Three days in Huacachina, Ica and Nazca
Huacachina 
Huacachina is located near Ica and has roughly 100 inhabitants. It is a small village built around an oasis and is surrounded by ~100m high dunes.
15 August 2015
As soon as we arrived to our hostel, we booked a sand buggy and sand boarding tour for the afternoon. We also informed about a trip to the Nazca lines but decided that we want to try this on our own.
From four to six, we then had our tour inside the dunes.
The buggy drove through the dunes like there was no tomorrow. We were buckled like racing drivers with a seat belt between the legs and over the shoulders.
We did some photo stops with a great view over the dunes and four stops where we could test our board skills and were picked up at the bottom of the dunes again. After a disappointing start in a quite flat dune, the following ones were incredibly steep – I did not dare to stand on the board.
We saw the sun set from a beautiful dune where it got cold as soon as the sun left.
Back in the hostel, we got a Pisco Sour for free (Pisco, lime juice, egg white and sugar sirup). In the evening we went partying with people from the hostel.
Ica
16 August 2015
After breakfast with view on the lagoon and the dunes behind, we started our day with relaxing.
We then got a taxi to Ica which is 5km from Huacachina to buy new sunglasses after we lost some in the dunes the day before. We walked through the city and found a good one. With a mototaxi we went back to Huacachina.
The evening in Huacachina, we relaxed at the lagoon, read and wrote home and had a great dinner.
Nazca Lines
Nazca is a small town located in the South of Peru. It is renowned for the famous Nazca Lines, enormous geoglyphs etched into the desert floor over 2,000 years ago. These ancient designs depict various animals, plants, and geometric shapes, and their purpose and creation techniques still remain a mystery.
17 August 2015
Today we drove to the legendary Nazca Lines on our own.
We took a taxi to Ica and from there we took the bus for three hours to Nazca. From there we took another bus back half an hour to a lookout tower/mirador. You could have done it more intelligently and simply asked the bus driver of the first bus if he would let you off earlier… But fine. We didn’t know.
The observation tower was outstanding, breathtaking – cough – rickety scaffolding in the middle of nowhere 😀
After entering two soles, we could see the frog (=the hands) and the tree from above. Theoretically you should see a lizard, but we only saw a few car tracks.
The lines turned out to be a lot thinner than we thought. Totally thin and quite small. By the way, you can’t enter them because there is still a danger of landmines in the whole area! Also, they would break 😛
Many other lines are off-road and can only be viewed from an airplane. But that was too dangerous and too expensive for us. So now we were standing somewhere in the middle of nowhere in the blazing sun without a car. How to get away? We waited for the next bus and waved it over. Easier than you think. So we went back to Nazca to have something to eat before the long drive back to the hostel.
After a mediocre pizza and a walk through Nazca we went to look for a bus.
Since I intelligently didn’t have my ID with me (I left it in the hostel in Huacachina), it wasn’t that easy to find a company that would take me without a passport.
But you just have to look for the cheapest bus 😉 At every stop, women come into the bus to sell things. Homebrewed and bottled juice, oranges, sweets… With a moto taxi without a door we went back to the hostel, where we chilled until our bus left for Cusco at 9:30 pm.
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