HUACACHINA, Peru -- It’s a scene right out of Lawrence of Arabia: enormous mountains of sand — some as tall as 300 feet — their surfaces sculpted into soft, geometric designs by the wind, and extending as far as the eye can see. My wife and I stand captivated, feeling the heat of the day rising up out of the soft sand and watching the interplay of golden light and pale shadow as the sun dips behind a distant ridge of solid beige.

Of course, there were also a few differences. For starters, this is not the great Sahara Desert, but a much smaller desert in southern Peru. And when it is time to return to our oasis, we climb not back onto camels, but into equally curiously-shaped, 10-passenger dune buggies. It will not be a leisurely plod back, but a wild ride up — and especially down — a Bedouin’s dozen more dunes, our hands tightly clenching the cushioned bars in front of us and screams of delight issuing involuntarily from the mouths of our internationally-diverse fellow passengers. Peter O’Tooles we definitely weren’t.

For nearly two weeks we had dangled Huacachina as a reward to our 12-year-old twin daughters for all the “ordeals” we had subjected them to: eight hours wandering the ruins of Machu Picchu, a day-long boat trip across Lake Titicaca, and a 15-hour minivan tour of the amazingly deep (11,000 feet) Colca Canyon. After a second overnight bus ride, they had certainly earned it. And we all needed to end our trip on a piercing high note.

Naturally I was worried that Huacachina wouldn’t be anywhere near as compelling as it looked in the guidebooks. Fortunately, I was wrong. Towering dunes of beach-quality sand encircle the palm, jacaranda, and bougainvillea-laden oasis on three sides. The fourth, through which the road to Ica, three miles distant, passes is small by comparison, but still sufficient to block the view and create the impression of complete isolation. What little there is of the town wraps itself around three sides of a murky green lagoon of mythical origins (the name means “crying woman” in Quechua) whose allegedly curative waters once attracted ailing Peruvian elites.

These days, however, it’s Huacachina’s sand that attracts thrill-seeking foreigners. While the girls cool off in the pool, I set off to arrange our afternoon dune buggy/sandboarding excursion. In fact, there wasn’t much arranging to do. Just about every accommodation in town will do it for you, and it’s all the same tour anyway. All you have to do is negotiate your price downwards from the asking price, which in December was only 30 soles ($12).

At 4 p.m., our driver, Francisco, swings by our hotel in his neon orange buggy, a racked, open-air contraption that rumbles with power. Two hotels later, we are full. Francisco loops around to the other side of town where we pay our nominal municipal tax and wait, engines throbbing, until the full caravan of dune buggies — about 20 of them — has assembled. Then, in an explosion of noise, color, and palpable excitement, we roar off into the desert.

For the next 30 minutes, Francisco delivers big time on the “adrenaline-stirring” promise of the tour, tearing up, down and over a succession of serious dunes. We in the back brace ourselves as best we can as we are jostled every which way.