Sandboarding!

Oh my god this morning was awesome!

I’m now in the tiny little village of Huacachina, and by tiny, it has 300 people.  It’s a village that grew up around a oasis, in the desert, and it used to be where rich people would have retreats.

Huacachina

Nowadays, it’s part of the “Gringo Trail” in Peru, known as a party stop for white people.  I’ve found out why, too!  It’s a playground!  We took out dunebuggies and went driving through the sand dunes,  it was super awesome, like a roller coaster but the kind where you could pick your own route.  I’d highly recommend the experience to anyone, itcosts around 40 soles to hire a driver and sandboards.

Dunebuggy

Then we got to the top of the dune and pulled out the sandboards!  They were actually snowboards but modified so they’d work on sand.  For starters, they don’t have edges, and the ones we had had modified bindings so you could use your regular shoes.  You have to wax your board before every run, and sometimes halfway down the run if you go too slowly.  It was so much fun, but a little bit confusing for me because I snowboard, so I was trying to turn and stuff like in snowboarding, but you don’t have as much control with the bindings and sand responds differently than snow (obviously).

Sandboarding!

But know why this is so super-awesome?  Because you can do a winter sport in the summer!  You can go skiing(ish) without having to worry about bundling up or getting frozen toes or going in for hot chocolate breaks.  It’s the best thing in the world, except you get sand in like every orifice.

Me!

So Uncle Derek, I dare you to outdo that!