Sandboarding og vingård

Huacachina town is built around a small lake. An oasis in the middle of the desert. It has surprised us a lot that Peru is such a dry country. The country with the driest places - ex. Huacachina - and the wettest places in the world - the Amazon. This city is quite literally located in the middle of a sand pit around a lake in the desert. There are only 2 rows of houses, all surrounding the lake. In the background all the way around the city, the eye is met by a wall of sand. The sand mountains are so close to the houses that many have sand directly in their gardens. No matter where you look, it's impossible to see a horizon. You really can't see past the high sand dunes that surround the city. We are in a hole :o) This morning we were woken up by shaking. The whole room was shaking, the door rattled in the door frame. However, nothing fell from the walls. It turned out to be a small earthquake measuring 4 on the Richter scale. The only thing that was damaged was the internet connection. All restaurants have a good view of the small lake in the center of the city. Menu del Dia costs only 10 S or 15 S. So far, this is where we have had the best meal. We had soups and salad for starters respectively. Lomo saltado and fish saltado for the main course. Saltado consists of sliced meat, onion, tomato and potato slices and rice. Very tasty and not much different from the food we already know. Saltado is one of the country's national dishes. Everyone smiles and takes it to heart when we say we like Lomo Saltado :o) The lifeblood of the city is the tourists who are attracted by surfing in the huge sand dunes. But the area also has another attraction that we started the day with. There are quite a few wineries or bodegas, as they are called in Peru. Tacama is South America's oldest winery and easy to visit from Huacachina. They produce white, rose and red wines, champagne and pisco, which is the country's national drink - on par with tequila in Mexico. Tacama is a modern and efficient winery that produces 1 million liters per year. It employs 100 people. They put a lot of effort into grafting vines to produce new grapes. As a contrast to a modern winery, we were then taken to a farm that still followed the old-fashioned method of stomping grapes. No one washes their feet before jumping into the grapes. Acidic toes help give it the right flavor. They produce a lot of pisco, which is an incredibly strong alcoholic drink. Mixed with lemon or lime, it tastes even better. This drink is called Pisco Sour and is served everywhere. Pisco mixed with grape juice or figs is also a good variant. At 4 pm we got into a dune buggy, which is a car specially built to drive in the huge sand dunes. The desert is over 50 km large and goes all the way to the Pacific Ocean. Our driver was really crazy and incompletely wild as he sped around with us in the desert. We all sat there screaming. He roared up almost vertical sides, went over the tops of the many dunes, roared down the other side so we thought we were going to fall over. At one point we flew through the air. He gave it full throttle over a cliff, so we flew 10 meters through the air before we landed. There were 8 of us in the car and everyone was screaming at the top of their lungs. We were strapped in tight otherwise everyone would have rolled, flown or fallen out of the car several times. Along the way we stopped a few times to surf down the steep sand dunes. Lots of candles under a surfboard and then you can surf. It doesn't hurt to fall over in the sand, which was lucky as everyone fell over a lot. It also meant that afterwards you had sand all over you when you took your clothes off :o) Both activities together cost 70 S per person.