Places MeanderingMind Wants to Go

Home of the "true" equator.

These mammoth-yet-narrow crevasses in the Earth are perfect for taking an otherworldly swim.

Ecuador's largest Incan ruins show evidence of sophisticated irrigation and diplomacy among the ancient builders.

A turquoise lake within a volcanic crater.

A swing to dangle you off the very edge.

Enormous array of antennae fill a desert valley.

A circle of stones on a hilltop in Peru’s high jungle, aligned with the winter solstice and largely ignored by archaeologists.

A paradisical gorge with rapids, waterfalls, and wildlife whose raw beauty is the stuff of CGI movies.

This metal tower in the desert provides views of a handful of Nazca geoglyphs.

Visiting dignitaries and Hollywood stars once stayed at this 1920s hotel, alongside ghosts that are said to haunt its corridors.

After an epic flood washed away its enslavers, this city has been part ghost town, part cultural wildcard for the past three centuries.

This unimaginably large pile of sand near Nazca is one of the tallest dunes in the world.

A pretty park of over 1,600 olive trees that grew from just three saplings brought over from Spain.

Art school in the Amazon: Drugs, nature and sustainable agriculture.

These giant mummies are set ominously into a Peruvian cliffside and topped with real human skulls.

These steeply terraced ruins are a stop along the Inca Trail to Machu Picchu.

This Peruvian canyon is filled with geometric salt pools that have been being harvested since the Incan empire.

Huge stone depressions which may have acted as an Incan agricultural experiment.

An unexpected desert oasis in South America.

Nazca pilgrimage site covering 370 acres is a popular stop for archeologists and looters.

A remarkable geological formation resembling a forest made of stone.

A remote candy-striped mountain in the Peruvian Andes straight out of the pages of Dr. Seuss.

Keshwa chaca, among the last handwoven Incan bridges, crosses Apurimac Canyon in Peru.

This devil-dancing ceremony now celebrates a miraculous image of the Virgin Mary that appeared to a modern-day Robin Hood in a mineshaft.