This is a video taken by Nicolas De La Torre, a sandboarding enthusiast filming his descent down the Toromata dune in Peru. Unfortunately we live in a world where true beauty, nature is now convoluted by AI and AI sentiments, but this is in fact, not AI lol
Just to calm people: The dog in this video is the pet of the guy filming. In the full video, he gets down to it, and it is perfectly fine. Just a bit bumped up and dizzy. It is walking around, tail wagging.
I ride a skateboard while my 2yo rides his balance bike, so much fun on our local paved trails. Teaching him not to go right in front of me and stop immediately has been hard.
Not near to this extent, but I watched my dog go head over heels like this down a hill after she tripped chasing a ball. I genuinely wish I was as bouncy as her because she got up like nothing happened, grabbed the ball and wanted to go again. It's the equivalent of watching a toddler jump up and run off screaming "I'm ok!" after they've just ate shit on the pavement. Kids and dogs are made of rubber, I swear to God.
I used to have a 3 legged dog and once when chasing a ball (tbh the ball was stationary) her big noggen hit the ground and she went ass over teakettle. Totally fine other than a little scrape on her chin, which got a Hello Kitty bandaid.
I had a 4 week old kitten climb up onto a bed and jump off it, once, and land directly on her face. She immediately got up like nothing happened and would have gone again if I hadn't grabbed her.
We had a dog.
Little idiot ran to the stairs, slipped on the floorboards, then fell straight down the stairs, into a wall, back another set of stairs and into a radiator. Then got up and ran to the door.
One day after a walk we noticed blood all over the floor, go check the dog and it turns out she ripped off her paw pad almost half way. I have no idea at what point in the walk she did it, she gave no indication.
The same dog once went and hid under a pile of coats for 20 minutes because a fly landed on her butt and it scared her.
Idk it's believable. When I lived out west and was in the back country biking and boarding a lot I saw so many people take their dogs down treacherous shit and saw so many dogs just eat shit constantly.
Sands natural resting angle is between 30-35 degrees so it's not crazy strep. My concern would be about accidentally hitting the dog or it just being too far of run going full bore. That said people run their dogs on bikes all the time. Also I had herd dogs who's natural state was to be running. I had one who would chase flying birds for hours at a time see her run by going one direction then seeing her run by in the other lol and I'm not joking about hours. She would have loved herding someone down a dune like this as long as she was trained on what not to do. Used to take her anytime we went sledding and she was in heaven. Some dogs are energizer bunnies until they get older and start slowing down.
on the plus side you can clean your partner's smegma off with a single fart. They call it the outback shower, saharan sandblast, Colorado Grits, Beans on toast, Moroccan Parmesan, etc...
Not too bad TBH, though I've only ever been sandboarding when it's cold, on account of the fact that you really should wear gear.
When I was in the Sahara last year, we went in the early AM to catch the sunrise, w/out the high temps (even in Feb), and the properly waxed boards never got too hot to the touch.
It's not a dune, it's a mountain with an eroding sandy surface. The surface of the mountain can be described as a shifting dune (and this sandy surface is anywhere from couple of meteres to couple of tens of meters thick).
So basically, this is just marketing what you are seeing, dubai chocolate of outdoor vacations.
While I love that conspiracy, it really doesn't make any sense at all.
Like, no one has ever heard anything about Dubai poop until they mass market their chocolate to "cover up" a conspiracy that didn't actually exist, but now the whole world knows about?
This is the crappiest example of the Streisand effect, pun intended.
The US has a pretty good spot for this, not this tall. Those get like 800 feet tall, they last so long they all have names like mountains, oh and it is in a beautiful valley surrounded by the Rocky mountains. I've been sledding there, it's white sand and can get hot in winter, so put boots on your dogs if taking them. It became a national park in 2004. There is also Zapata falls nearby, 15 minute hike to a hidden waterfall. In the winter, it freezes and is a giant wall of ice, so cool. The valley is in middle of nowhere Colorado, 20 minutes from New Mexico, 2 hours from Taos so if ever down that way I highly recommend.
Fisheye lens always makes things look bigger and faster. The fact that the dog was able to keep up tells you the rider isn't going nearly as fast as it looks
I remember the thrill of running down hills with wild abandon like that when I was a kid. It really is hard to recapture that feeling as you get older.
Ya for real. My buddies brother was snowboarding and their pupped jumped in front of- broke the dogs leg. It was pretty traumatic, his brother was like 10 at the time.
Someone above mentioned they probably trained the dog not to get in front of the board since I think the dog goes with them a lot. I guess its pretty common in the adventure dog community.
(There are also adventure cats, but they ride on their humans' shoulders instead of running next to the snowboard. Its super cute.)
