11 Best Sights in The Southern Coast, Peru

A favorite stop on the tour circuit, this family-run bodega produces wines and some of the region's finest pisco. Tour guides are happy to show you a 300-year-old section of the distillery that's still in operation. If you're here in March, try to catch the annual Fiesta de Uva, when the year's festival queen tours the vineyard and gets her feet wet in the opening of the grape-pressing season. The excellent Taberna restaurant and bar is open for lunch after a hard morning's wine tasting. If you don't want to drive, take a colectivo taxi from near the Plaza de Armas (S/2).

One of the more enjoyable alcohol-making operations to visit is owned by Elar Bolívar, who claims to be a direct descendent of the liberator Simón de Bolívar himself (some locals shrug their shoulders at this). Regardless, Elar's small, artisanal operation includes a creepy collection of shrunken heads (Dutch tourists, he says, who didn't pay their drink tab), ancient cash registers, fencing equipment, and copies of some of the paintings in Ica's regional museum. The question is, who really has the originals: Elar or the museum? As part of your visit, you can taste the bodega's recently made pisco, straight from the clay vessel. The pisco is so-so, but the atmosphere is priceless. Some organized tours include this bodega as part of their itinerary. It's not a safe walk from town, so take a cab if you come on your own.

A sunny brick archway welcomes you to this large, pleasant winery, which has been producing fine wines, pisco, and sangria since it was founded by the Picasso brothers in 1857. A former monastery and now the largest winery in the valley, it's a popular tour-bus stop, so come early to avoid the groups. Tours in English or Spanish take you through the vast pisco- and wine-making facilities at the industrial-sized production center before depositing you in the tasting room. It's not safe to walk here from downtown Ica, so if you don't have your own vehicle, take a taxi.

Within a walled, 3,400-square-meter (4,050-square-yard) courtyard west of the Nazca Lines is an ancient ceremonial and pilgrimage site. Six adobe pyramids, the highest of which is about 21 meters (69 feet), stand above a network of 40 mounds with rooms and connecting corridors. Grain and water silos are also visible inside, and several large cemeteries lie outside the walls. Used by the early Nazca culture, the site is estimated to have existed for about three or four centuries before being abandoned around AD 500. Cahuachi takes its name from the word qahuachi (meddlesome). La Estaquería, with its mummification pillars, is nearby. Tours from Nazca, 34 km (21 miles) to the east, visit both sites for around S/40 with a group and take three hours.

Dating from 1684, this is one of the oldest working distilleries in the Americas. For the past few years, the historic hacienda has been continually upgraded, now that it is the home of internationally famous brand Pisco Portón. Master distiller and pisco celebrity Johnny Schuler designed the new distillery so that it would move liquid only through the natural forces of gravity, which allows for small-batch distillation and control over every bottle. On the guided tours, you’ll see several traditional pisco-making methods on the estate, from the large wooden press to the gravity-fed channels. Then you’ll see the modern additions, such as the roof garden that was planted to offset the carbon dioxide emissions created during fermentation, as well as a water-treatment system to recycle water from distillation into a source of irrigation for the vineyards. Tours end with, of course, a tasting. With prior notice, they can set up lunch in the vineyard or Peruvian Paso horseback rides. Reservations are essential.

Catch your breath and drive up to this beautifully restored colonial church, built on the foundation of an Inca temple 2,800 meters (9,200 feet) above sea level.

Soaring ceilings, ornate stained-glass windows, and the fact that it's the only one of Ica's colonial-era churches left standing after the 2007 earthquake make this the city's grandest religious building. Yet even this colossal monument didn't escape the quake unscathed. If you look on the floor toward the front of the church you can see the gouges left in the marble blocks by falling pieces of the church altar. It's said that the statues of the saints stood serenely throughout the quake and didn't move an inch.

These wooden pillars, 34 km (21 miles) west of Nazca, carved of huarango wood and placed on mud-brick platforms, were once thought to have been an astronomical observatory. More recent theories, however, lean toward their use in mummification rituals, perhaps to dry bodies of deceased tribal members. They are usually visited on a tour of Cahuachi.

Everyone comes to town for the Nazca Lines, but a more contemporary spot that's also worth visiting is the studio of Tobi Flores. His father, Andrés Calle Flores, years ago discovered Nazca pottery remnants in local museums and started making new vase forms based on their pre-Columbian designs. Today, the younger Flores hosts a funny and informative talk in his ceramics workshop, and afterward you can purchase some beautiful pottery for reasonable prices. It's a quick walk across the bridge from downtown Nazca; at night, take a cab.

After suffering earthquake damage in 2007, this 16th-century hacienda took the opportunity to overhaul its now very modern operation. Internationally renowned, it produces some of Peru's best labels, particularly the Blanco de Blancos and Don Manuel Tannat wines and the Demonio de los Andes line of piscos. Stroll through the rolling vineyards—still watered by the Achirana irrigation canal built by the Incas—before sampling the end result. The on-site restaurant is one of the best in Ica. The estate is about 11 km (7 miles) north of town.