Huacachina

Huacachina is the oasis that looks like an illustration of the word: a small green lagoon fringed with palm trees, a ring of low buildings around its shore, and on every side immense, wind-sculpted dunes of the Ica desert rising far above the rooftops. The contrast is the whole spectacle — dark water and green crowns at the bottom of a bowl of pale gold sand, with sharp dune crests cutting the sky above.

The setting changes with the light. At midday the sand is bleached and glaring; late in the afternoon the ridges turn amber and honey-coloured, every ripple picked out in shadow, and the climb to the crest above the lagoon is rewarded with a view over a sea of dunes rolling away towards the coast. Many visitors come for the sand itself — sandboarding down the slopes, or riding the big open dune buggies the locals call areneros — but the quiet hour on a ridge at sunset is the real reward.

Local legend explains the oasis as the work of a young woman — a princess, in most tellings — who was bathing in a pool when she saw a hunter approaching in her mirror. She fled, the mirror fell and became the lake, and the folds of her cloak streaming behind her became the dunes; she is said to live on in the water as a mermaid. Real history is gentler: the lagoon was a favourite family retreat for decades and a popular summer resort in the 1960s, and it appeared on the back of Peru's 50-sol banknote from 1991.

Only about a hundred people live here permanently. The lagoon depends on underground water, and as well-drilling for farms around Ica lowered the water table in the early 2000s, the level fell; since 2015 local businesses have pumped water in to keep the lake alive.

Getting there

Huacachina lies about 5 km from the centre of Ica, a 10-minute taxi ride from the city's bus terminals. Buses from Lima reach Ica in about 4.5–5 hours. The nearest airport by distance is Maria Reiche Neuman at Nazca (NZC), about 121 km away, but neither it nor Pisco has regular scheduled flights; the practical gateway is Lima's Jorge Chávez International Airport (LIM), followed by the bus south to Ica.