Day 7: In a desert oasis
I am currently at an oasis. A real, live oasis. This very well might be one of the strangest places I have ever been too. As I sit here and type this, I can look out the window to my left and see a giant sand mountain, towering about 1000 feet over the little town of Huacachina, where I have spent the last three days going on dune buggy rides and doing crazy sandboarding (though not nearly as cool as snowboarding, I am sad to admit). Huacachina is a tiny town situated next to a natural miniature lake, surrounded by palm trees and big golden sand dunes. When I arrived here I seriously thought I had stepped out of South America and into the Sahara: if you imagine in your head what an oasis would look like, this would probably fit the picture perfectly. I normally don't gush on about the places I go to, I'm more interested in writing about weird stories or the people, but this place is trippy.
Tonight though I am getting on a bus to head to Ayachuco, which is smack dab in the middle of the Andes. My guidebook says only about 500 tourists come there each month, which makes it even more cool in my book. As the required bit to freak out my parents, Ayachuco was the main center for the Shining Path, the terrorist group that in the 1980s and 1990s fought a civil war against the Peruvian government. Happily (from the perspective of my personal wellbeing), today the entire movement is gone and tourists like me can go there without fear of ending up in a bad Russel Crowe movie about kidnapped and ransomed gringos. Apparently near Ayachuco is a field with these catcuses, which once during their lifetime, right before they die, sprout a 50 foot tall flower. So I might check that out for the novelty value.
