and Ben made it about as far as I had before falling. Max's wipeout was particularly impressive because he got air and tumbled for a couple times. Fortunately, we all emerged unscathed from our first rides, ready to screw up again.
We were buggied to a second dune, a taller one this time. I made the mistake of thinking that I had learned something from the last descent and pointed my board downhill.
WHAM! Exploding pain to the right side of my ass. I loosed an obscenity and got partway up so that I could execute a pathetic skid down the rest of the slope. After that, I became far more cautious going downhill, resorting to squatting on the board and dragging my arm behind like a rudder so I could steer/break.
I think I was the slow learner of the pack of us, but at least I was getting some awesome views as the sun went down in the desert. On our last hill, we watched the stunner of a sunset burn out over a set of far-off planes. This was a place we hadn't seen yet, where none of the dune buggies traveled, where ebony crags of rock reared out of the sand like breaching whales.
We loaded the boards and ourselves onto the buggy and tore hell across the landscape. Our driver did not slow for the dimming light, but instead brought his machine roaring up the face of the tallest sand dune in sight. He whirled it back around right before the top so that we had made a great crescent shape, and plunged kamikazee down the slope. My stomach floated as we fell and then whiplashed into my ribcage when we hit the next dune. Then the driver took us back and we did it again.
Someone had brought her kid along with us who was probably not more than the age of five. He screamed and screamed for the whole way back, oblivious to his mother's consolation. It was the purest distillation of agony and terror that I had heard in a while. My heart went out to his suffering. I know that when I was his age, I would have been catatonic by that point.
There was a classic rock-themed restaurant in Huacachina where we got out dinner. The music was all in Spanish and really good. If I had written down the words from the songs, I might have tried to look up the bands and bought some albums back in the USA.
Peru Lesson of the Day--
Cusqueña premium beer is worse than regular Cusqueña
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