Having visited the two most famous historical sites of Perú in the space of a week, it was time for me to take some R 'n' R in a sandy and sunny place. Usually this would mean going to the beach, but for the sake of variety I headed off to Huacachina which has dunes to rival the ones I visited in the North-East of Brazil all those months ago. The small town of Huacachina is also home to the lagoon which is featured on the back of the Peruvian 50 Nuevo Soles note, so I figured that alone must be special enough to warrant a quick visit here.

As it turns out the lagoon is pretty stagnant and doesn’t smell too great when you get up close, but if you keep your distance then it’s not too bad. The sand dunes were very impressive both in their height and how far the desert extended. I had lots of fun racing around them in a dune buggy and down them on a sandboard, whilst sustaining only minor injuries! The dune buggy ride itself took place late on in the afternoon and so it finished with one of the most beautiful sunsets I’ve witnessed for a while – it was worth coming here just for this spectacle and it more than made up for the disappointing lagoon.

Whilst going around sand dunes in a dune buggy is all good and fun it is not cheap, and so if you want to head back to the heights of the dunes, and maybe tumble down a bit more, it means only one thing – get up there on foot. This is no easy task, especially not with the blazing sunshine that was ever-present during my stay in Huacachina. As much as I love the sunshine and appreciated being able to get back to work on my tan, it makes climbing sand dunes a hellish task which I did not attempt again after my first time!

In Huacachina I bumped into Jason who I had met on my Machu Picchu trip. He had met up with a couple of his friends from home (Ryan and Matt), so I spent some time with them. One night we all went camping out in the desert along with a few people from my hostel and a couple of the guys that work there. Perfect timing as I had just had the brilliant idea of ditching my sleeping bag in Nasca. Fortunately Jason was kind enough to make a bit of space for me in his for the night; I have never spent so long keeping deadly still as there is literally zero room to move!

On our little camping trip we sang/played some guitar/drank beer around the camp fire before heading off on a mission to climb a nearby dune – a much easier task without the hindrance of the sun and with a little beer inside you. Due to sandball fights leaving a lot of sand in our eyes, mouths, ears and anywhere else it could get, along with cart-wheeling on the dunes, we all got a little disorientated and came down a different way to the one we had come up and could not see our fire anywhere. Somehow we managed to find our way back to the "campsite" and got tucked in for a very cold night.

Due to the fantastic weather and therefore constant blazing heat, a swimming pool is something that you definitely need to make sure you have at your disposal. The first hostel I stayed at had a pretty nice pool, but it meant staying in a dorm room built for 19 people and the pool was always surrounded by the very noisy Israelis that seemed to occupy every other bed in the hostel. Therefore after one night I moved into a different place that was about half the price and I got an eight bed dorm room all to myself, despite there being no pool here it was not too much of a problem as it was right around the corner from my old place and that was where the boys were staying. One day we even went to a different pool that was on the way between our hostels as it was much quieter and nicer. It was here that I randomly bumped into Zak who I had met working on my boat to Antarctica… sometimes the world is a very small place indeed.

Once I was fully rested and had managed to wash as much sand off as possible, it was time to leave the little town of Huacachina behind.