Huacachina - Sandboarding!

After Lima our next destination was Huacachina. This was actually the place Trevor was most looking forward to. Trevor is a big snowboarder and with us travelling around South America during our winter, he was missing snowboarding. So to make up for this we were going to go sandboarding in the desert. We had to take a 4 hour bus from Lima to Ica and from Ica we took a 10 minute taxi ride to Huacachina.

Huacachina is a gringo paradise, made up of mountainous sand dunes that surround a picturesque lagoon. Its a tiny little town with a population of 200 people that survives compleletly off of tourism.



All the hostels have dune-buggy/sandboarding tours however the sandboards they use are cheap boards with just velcro straps for your feet. Trevor wanted to do the professional sandboarding so we spent the afternoon  looking to see where we could rent professional sandboards. During our investigating we came across this place Peru Sandboarding that was actually run by professional  competing sandboarders. It costed more then double (80 soles or $32) what we would pay with our hostel but they provided professional sandboards, an hour of lessons, and 3 hour dune-buggy/sandboarding tour. If you are going to Huacachina I would highly recommend you do the sandboarding with them over anyone else.

I have never snowboarded before and was actually nervous about sandboarding because I though it would hurt my hip but I wanted to give it a try. Turns out I absolutely loved it!!! I probably won't have liked it as much if we didn't rent professional sandboards and lessons but thankfully we did and I was even able to make it down a couple hills without falling.

If you are going to visit Huacachina or try sandboarding, here are a couple tips:

Cheap hostel sandboards

1) Rent professional sandboards - the hostels will provide you with the cheap strap-on-sandboards for free but there is no way you can go down the hill standing up properly in those. Because you're not strapped in properly you can't actually slow yourself down or stop properly.  A friend of our actually fell and got a conciousion using them. Most people that use the cheap boards just use them as sleds and go down the hills on their stomach. This can be fun too but if you really want to try sandboarding go professional.

2) Get lessons -  I specifically went with the company that offered an hour of sandboarding lessons and it greatly enhanced my sandboarding experience especially since I have never snowboarded before. They split our group into two groups: snowboarders and beginners. This was great because Trevor didn't need to worry about me and could practise going down with the other sandboarders while an instructor worked with us beginners showing us how to control our speed and slow down. When we got to the first hill the instructor also went down beside me till I was confident doing the hills by myself. I was even able to make it down the hills without falling thanks to the lessons. The hostel tours say they provide lessons but everyone we met said no instruction where provided, including the time we went with our hostel.

Size and steepness of the hills we went down

3) Go with a professional company not your hostel - besides the equipment and lessons using a professional company is worth the investment because everyone is using professional equipment so they take you to bigger hill. When we went with the professional company we did 10+ hills and that's all we did for 3 hours. It's a smaller group and you all go down faster so you get to spend more time sandboarding instead of waiting for everyone in the group to get down.  When we went with our hostel we only got to do 3 hills which were smallers and we were only out for 1.5 hours.

4) Watch the sand with your camera - you get sand everywhere and this includes your camera. There were a couple peoples, including us, whoses camera got messed up because of sand getting stuck in their camera. So if you really care about your camera don't take it with you.

5) Climbing sand dunes is hard -  climbing up sand dunes on your own is HARD. When we first got there we though we could just rent the sandboards and climb up the sand dunes and do it on our own. That was until we tried to climb a sand dune. I thought sandboarding might hurt my hip but the sandboarding itself didn't, it was trying to climb the sand dunes that did.  The dungs-buggys actually drive you to the top of the various sand dunes so you don't kill yourself trying to climb up. I have the best brother though because sometimes the sand dunes where too steep for the dungs buggy to go all the way to the top and you had to climb a portion of it yourself, carrying your sandboard. Whenever this was the case my brother won't let me carry my own sandboard because of my hip and would insist on carrying both his own and my sandboard up. 

6) Be prepared for your arms to hurt  - I'm not sure if it's the sandboarding, carrying your board, or holding on for dear life in the dungs buggy that causes this but the next day everyones arms hurts and it actually hurt for a couple daysafter.

7) Bring water - No matter what, you will be breathing in sand while sandboarding and riding the dungs-buggy, so having water  will be appreciated. Plus you do build up a huge thirst sandboarding, especially if you have to walk up any sand dunes.


8) Insist on googles - most places won't give you googles unless you ask and just tell you to wear sunglasses. Trevor however insisted on google and I'm really glad he did. The couple we did  lessons with actually regretted that they just had sunglasses because as mentioned before the sand goes everywhere so having your eyes fully enclosed is best.

9) Wear sunscreen - The sandboarding tours take place at sunrise/sunset because the sand is faster when it's cool and it's too hot to sandboard during the day. This doesn't mean you can skip the sunscreen though. The sun reflects against the sand and even though we both wore sunscreen we still ended up burnt.

10) All there is to do is sandboard - there is really nothing else to do in Huacachina but sandboard, so when booking a hostel look for one with a pool and some nice hammacks because that is where you will spend your day until you can go sandboarding in the late afternoon.

11) Falling on sand doesn't hurt as much - I think one of the good things about attempting sandboarding before snowboarding was that the falls don't hurt as muc. It's actually quite soft and my butt didn't hurt the next day. It was also good when I was first learning and didn't know how to stop because I just dragged my hand in the sand to stop myself. The only thing you need to watch out for is the somersault, thankfully I didn't do it but I did watch a couple of the snowboarders do a somersault fall which did not look like fun.

12) Getting started is the hardest part- I found getting the sandboard going to be the most  difficult part. Part of it is being up there and thinking can I really make it down that but once you work up the courage to get started I found it hard to get started. At the top of the sand dune you are usually diaganol but you need to straighten out your board to take off and it's not easy getting straightened out. When you first start you are also trying to gain control over your speed because if you just go straight you go really fast which is  dangerous so you actually want to try and curve a bit but once you have control over your speed its smooth sailing and so much fun. If I fell it was usually at the top while I was trying to gain control over my speed.

13) More wax = fast board - You will be given a candle and this is what you use to wax the bottom of your board. Before each run wax the bottom of the board and the more wax you have on the bottom the fast it will go - so the more the better.


14) Go on a dungs buggy tour - Even if you don't want to sandboard do the dungs buggy ride.  It really is a roller coaster and a ton of fun.

15) It's addictive - as mentioned I didn't think I would like it but after my first day on the hills I was addicted and talking about staying more then the intended 3 days to get more sandboarding in.