Huacachina Oasis: What to Do and How to Get There

Short answer: Huacachina is a tiny desert oasis about 5 km (3 mi) from the city of Ica, roughly 300 km (186 mi) south of Lima. People go for dune buggy rides, sandboarding and the sunset over the dunes. You can see it on a long day trip from Lima, but one night there, paired with Paracas and the Ballestas Islands, is the better plan.

What Huacachina looks like

Huacachina is a small green lagoon ringed by palm trees, hotels and restaurants, sitting in a hollow between tall sand dunes on the edge of Ica. Around 100 people live there year round. Everyone else is a visitor, and on a weekend in summer there are a lot of them.

First impressions surprise people. From photos, you expect a lost oasis in the middle of nowhere. In person, it is a busy little resort a few minutes by taxi from a city of several hundred thousand, with a promenade, pisco sours and music from the hostels. Walk 200 m (650 ft) up any dune and the town disappears: all you see is sand to the horizon, which is why it works.

The lagoon has a legend. A local princess, surprised by a hunter while she bathed, ran away and dropped her mirror, which became the lake, and she still lives in it as a mermaid. The water has a more practical story too. Wells for farms in the Ica valley lowered the water table, and since 2015 local businesses have pumped water into the lagoon to keep it from drying out. Swimming is allowed in parts, but we would not.

Where Huacachina is and how far from Lima

Huacachina is about 5 km (3 mi) southwest of downtown Ica, on Peru's southern coast, and about 300 km (186 mi) from Lima along the Panamericana Sur highway. By road that is about 4 to 5 hours from Lima, more on summer weekends when traffic leaves the city. Paracas is about an hour and a half north of Ica, and Nazca about two and a half hours south.

The oasis sits at about 400 m (1,300 ft) above sea level, so altitude is not a concern here. Heat and sun are. The desert around Ica is dry and sunny almost every day of the year, and very hot at midday from December to March.

How to get to Huacachina from Lima

The simplest way to get to Huacachina from Lima is a long-distance bus to Ica, then a taxi of about 10 minutes to the oasis. Buses leave Lima throughout the day and take about 4 to 5 hours. A tour from Lima includes the transport and usually Paracas on the same day.

• Bus to Ica. Several Peruvian companies run comfortable buses with reclining seats between Lima and Ica. Book a seat on the upper deck at the front for the desert views south of Lima. Take a registered taxi from the Ica terminal to Huacachina.
• Organized tour. A day tour leaves Lima before dawn, does Paracas in the morning and Huacachina in the afternoon, and returns late at night. Two-day tours add a night in the area and sometimes the Nazca Lines.
• Hop-on hop-off bus. Backpacker bus services connect Lima, Paracas, Huacachina and Nazca and drop you at hotels. Good if you want to stop for a night at each place.
• Car with driver or rental. The Panamericana is a good highway, but driving out of Lima is slow and stressful. We would not self-drive on a first trip to Peru.

There is no regular commercial flight to Ica. Pisco airport, about an hour north, handles some charter and sightseeing flights, including Nazca overflights.

What to do in Huacachina

The two things to do in Huacachina are a dune buggy ride with sandboarding and a sunset on the dunes. Most visitors combine them in one tour of about two hours in the late afternoon. Add a walk around the lagoon, a pisco tasting in the Ica valley and an early climb up the dune behind town, and you have filled a day.

Dune buggies

Dune buggies are open, roll-caged vehicles for about 6 to 10 passengers that race up the dunes and drop down the far side. It feels like a roller coaster without rails. Drivers go faster when the group shouts, so if you want it gentler, ask before you start and sit at the front near the driver. The ride usually lasts 1.5 to 2 hours with stops for sandboarding and photos.

Sandboarding

Sandboarding in Huacachina is mostly done lying on your stomach, head first, on a waxed board. It sounds scary and is not: you hold the front of the board, keep your elbows up and drag your toes to slow down. The first dune is small and the last one is long. Standing up like a snowboarder is possible on gentler slopes, but the boards on buggy tours are not built for it and the sand is slower than snow.

Sunset on the dunes

The buggies stop on a high ridge before sunset, and the light turns the dunes orange and then purple while the lagoon goes dark below you. Choose a buggy tour that starts around 4 p.m. for that reason. The midday tours are hotter, harsher in the light and less pleasant.

