Huacachina, Peru · Travel Poster

Each poster comes with a letter home. Ella writes about the place and its hidden history, and the details that never makes it into the guidebooks.

Huacachina, a small oasis ringed by towering desert dunes, takes its name from a Quechua legend about a weeping woman who cried a lagoon into being and then, fleeing a hunter, transformed into a mermaid to escape into its waters. Long before it became a backpacker stop, it was something quieter, a private retreat for Lima's wealthy, whose lagoon waters were believed to have healing powers roughly sixty years ago. Scientists put the oasis down to an underground water current rather than any legend, though the lagoon has been slowly shrinking in recent years, thinner each season as nearby drilling and evaporation take their toll.

This poster is an original illustration in watercolour and ink, painted exclusively for the Ella's Adventures travel poster series.

No frame included.