The Time I Tried Sandboarding

2/25/14, 9:14 PM

Yesterday, we explored the sand dunes via dune buggy and sand board. We met the third green-shirted Peruvian jerk on this adventure. In fact, he was the dune buggy driver. My first piece of evidence to prove his jerkiness is that he did everything he could to make the ride as bumpy and as scary as possible. The ride was terrifying! Yes, I'm a huge chicken, but the ride was still terrifying.

The dune buggy and the people we dune buggied with

The dune buggy we were strapped into was a bit on the ramshackle side; I didn't trust it 100%. And after what happened with sandboarding, I didn't trust the green-shirted jerk driver at all.  A man from Australia decided to go down the dune on the sandboard surfer style; Alli had done it before him.

The sand dunes near Huacachina

This man had a great run and made it almost all the way to the bottom before he fell. Badly. He tumbled feet over head over feet. Alli was at the bottom of the dune while I was at the top. She later told me that the man was unconscious and was out for a couple minutes. Those of us at the top who hadn't had our turns yet could only see that he wasn't moving.

The dune buggy driver ran down the dune to see to the situation. Apparently, he had no idea what to do and actually wanted to do some things that were clearly wrong (move a guy who just hit his head). In a few minutes, the guy was sitting up, so I thought everything was okay. The driver trekked back up the sand dune and the rest of us had our sandboarding turns. I rode down the incredibly steep dune head-first on my stomach.

I sandboarded from the tiny dots of people at the right top to the person standing at the bottom.

I thought at that point we were going to leave the dunes to get the man the medical attention he needed. Nope, we were going on another sandboarding run. I took my turn, this time riding down on my bottom, but I couldn't help but feel a little worried about the guy and a little guilty that we were sandboarding while he obviously needed medical attention - he couldn't remember the year or what had just happened.

After we had our second sandboarding turns, the excursion was cut short, and we returned to the company office. Alli urged the driver to be cautious. Although he was more careful than on the ride there, the ride was still somewhat bumpy and even a little scary. As far as we know, the man was taken to the hospital. It's just so unfortunate he had to wait as long as he did.

As an update, I happened to see the man and his wife earlier today in Paracas, so everything must have worked out.