Pisco in the Ica valley

Ica is the heart of Peru's pisco country. Many tours stop at a bodega (winery) to see how the grape brandy is made in clay jars and copper stills, with a tasting at the end. Small family bodegas are more interesting than the large ones if you have a choice.

Is Huacachina safe?

Huacachina is safe for visitors who take the ordinary precautions, and the real risk is the buggy ride, not crime. Buggy accidents do happen, usually when a vehicle rolls on a steep dune or a driver goes too fast. Choose a tour with a full roll cage, a proper harness at every seat and a driver who stops when you ask.

• Skip the buggy if you are pregnant or have back or neck problems. The bumps are hard.
• Wear the harness on every descent, even the slow ones.
• Sandboard only where the driver tells you, feet down if you need to stop, and never into the path of the next rider.
• Carry water, sunscreen and sunglasses. Sand blows into everything, so leave a good camera in its bag.
• At night, keep an eye on your phone and bag on the busy promenade, as you would in any tourist town.

Paracas, the Ballestas Islands and Huacachina in one trip

Most visitors pair Huacachina with Paracas, about an hour and a half north, where boats leave in the morning for the Ballestas Islands. The boat ride lasts about two hours and passes the Candelabro, a huge figure carved into the hillside of the Paracas peninsula, before circling rocky islands covered in sea lions, Humboldt penguins and seabirds. Boats go only in the morning because the wind rises in the afternoon, and nobody lands on the islands. The Paracas National Reserve on the mainland adds desert beaches and red sand cliffs.

A day from Lima runs in this order: an early start, the Ballestas boat, lunch in Paracas or Ica, a bodega stop, the buggy at sunset and the long road back. Our Paracas and Huacachina day tour from Lima does exactly that, for US$207 per person, with a pickup around 4 a.m. and a return late at night, about 15 to 17 hours in total. It is a lot for one day, but it is the only way to see both if you have a single free day in Lima.

Our guide to Paracas and the Ballestas Islands has more on the boats and the reserve.

Day trip or overnight?

Stay one night if you can. The day trip from Lima puts you on the road for about nine hours and gives you only two hours in the dunes, in the hottest part of the afternoon if traffic is bad. With a night in Huacachina or Paracas you see the sunset without watching the clock, climb a dune at sunrise when the sand is cool and the town is asleep, and break the drive into two.

The best two-day plan we know: Lima to Paracas on day one, Ballestas the next morning, Huacachina in the afternoon and the evening bus or a transfer back to Lima. Add a third day if you want Nazca.

Adding the Nazca Lines

The Nazca Lines are huge figures and lines drawn in the desert floor about 2.5 hours south of Ica, listed by UNESCO in 1994 with the geoglyphs of Palpa. You see them properly only from the air, on a small-plane flight of about 30 minutes from the Nazca airfield, or a longer flight from Pisco that adds the Palpa figures. Small planes bank hard over each figure, so skip breakfast and take motion-sickness medicine if you get airsick.

Two of our Lima day trips include the flight: a 2-day tour from US$307 that flies from the Nazca airfield, and a 2-day tour from US$607 that flies from Pisco and adds a Paracas hotel night. Our Nazca Lines flight guide explains which flight to pick and who should skip it.

When to visit Huacachina

Huacachina is good all year because it almost never rains in Ica. December to March is summer: hot, crowded on weekends and holidays, with the brightest sky. June to September is winter: mild, sunny in Ica even when Lima is under its gray coastal fog, and quieter. Peruvian holidays, especially Easter week and late July, fill the hotels, so book ahead on those dates.

Fact	Value	Source
Location	about 5 km (3 mi) from Ica, Ica Region, southern coast of Peru	en.wikipedia.org
Distance from Lima	about 300 km (186 mi), 4 to 5 hours by road
Altitude	about 400 m (1,300 ft)
Population	about 100 residents	en.wikipedia.org
Lagoon water	pumped in since 2015 to stop it drying out	en.wikipedia.org
Buggy and sandboard tour	about 1.5 to 2 hours, best around 4 p.m.
Our day tour from Lima	US$207, about 15 to 17 hours

Sources

• Huacachina, Wikipedia (distance from Ica, population, legend, water pumping since 2015)
• UNESCO, Lines and Geoglyphs of Nasca and Palpa
• SERNANP, Paracas National Reserve