To the Desert

At last, we embarked upon the long-awaited escape from Lima to seek our fortunes elsewhere. Our journey carried us eight hours down the Pan-American Highway to thec city of Ica and then via a short cab ride to the lovely tourist oasis of Huaycachina, an island of green situated amongst the desert sands. The hostel offered two nights of plush leather couches, internet access and comfortable beds, all for roughly nine American dollars. Posh bodegas took the place of the rundown buildings we saw in Lima and Ica. All around were Euro´s and Aussies; the air filled with the Bob Marley and R.E.M. they craved. Poncho-clad Quebecois and dreadlocked Germans mingled in their fashion with the Peruvian locals who sold them culture. Though my irony detector was blinking off the charts, I had to say that I kind of enjoyed the place.
First things first though, I must describe our last run in Lima and then the bus journey that took us to this place.

We started the day with a morning run of about nine and a half miles. The Terrible Shitz had descended upon a percentage of our group though I am happy to say that I had been in the clear so far. Because I know you think this is as interesting as I do, I will say that In Peru the best places to score a bathroom are the outposts of major American corporations. McDonalds and KFC have come through in the clutch for me on multiple occasions when the only other refuge would have been a darkened alley baño where I would have been lucky to find toilet paper, much less a seat.
I may rail against American cultural imperialism when safely at home amongst the beret-wearing, clove-smoking liberal cogniscienti, but abroad I'll happily sacrifice my values in exchange for a good flush.

After we returned from our outing, we picked up supplies at the Tottus, including some big loaves of bread that I planned to consume during the busride along with the red pasta sauce from a bag that I planned to dip it in. For old times sake, I picked out a can of lentils that I thought I´d be able to jimmy open with a pocketknife. Ever since developed a taste for eating cold soup out a can while in Ireland, I´ve taken pride in unusual culinary habits.
We had a fine breakfast of hot qunua made right, not too thin, and said our goodbyes to Rico and Helen. As a small gesture of our gratitude for letting us stay, we gave them a bottle of Argentine wine that we had found at Tottus. Rico shook our hands and told us to have a good time on our journies but to "keep our eyes open." Good advice for sure, but after our time in Lima I had actually began to feel more at ease. Crushes of people, aggressive street vendors, terrible drivers, diesel fumes and poverty--no problemo!

We took a taxi to the bus station about three miles away where we would hop aboard a Soyuz transport going south. That name sound familiar? It's no coincidence that our ride shared its name with the brand of rocket used to propel commies into orbit in cold war times. According to Rico, during the 1970´s when Peru was under a socialist dictatorship, the country received a lot of investment from the Soviet Union. I believe that Soyuz remains under Russian ownership but we didn't have to swear allegiance to Stalin or anything.
The bus was commodius, about as good as a greyhound for far less money.
It had apholstered seats and television screens that played dubbed versions of Heaven is Burning with Russel Crowe and The Bourne Supremacy. Footspace was a bit limited but it was a pretty pleasent setup otherwise.
One other complaint I had was our hot-collared busdriver. We almost missed the bus at the start when Ben ducked into the busstation bathroom. Max and I had to stall the bus driver so he wouldn´t pull away with our luggage. A second time, the guy almost pulled away on Max when he took a leak and would have left him at some desert gas station if not for the heroics of Ben and a Peruvian woman.

The beginning phase of our bus ride brought us through the same parts of town that we had travelled when we left for Patchamacac. For miles further, the highway stayed closed in by houses of mudbrick and sheetmetal until I wondered if Lima ever ended or if it stretched all the way to Chile.


After about an hour into the drive however, we began to see the wild, desert beauty of Peru. The service stations and clapboard shacks were a foil to the sand stretching out in front of us and up the Martian hills to our right. Martian is the best word I can apply to this desert, with its beige sands clumped with rocks, dried up riverbeds and empty canyons--a void lifeless expanse. When the highway cut through a hill, I could see that the earth consisted of stones fused together in dry clay soil.
There were a few terrestrial features however that would have been out of place on the fourth stone from the sun. The shacks for instance, lent the land a wild-west feeling. There was also that mist, everpresent in Lima, which followed us for a while before it disappeared and hot, sunny blue shone out in its place.




