17 Hour Bus Rides + Haucachina

Hola, mis amigos! That's the extent of my Spanish, get over it. In my attempt to shower, since I haven't since last Sunday, it didn't happen. I just finished watching a movie, and with my luck the water was already turned off. Bullocks. So I decided it's time to update the Abbyites. I arrived home from Haucachina yesterday afternoon, and I wish that wasn't the case. Why was I forced to leave paradise to good 'ole cold Cusco? Oh yeah, because Peru hates me and wants me to be freezing 24/7. Anyways, I'll start with the bus ride. We boarded the bus and as soon as I sat down I burnt my foot on a heat register. I later found out that this heater didn't turn off. For 17 hours I got to enjoy it being 25 degrees. It didn't help with the screaming baby who sounded like a baby raptor trying to eat it's mother. Oh, I almost forgot the rabid vomit it was spewing the entire time as well. During this same bus ride a semi truck was broken down and took up the entire road. So we had to wait about an hour in the blaring heat. I then took the liberty to run into the sand and had a mini photo shoot. We also drove past the Nazca Lines. So whenever somebody asks if I saw them I can brag about it. When we arrived in Ica ( 10 minutes away from Haucachina) we were all in awe from the sand dunes that surrounded us.

We all crammed into a tiny taxi and made our way to the hostal. B-E-A-U-T-I-F-U-L! If I was ever asked what my paradise would be I would have to say it would be the palm trees, the pool, the bar, the yellow beach chairs, being surround my sand mountains, and of course, the heat; a.k.a. our hostal. We got in around 230p so we just stripped and threw our nasty 17-hour bus ridden bodies in the pool. The next day we booked our sand boarding/sand buggying trip for 4p. So we had a repeat of the day before and cooked our bodies in the sun until then. When 4p rolled around we all jumped into our buggy and climbed bodies of sand at stupid speed. The sand buggying was probably the best ride I've ever been on. Dropping down steep ass hills and getting air was such an adrenaline rush! The driver finally stopped, gave us our sand boards and told us to have at'er. So I tried to go down standing up and failed horribly. Apparently they don't make sand boards in Peru that fit my caucasian feet; so I fell because my feet unstrapped themselves. Awesome. So I was forced to go down either sitting or on my stomach. I decided that going boarding on my ass wasn't working for me because I was too fat or something. I remember getting super angry and yelling I was too fat at the top of my lungs, and proceeding to roll down the hill because I was bored. With about 15 other people surrounding me. Whoops. After that incident I said fuck it and went down the hills on my belly. Note to self if I ever sand board again, don't do so while screaming. Eating sand isn't my favourite thing to do. While boarding there were two separate occasions where I almost said, "No thanks, take me home." They were the steepest things I've ever seen in my life that I was supposed to hurl my body down (minus bungee jumping). So I grew some balls, 4 apparently, and almost died. The first one I went down it at like 23524 km/hr, which threw my sunglasses off, gave me a mouthful of sand, and gave me snot rockets out of both my nostrils. Attractive, I know. It was SO painful, but worth every second! Okay, but the last hill we went down... I think I peed a little when I saw it. People looked like ants at the bottom of it, and every single time they got to the bottom every single person biffed it, looking like they broke every bone in their body. So I manned up, grew another set of balls (I'm at 6 now) and went face first. I just remember a mixture of screaming, thinking I was going to be killed by Worms (movie reference), and the poop I was about to let release. I survived without bailing. Just barely, though.

After that it we were in definite need of beer. So we went to a different hostal with a nice restaurant and kicked it there for a couple hours. The two Aussies, Kait and Ruth, that came with us, as well as Chad, surprised Rachel and I with tickets to the Paraca Islands. Rachel and I didn't plan to go with them because of our situation, the situation of us being broke, homeless people. Love them to death. But anyways, we got home to our hostal and thought we were going straight to bed because we had to leave at 630a, but walked right into a massive party. They thought it was a good idea to open the club that resided right outside of our room's door on the night we actually need to be up early. Perfect. The next idea in our heads was to pull an all-nighter. That was def a night to remember. 630a rolled around and we climbed into a 1 hour bus to the ocean. I loved every second of it until I started to die from being so tired. The boat ride was two hours and seeing all of the caves reminded me of The Goonies (another movie reference). We saw about 3 million birds, penguins, sea lions, and dolphins. Another crazy experience!

We came home, had a long nap, and just lounged all day until we had to get on another 17 hour bus ride. I hated that I had to leave my paradise back to an icicle. Okay, lets talk about the bus ride home... Between the man who sounded like he swallowed the baby raptor human the first bus ride. Yes, his snoring was that bad. And the person who I sat beside who slept on me the entire ride and his potent smell of rotten ham; bus ride number dos was much worse. Chad actually took a recording of this man snoring and we listened to it the next day, holy shit. I have never heard anything more repulsive in my life. I'm really not going to miss these long ass bus rides when I get home.

That was my Haucachina and Paraca adventure that I'll never forget! And now I'm about to leave in 5 hours to go on a 4 day trek to Machu Picchu that I'll never forget for a different reason. That reason being because I'll have my legs amputated. Can't waaaaaaait! There will be a blog post about this event when I get back.