Sandboarding

Something very cool I tried here was sandboarding.  I've never been snowboarding, but I imagine it's pretty similar, except in sand.  Which is good for learning because sand is slower than snow.  For sandboarding you can just wear shorts and a t-shirt, which means you get sand everywhere!!  You also get a helmet and goggles.

One major difference between sandboarding and snowboarding is that sandboarding doesn't have chairlifts (at least not here).  That means that each time before you go down, you have to walk up the giant sand dune - wearing your boots, up a steep slope of sand, carrying your board, and all at 2400 meters, which makes it significantly more tiring than it already would be.  For each run you probably spend about 2 minutes resting and drinking water at the bottom, 7 minutes walking up, 5 minutes resting, waxing, and strapping on your board at the top, and then 1 minutes actually going down.

At first it takes a little while to figure out how to position your board -  if you don't keep it at the right angle and tilt it gets covered with sand and you stop and fall.  But once you get the hang of it you can get going pretty fast.  I've been a bit sore the passed two days from it!

I don't have any pictures, but the guides/instructors took a video of us doing it.  I haven't been able to watch it yet since internet in the middle of the desert isn't exactly high speed, but here's the link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zd6mGGnuu0s.  (I'm wearing purple shorts and a white t-shirt.)  Hopefully it looks as cool and exciting in the video as it was in real life, but I'm kind of worried it might not look as fast at it felt.