That part of the world has a lot of steep coastal sand "dunes", a geological effect of mountains being so close to the sea. the Top Gear Bolivia special ended with driving down one not far away in Chile.
From what I could find, the skiable part is not 2000m high but "just" 1200 with a vertical descent of about 1000 meters, which is still pretty high and definitely more than enough to convince me that this video is real.
Clouds can form very low to the ground, sometimes even at ground level! (Fog) Hills, mountains & sand dunes can rise very high, & even rise above the clouds.
I’m half Bolivian and one of my core memories was when I went there when I was four and I noticed how close the clouds were to the ground. The Andes are VERY high up.
I miss when people would film themselves with a GoPro attached to their chest or helmet. The 360 poll cameras irritate me to no end and I can't figure out why
For those saying this is AI, could you please explain your reasoning?
I managed to find a few other videos in the location mentioned by OP, & they do look very similar (albeit more "real"), some of which seem to be filmed in this exact location.
If this is indeed AI, it'd be the first time it's actually fooled me, and I'm officially scared now.
Edit: I kept looking and found even more photos & videos of pretty much exactly this location. I'm convinced this is real and that AI isn't this good yet. I don't see any of the typical AI signifiers.
For those saying this is AI, could you please explain your reasoning?
Because it's 2026.... That's literally it.
In 2006 it was exactly the same but with Photoshop.
"It's Photoshopped"
Everything was fake. Compression artifacts? Evidence of Photoshop.
Everything is ai, nothing is real. No one believes anything anymore. And apparently no one can bother to google search "super tall sand dune people snowboard down"
... And first page shows multiple for sand skiing in puru.
Just extreme fisheye and probably HDR. Heavy Hdr has been making things look fake way longer than AI ever has.
I'm finding that people are really quick to try and discredit anything that took any actual effort, presumably to try and make themselves feel better about being lazy, unaccomplished fucks.
Feels to me like the root of the problem is more so because as AI improves, it's easier to distrust things in general. Especially something "spectacular" like this.
The down hill nature helps the dogs gait as well. 4 legged animals have better balance and more ability to really launch themselves down hill without being out of control. Unlike humans running down hill which is more a focus on not wiping out.
Lol the ai comments. We are so cooked. I hate wide angles for distorting things but it is what it is. Whip out super telephoto shot with a lot of lens compression and people trip out as well lol. I get called out as a photographer all the time because people don’t understand what bokeh or separation from a fast lens looks like. Crazy considering I shoot a lot of film so very far off from it being digitally altered or generated haha.
The fact that I noticed them too and had to alter the post body to explain that it wasnt...we are indeed cooked. Also, if your art blurs the lines between realism and AI gen, you must take it as a compliment because it means you have created something so surreal, then weep of humanity's brain cells and your bank account fate.
The fact that people are saying this (along with so many other things) is AI and it's getting more and more common for us to question reality only reassures me that the world, society and humanity will most likely cease to exist at some point in the next quarter to half-century.
Or... The internets social media simply won't survive.
On one side we have restructuring of history to fit an agenda. Hundreds of thousands of deleted/altered files in an attempt to wash away whatever doesn't fit the narrative.
On the other side we have an AI system that has been proven to constantly lie and fabricate whatever will support the narrative of the statement/question given, especially over multiple prompts.
And over it all we now have disbelief in all forms of media from newscasters playing to biased shareholders/CEOs all the way to every media output going forward being questioned as not real.
People are simply losing reality in general. If ever there was a solid argument to end social media (Edit: and put in new requirements for how "news" is delivered), we are arriving at the station.
Kind of a weird take. If anything, it's an extremely good thing that the default stance is for people to question if things on the internet are real and not just assume they are. This is a positive move and shows maturing with the technology we have. Humanity will most certainly be fine.
The fact that people are going "this is fantastical, I should see if it is real or not" before saying "wow! how cool" is giving me hope more than anything. People wanting to verify and confirm is a very beautiful thing.
This thread makes it look more like the thought of AI is brain rotting, since AI has nothing to do with this video and doesn't take away peoples ability to fact check.
Reminded me when I went sleeding as a kid and we took our dog with us, she always not just ran along while we went down she always tried to grab onto me during the drive
To everyone mentioning the fact it's above the clouds. You know clouds can exist at any height in the atmosphere right? There's this thing called mist. Any Scottish person has seen cloud cover at sea level
Day after day i am beginning to believe comments that respond something like 'how is it AI' or 'why you think it's AI' are bots that train how to make more realistic videos
•
u/trendingtattler 6h ago
This post has reached /r/all.
I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please contact the moderators of this subreddit if you have any questions or concerns.