From Cusco we flew back to Lima and bused down to the curious and impressive sand dunes of Ica, Peru. The area’s main attractions are bodegas/vineyards, sandboarding and dune-buggying. This in mind we immediately booked a tour to two vineyards followed by a sunset tour on the sand dunes.

Vineyards and sand dunes

Wine-tasting

El Catador is an artisanal winery that does things such as pressing grapes and distilling wine at a much less industrial level.

The oasis of Huacachina; waiting to dune-buggy and sandboard

The tour was an hour and a half, flying over the dunes in the dune-buggies with the opportunity to slide down multi-hundred-foot dunes on a snowboard, sunset included.

The perspective makes it a bit hard to make out, but this is our buggy perched on the peak of a hundreds-of-feet dune.

Julien’s attempts to correctly spell Perú

Click here for a sand dunes buggy ride with us!

Ica’s cathedral was badly damaged in a large earthquake in 2007, still unable to be accessed.

We spent much of our four days in Ica working on the blog, taking advantage of exceptionally good internet speeds. On the last evening, we headed back to the dunes, and walked up to the top of one to enjoy a last sunset over the desert.

Ten minutes in.

Reached the top in twenty minutes!

I still don’t understand how these massive dunes don’t swallow up the cities that form at the base.

Heading back down to the oasis Huacachina.

A little halfway point stop: people heading up, people heading down.

We left Ica with many fond memories with the dunes and plenty of sand in our shoes!