My youngest son, Tom, just turned thirty yesterday. I was never terribly overwhelmed by turning thirty, forty, fifty, sixty or even seventy. I don’t tend to connect myself to my age very much even though I never deny my age, nor do I even try to hide it. I just don’t seem to care one way or the other for some odd reason. Everyone else seems to attribute much more significance to age and birthdays, and especially on a “golden” birthday like Tom had yesterday, since he turned 30 on August 30th. He and his wife Jenna chose to plan a trip to Peru for the occasion. I have to admit, Tom & Jenna are far more adventurous and worldly in their leisure travel than I ever was at their age. When I was thirty, I was hopping on planes all over the world going here or there, but for business. We made a few foreign trips in those days for pleasure, but they were to much more ordinary spots like Europe, Cancun or the Caribbean. It wasn’t until much later in life that I started going to more exotic places for pleasure, even though places like the Amazon, the Red Sea, Caracas, Niworkgeria and Hong Kong were all places I had to go regularly for. I understand that adventure travel is much more a thing these days than it was when I was young, but I must admit it’s still impresses me.
I called Tom first thing in the morning yesterday and I caught him in a small desert oasis called Huacachina. When I think of Peru, I think of the palisade shoreline of Lima or the Andes Mountains around Cusco and the mystical Machu Pichu. Machu Picchu was, as most of us know, built by the Incas. This famous ancient citadel in Peru was constructed around 1450 AD, during the reign of the Inca emperor Pachacuti. It’s considered one of the most remarkable examples of Incan architecture and engineering, featuring precisely cut stone blocks fitted together without mortar. The site was likely built as a royal estate or sacred religious site for Inca nobility. It was abandoned around 1572 during the Spanish conquest, but remained largely hidden from the outside world until American historian Hiram Bingham brought it to international attention in 1911. Machu Picchu showcases classic Inca architectural techniques, including their sophisticated understanding of seismic engineering – the structures were built to withstand earthquakes, which is why they’ve survived so well over the centuries.
But Tom & Jenna are going to that spiritual and historic vortex, which sits at 8,000 feet of altitude (Cusco is 11,000) during the next week. But yesterday they were in this puny desert oasis of 100 people, just west of Ica. This was truly a natural spring oasis that could have been a movie set since it’s surrounded by massive sand dunes of the Dunas de Los Vientos Cantores to the north and Dunas de La Hucachina Mirador to the south. These classic and grand sand dunes are part of the Desierto de California. That desert, I imagine, is a geological extension of the famous Atacama Desert in northern Chile. It looks as though you are in the most remote parts of the Sahara or Gobi deserts. When I used to travel to the Middle East, we would occasionally go out to the desert for one reason or the other. I’ve gone out during Ramadan to visit princes in their Bedouin tents during the dark of night. And I’ve gone out during the daylight to go “Wadi bashing”, which involves running around on dunebuggies up and down da d dunes and across wadis. A wadi is a dry riverbed or valley in arid and semi-arid regions, particularly common in North Africa and the Middle East. The term comes from Arabic and refers to watercourses that are usually dry but can fill with water during occasional rainfalls or flash floods. There are no wadis, per say, in the Desierto de California, but there are lovely sand dunes with all the wind-crafted ridges and lovely waves and lines.
I’m not altogether sure how Tom & Jenna came to know about Huacachina and its surrounding dunes, but I’ll bet it had to do with either Instagram or TikTok. From the look of the information I’ve been able to glean about the place, it would put Burning Man to shame in terms of its hipness factor. It looks like every digital warrior in the developed world wants to go party at a remote but very cool place like this with its boutique hotels and open-air bars, all set in a romantic Beau Geste setting . The popular daytime activities seem to include something very similar to wadi bashing only using UTV’s and running around the dunes rather than the wadis. Tom & Jenna posted several videos showing them doing just that. The other big activity seems to be dune surfing. This is where you lie face down on what looks like a snowboard with a handle and go down a series of sand dunes until you roll off at the bottom. It would be akin to tubing in snow country or perhaps boogie boarding in the ocean. From the look of the videos Tom has posted, it seems like a hoot…at least if your thirty.
This all makes me think about living life to the max and grabbing what gusto you can in life. That means a lot to some people and nothing at all to others. Some people watch these adventurous escapades and wonder what possesses the participants to want to do such things. Others watch these videos and are immediately envious, either of the youth and vigor they portray or the opportunity and funding to do such things. The truth is, it has far less to do with money than it does with attitude. There is no doubt that if you can afford to jet off to Huacachina to dune surf on one day and then go for a nitrogen dive off the coast of Pilau the next, you have an easier time being at the cutting edge of the adventure travel set. But the truth is, a ticket to Lima from L.A. cost only about $600 and according to my AI search, you can go about Peru staying hostels, eating local food and riding in buses for about $20 per day. That’s not quite the old Europe on $5 per day program first suggested by Arthur Frommer in 1957, but its pretty damn close. In fact, inflation adjusted, that $5 is now $57, but even that is not enough to get you around Europe. That is somewhere between $85-100 per day assuming you go in the cheapest manner. So, going to Peru for $20 per day seems like a bargain that most anyone can afford. As for dune surfing in Huacachina, I’m betting you can stay at some hostel in Ica, hitch a ride out to the dunes, find an old piece of wood or plastic and fashion a board that you can use to hike up the dunes and rip down the sand to your heart’s content…all pretty much for free and without the tour guide, UTV and photo package…plus complimentary bottle of water.
Adventurous spirit is the one ingredient you cannot do without to enjoy this dune surfing lifestyle. I suspect Tom & Jenna fall somewhere in the middle on all of that spectrum. I bet they traveled economy to Lima and took a bus down to Ica, but I also guess they sprung for the Huacachina boutique hotel, a nice meal package (with wine and beer) and the Dune Surfing Tour Plan A. Ah, to be young and carefree!