This Oasis Is Not a Mirage
THIS OASIS IS NOT A MIRAGE, IT EXISTS IN PERU AND FOR LACK OF CAMELS… BUGGIES!
It has been a little over four hours of driving from Lima. The clouds are getting thicker and thicker and are slowly filling the sky in southern Peru. The landscape has changed completely and now you can barely see the sun. Only a sandy sea of rolling dunes is visible.
In the bowels of the Pacific coastal desert, in the department of Ica, the destination is the famous “Oasis of America”.
As if it were a story out of “The Thousand and One Nights”, an incredible oasis looms on the horizon. It is the oasis of Huancachina.
A handful of houses, hotels and restaurants surround this greenish water mirror of less than one hectare of surface.
In the distance, as if guarding this amazing oasis, buggies… dozens of them.
First things first
Once the palpitations are restored and the excitement of seeing this extraordinary phenomenon gives us a break, we do not take long to learn the story behind it.
For more than a century the place has been an attraction that brings together Peruvians and foreigners from all over the world.
The Mossone Hotel, a picturesque neo-colonial style building, is part of the living history of the place and proof of what was the golden age of this oasis in the early twentieth century.
A few years ago, the lagoon began to dry up and a handful of solidary dreamers, we are referring to the Oasis group and the Salvemos Huacachina Foundation, got down to work to solve the problem. “We were able to present a project to pump the water from the subsoil so that the water would not dry up,” says Maria Elena Cabrera, president of the Huacachina Lagoon Commission. Thanks to her initiative, today the lagoon continues to have good water levels and attracts thousands of visitors.
Of course, here too, the legend is also present. The story goes that a princess of Inca lineage called Huincca China had made a pact with a deity that she would never fall in love with a human. But one day a hunter saw her, fell madly in love and began to follow her. In trying to escape, the young woman tore her dress and the scraps became a large sheet of sand, representing the desert. She also dropped her mirror, which, when broken, became a lagoon. This is how the maiden was transformed into a mermaid and continues to live in the depths of the lagoon.
Visitors can enjoy it sailing in small rowing boats, pedal boats and, those who dare more -and are not afraid of mermaids-, can even swim.
The guardians of the desert
But the desert, far from being monotonous and unattractive, offers as much interest as the oasis itself.
“Tourists visit us not only for the oasis but also for the adventure sports we run here,” says Luis Challcha, buggy driver for the Mytriperu company, proudly. In high season, up to 100 of these vehicles can fill these fantastic dunes that range from 100 to 500 meters high. The engines roar around the place but cannot silence the screams of the tourists who experience a roller coaster-style adventure.
But the extreme desert experience does not stop there. When the engines are turned off, the adrenaline is inflamed with the practice of sandbording. This discipline is all the rage among tourists who love action and adventure. The soft sand of the Huancachina desert could not be better for surfing its dunes. It is possible to do it on handmade boards specially made of wood. The experience is simply extraordinary.
The day ends and the sun sets in Huancachina.
Inspiradores de decenas de fábulas y cuentos, los oasis ya son, de por sí, mágicos e inigualables. Pero el de Huancachina, en Ica, Perú, tiene este doble atractivo. Su encantadora laguna y esta nueva pasión que genera sus dunas.
Huacachina significa: la mujer que llora por su amor perdido, en lengua quechua. Pero, tal vez, a quienes se le caerá una lágrima, serán aquellos turistas que tuvieron la suerte de visitarlo y ya deben partir.