The sand dunes at Huacachina in Peru are over 300 feet high.
They are the tallest in the world.
The small town of 200 residents is built around an oasis. Palm trees lean lazily at the water’s edge and children splash in the spring water that wells up from the desert.
TJ parked Cindy under a cover and we climbed down from the truck, drank a beer and then climbed into a five point harness attached to roll bars and a 4.5 litre engine.
For the next thirty minutes the appropriately named ‘Jesus’ drove the eight-seat dune buggy as if he was being chased by something recently escaped from Hell. The engine roared like a piece of heavy machinery missing a critical part. The buggy lurched from one extreme angle to the next, throwing us against our restraints and making us grateful for the chest squeezing pressure that each change of direction heralded.
We screamed all the way as Jesus hurtled the buggy down gradients so steep that our stomachs struggled to catch up.
We roared up the face of dunes that laughed at the 600 horse power engine.
We rattled our skulls and pile-drove our spines until the world became a blur of sand and sky.
Finally it was over but the true terror was only just beginning.
Sand-boarding evokes the impression of a gentle descent down the face of a dune, with a soft landing guaranteed for anyone unfortunate enough to spill on the way down. And that would be true enough for any ordinary dune, but at 300 feet, death is a real option even if you were sliding down a mountain of marshmallows.
TJ was the first to take the plunge, clinging to some makeshift handles attached to a specially designed piece of dining-room table. The incline was stomach-churning, even for the bystanders.
He slipped over the edge.
The sonic boom reached us marginally before his screams as he gathered speed quicker than a police drugs locker. They told him to keep his legs apart. It could have been to give him increased stability but it had the incidental benefit of ensuring that his thongs didn’t catch alight in the flames that trailed behind his board.
As he came to rest somewhere in southern Argentina, it became apparent that he had survived – which is more than can be said for Nic, who parted company with his board at terminal velocity, flip-flopped like a rag-doll down the slope and then broke up, sending limbs cartwheeling in five different directions.
We pieced him together in time for the barbeque and ate in a circle round the blazing camp fire.
The desert stretches for hundreds of kilometres. Wander into the darkness and all light and sound is absorbed by the surrounding dunes. It would be easy to get lost here - lost in the ‘no rescue’ sense.
So, one by one, a few hardy souls ventured into the darkness to experience the sense of total isolation that our crowded living environments cannot hope to provide. I sat on the top of a dune, listening to the hiss of the night wind moving a hundred billion particles of sand within 20m of me.
After twenty minutes the isolation was too much and I carefully retraced my steps to the camp.
The fire gradually died and we climbed into our sleeping bags, shuffled ourselves into a small depression in the sand and drifted off sleep under the stars.
When I woke at 2am, the stars were gone and in their place a fog had descended on the desert. My hair was wet and the sand around me was dark with moisture.
Fog, as I learned later, is extremely rare in this part of the desert. It hasn’t rained here for as long as most can remember. Nothing grows beyond the fringes of the oasis.
By 9am the sun had burnt it off and the arid conditions had returned.
All evidence of our time in this place was soon gone as the hot wind blew over our tracks.
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