In addition to the desert, we had a striking view of the Pacific Ocean with its massive surf and empty beaches. A short ways offshore, there were jagged crags of rock. The surf had worn a hole through one big enough to paddle a kayak through.
All of this was in the absense of sunbathers or hotdog stands. The Peruvian beachfront real-estate market was as yet untapped. In America, the place would have been filled up with expensive beach houses, hotels, ice-cream delicatessans and the like. This coast was as yet unexploited, a beautiful desolation of lonely sand and waves stretching out for miles without interruption. It would be a good place to ride horses while the sun sets--you know, like in a movie.

As the road cut inland, some plantlife popped into view, including fields of grapes, spinach, and other irrigated crops. Palms mingled with thicker deciduous trees and for some reason there was even a bog out there. Maybe some of the greenery was natural waterflow, otherwise a lot of water must have been going to waste.
To the East, I could make out the foothills of the Andes. Using my keen mountaineering skills, I estimated that they were around 6,000 to 10,000 feet. Baby stuff compared to what we would see later on.



At last, the bus rumbled into Ica, a town about the size of Boston whose countless billboards, shacks and gas stations that remined me of the Lima strip. As soon as we got off, we walked away from the crush of taxi drivers trying to offer their services. Instead we went to a less-populated street so that we would get a better price. Sure enough, we ended up getting a cab to Huaycachina for five soles. The only drawback was that it didn´t have enough trunk space for our packs, and I ended up sitting in the passnger seat with all my stuff squashed in front of me. The fifteen minute ride into Huaycachina was uncomfortable to say the least.
It was dark and we were hungry by the time we got ourselves set up at the hostel. The fact that we were in tourist country was immediately apparent. We got a terrible meal at a local joint while a new-agey drum circle beat on ceasely outside. Some dude twirled firesticks for the amusement of the crowd of euro tourists. There was even some chick with dreadlocks writing stuff down in her moleskin notebook, probably going to blog away like some pretentious...okay I'll skip that comment.



We decompressed awhile and then decied that we wanted to climb the nearby sand dune, which loomed about 500 feet above the town. Night had fallen, but the hills were lit from Ica's glow. Amazingly, despite the light pollution, the stars shone through in vivid detail. The dry air must not reflect much light from below.
The climb was tough, far tougher than we had anticipated. Every step, our feet plunged into the fine silt of the dune. Small cascades of sand tumbled down in front of us as went up and the climb became so teep that we had to dig our hands into the slope in order to move forward. We stopped several times so that I could look upwards at our goal as my heart thudded in my head. After a small eternity of climbing, Ben surged to the front and almost fell over the other side.
The dune was not a giant mound, but rather a long wedge through the desert that made a sharp line at its top. We could walk along this edge and trigger mini avalanches of sand down either side.
Further off, there was another sand dune--dimly lit by Ica´s lights and illumination of the the sky. Between this dune and where we stood, there was a gulf of darkness, utterly black and undiscernable.
It was hard to tell, looking at the outlying desert and the clouds on the horizon, where the land ended and the sky began. One thing was certain however, and that was that the rest of the area was competely empty. There were no distant flits of light suggesting human habitation. Any light, even a candle miles out would have been visible to us. The miles of sand that I could see were perfectly smooth and showed no sign of plant or even stone. Certainly it was difficult to imagine any animals in this climate. Dead was not a good word for it because I doubted whether there had ever been anything living.
Against the desert, Huaycachina was thumping with a lively disquoteche and a shitty DJ going at it full blast. We were in a lonely place, but not yet so far from the rest of humanity. The edge of the sand dune marked the frontier, the border betwween the oasis clubs and infinite blank space. If one of us were to walk down the other side of that slope, the sounds from the night´s parties would eventually disappear. The stars, already stark with detail, would shine even brigher when the glow from Ica faded away. The curves of the dunes, with their alien geometry would only boggle the traveller, so that distance and direction would become meaningless values. Eventually the cold would set in; the desert would swallow the poor bastard, dry him to a withered husk and hopefully bury the grim sight so no one would have to see it.




After about 45 minutes of lying in the cold sand, we decided to head down. Waaay easier than going up. In fact we could run, sprint back towards Huaycachina at top speed. Even though it was dark, the sand had no obstacles so there was really no foreseeable consequence to running down the hill with utter abandon. Our long strides carried us back to the road from the summit in perhaps thirty seconds, despite the fact that it had taken us almost an hour to go up it.
We sat on a wall outside somebody´s house and emptied gallons of sand from our boots. You can never really get rid of the sand though. A week later there will still be a little bit of grit behind your ears.