huacachina.

Just a few kilometers (that's right ya'll: we've gone metric) outside of Ica, Peru is a tiny desert oasis, a lake with a fabled mermaid in the middle of rolling sand dunes, as far as the eye can see. This desert is the kind of place you would have to cut a camel open and sleep inside of it if you got lost at night. That's how massively intimidating it is: Star Wars intimidating.
But instead of keeping warm with dromedary guts, we had a hotel with warm blankets. We had this pool at the foot of a dune. We had pina coladas brought out by grinning barmen. We had copies of National Geographic with elaborate maps of ancient Persia.
In short, while other people were sandboarding and flying over the Nazca Lines and dunebuggying, we were perfectly content to relax in this perfect little oasis, surrounded by sand on all sides, and not even moving a muscle.
This may be the best place in the world to spend a January weekend.