A small lagoon fringed with palm trees sits at the base of massive sand dunes in Peru's Ica Desert — one of only two natural oases in the Americas.
Every oasis is, in some sense, a miracle — water where water should not be. But most oases are surrounded by modest desert, flat ground, scrub. Huacachina is surrounded by walls.
The dunes of the Ica Desert rise up to 100 metres on every side of the lagoon, their ridgelines cutting clean lines against the sky. The oasis is at the bottom of a bowl formed by these dunes, a round lake of olive-green water fed by underground springs from the Andes, ringed with totora reeds, palm trees, and the small whitewashed buildings of the village that grew up around it.
Seen from the dune crests above, the oasis looks impossibly small and impossibly vivid against the beige expanse. The green of the palms is the only green for many kilometres in any direction. The water reflects the dunes, doubled and wavering. The village looks like something placed there by someone who needed to demonstrate that life insists on existing wherever it can.
Local legend says the lagoon was created by a princess who was surprised while bathing. She fled and the water she spilled became the oasis. Her swimming cloak became the dunes. She became a mermaid, still swimming in the green depths.
The population of Huacachina is fewer than 150 permanent residents. The place they inhabit is the size of a city block. The dunes surrounding it would take an hour to climb. And yet it has been continuously occupied for at least 5,000 years, the water never running dry.