This weekend was our first regional meeting, where most of the 24 volunteers living in La Libertad met in Trujillo. It was nice to see everyone and get to know some of the older volunteers who are living in our department who were celebrating their first full year in Peru. Although we’ve only been in our communities for about two and a half weeks, most of us were ready for a little break to share stories, catch up, and relax.

We decided to go sand boarding on Friday, which was quite an adventure. Ian, Royce, Jim, Erin, and I piled in a rickety red van with our new friend and guide, Miguel. We proceeded to drive 45 minutes outside of Trujillo into the middle of nowhere, passing sugar cane fields, empty streets, and sandy dunes. As we drove further out the landscape transformed into a desert, complete with high sand mountains and overwhelming silence. Miguel gave us our brightly colored wooden sandboards and we hiked up the side of a steep sand dune. Once at the top we caught our breath, and peered down the dune, which seemed pretty steep. Despite our mini-lesson, I don’t think any of us really knew what we were doing or how we were supposed to stop, but we decided to just go for it. It was pretty awesome, and although we eventually got the hang of it I think we all tumbled down the mountain during our first couple of tries. I know I certainly did. By the end of the afternoon we were all covered in sand- in our eyes, ears, mouth, pants, shoes… we took about half of the desert back to Trujillo with us. Although we all had pretty epic wipeouts, I think Erin won the prize for most impressive face-plant. It was such a cool location- nothing like anywhere else I’ve been.

In addition to actually sandboarding, we decided sledding on sand would be pretty sweet.