Cerro Blanco - the Great Dune

The Great Dune - photo Willy Ross

In 2004, the stars were aligned (well, the timing was good for my job, and it was deemed okay for Fiona to take the last four weeks off primary school), so Linda and I decided to visit Peru and Bolivia with our 11-year old daughter Fiona.  Machu Picchu was one of the main targets, and the company we engaged to book the 5-day trek to Machu Picchu (daily numbers on the route had been limited to 200 at any one time) didn’t normally allow persons under 12 years old to join their groups.  After discussion around the fact that Fiona had already climbed around 100 Munros, they accepted our booking.

En-route to Cusco and Machu Picchu, after an unsettling start in Lima where I underwent daylight robbery by pickpockets working in a skilfully-distractive team, we travelled by bus to Nazca where we planned to see the famous Nazca lines, an observatory and some very basic gold-processing plants.  It was in Nazca in Peru that we first learned of the presence of Cerro Blanco, probably the second-highest sand dune in the world.

The summit of Cerro Blanco mountain is around 2080m, with the height of the dune (the upper part) being around 1170m.  Its prominence is about 466m.  For further details, see here on the Peakbagger website.  The dune accumulated over millennia from sand blowing west to east with the wind, and being deposited against rocks, and vegetation, and slowly accumulating.

To avoid the highest temperatures of the day we were driven by taxi with our guide Hector, starting around 5am, for around 30 minutes to the “trailhead”.  I noted down at the time an altitude of around 1100m, but it may have been higher.

The initial walk over rocky terrain was fairly spectacular, despite it being night-time, and we watched the sun rise to illuminate Cerro Blanco. 

The last uphill hour was fairly hard work walking on the giant sand dunes – one step up, three-quarters of a step down - soft shifting sands under a still cloudless equatorial morning sun.  We definitely felt a sense of achievement, with spectacular scenery and views, when we reached the top.

We returned by a slightly different route, on the other face of the mountain/dune, with an estimated gradient of 35-degrees.  We were running/careering straight down a continuous sand dune, with condors soaring on the thermals overhead.  On the lower slopes we found some old Nazca ceramic shards and some bones (they looked like human tibiae) – apparently there are many Nazca/Inca burial grounds in the region.  Hopefully we did not disturb a place of permanent rest.

The mountain has recently become popular with sand-boarders and other travellers.  I was surprised to be the first to record it on the Peakbagger website. It’s well worth a visit if you are in that region of Peru.

Willy Ross