El Cerro Blanco, the highest dune of the world!

Last week end, we found a new way to enjoy our free day : walking in the mountains and doing sandboard from early in the morning to early afternoon. Simona, Benoit (other volunteer), and friend of his (Amandine) and I climbed el Cerro Blanco that is close to Nasca, with our guide called Zenon. At 4.30 am a car was waiting for us in front of the center. The driver drove us up to the km 23 on the road that leads to Brazil. From there, at 5am, in the darkness of the end of the night, we started to walk among the rocks. The highest we were going, the highest was rising the sun, giving us very nice landscape. Our guide tought us about the plants (very few) that are growing in this desertic landscape. He mainly told us about cactus and there fruits that we could enjoy. The first one that was red tasted very good : something close to kiwi. The second one that you can see on the pi looked and tasted like crunched ice (althought it was of course not so cold). Zenon told us you have to be careful with those fruits : you can eat it in the early morning, while its still fresh, eating it later could be a bit dangerous, you would need to find comfortable bathroom where to spend quite a long time! Also after a while walking and before reaching the sandy part, our guide explained us that above El cerro blanco there were 3 different winds that met there. Depending the strongness of each of them, the highest point of the dune would be from a different place and different hight, because the sand would be moved away differently.

Continuing our walk, we arrived at a place where many “totems” of stones were (eriges). This is what “visitors” as a sign of there pasage and respect to the place. We also took some time to move the stones around us and make our own totem.

After 3 hours walking in the “stones montain”, we finaly arrive at the sandy part. Before climbing it, Zenon told us we could have a little break and make an offering to the montain as a sign of respect and to make sure it won t be bad with us. I gave a granadilla (very refreshing fruit) and Zenon light a cigaret up. After that, the climbing could start. It was difficult to walk in the sand and even more that the sun was up ! But after a while we finally reached the top of the dune. The view on the valley of Nasca was rerallyt nice. During the walk I was really impress by the fact to be in a real desert. You could not see any sign of a civilization, and there was no noise except us and the birds.

There the funny part, sandboarding could start! None of us (except Zenon, of course) had ever down snowboarding, we had to learn it. To be honest, Simona is the only one who found the courage and perseverance to go down standing up on the board. Benoit, Amandine and I went down on the board but siten ... It was really funny anyway.

Once we had “surfed down” there was still one hour of walk to reach the km 9 from Nasca of the road. Althought it started to be quite difficult with the sun, we crossed a valley were you could see green and red stones, the bed of a probably very very anciant river.

At 1pm we reached the road, full of sandand tired, but really happy of this experience!