Machu Picchu is the booking everyone makes. Peru is the rest of it.
Which train reaches Aguas Calientes in time for an afternoon entry. What the four-day trail costs and how far ahead the permits go. Whether Rainbow Mountain repays the altitude. Reviews of every tour you can book in Peru.
Humantay, the Sacred Valley, Colca, the coast road south.
Five days that a first Peru itinerary tends to be built around. What each one costs, and what the people who went say about it.
01The glacier lakeHumantay Lake Tour with Breakfast and Buffet LunchUp to a meltwater lake under Salkantay and back by dinner. The single most booked day out of Cusco.
02The valley daySacred Valley & Maras Salt Mines Tour with LunchPisac, Ollantaytambo and the salt terraces at Maras, six hundred metres lower than the city. The gentle way to acclimatise.
03Lima at the tableUltimate Peruvian Food TourCeviche, causa and a pisco poured properly, walked through Miraflores and Barranco. Peru eats better than its neighbours and knows it.
04The condor morningColca Canyon Full-Day Guided Tour with MealsThe canyon rim above Chivay, where the birds ride the thermals up at about nine. A long day out of Arequipa.
05The desert runParacas and Huacachina Oasis Full Day Guided TourSouth out of Lima to the sea lions at Ballestas and the dunes behind Huacachina. One day covers both.
Train in a day, four days on the trail, or a week that starts in the valley.
Every route ends at the same gate above the Urubamba. They differ by how much walking, how much money and how far ahead you have to commit.
Six towns, and the best day out from each of them.
The Inca capital and the valley below it, a colonial coast city that cooks, white volcanic stone in the south, a fishing port on the desert shore, a lake town at 3,800 metres, and a river port on the edge of the Amazon.
The days out more travellers book than anything else in Peru.
Every Peruvian tour we have reviewed →What the country actually books, and what earns each of them the slot.
1
Humantay Lake Tour with Breakfast and Buffet Lunch
Leave Cusco before dawn for Humantay Lake with bilingual guides such as Jonathan, Eduardo, Kevin, or Waldir. After breakfast in Mollepata, hike from Soraypampa to the 4,200-meter lake, then return for a buffet lunch. Expect a steep trek, cold weather, horses for hire, and superb mountain views.
From · $22
Read our review →
2
Sacred Valley & Maras Salt Mines Tour with Lunch
from $28
3
Moray, Maras Salt Mines & Chinchero Weavers Tour
from $15
4
Paracas and Huacachina Oasis Full Day Guided Tour
from $59
5
Full-Day Group Tour of Machu Picchu
from $321
6
Machu Picchu Day Trip from Cusco
from $336
7
Half-Day City Tour with Sacsayhuaman and Q’enco
from $13
8
Vinicunca Rainbow Mountain ATV Tour with Meals
from $76
Cusco sits at 3,400 metres. Spend day one at walking pace.
Fly in from Lima and you gain three kilometres of altitude in ninety minutes. The headache usually arrives that evening. Guides all say the same thing: no trek, no early start and no big lunch on day one. Walk the old streets, sit in a museum, learn to make a pisco sour, and save Rainbow Mountain for day three.
Cusco: everything worth doing is a day trip, and most of them start at four.
Everything in Cusco →
Inca foundations under Spanish arches, a plaza that fills at dusk, and minibuses leaving before dawn for lakes, ruins and a striped mountain. These three carry more travellers than anything else in the region.
Machu Picchu, in a day or over four
The train version leaves Cusco in the dark, gets you through the gate by mid-morning and back for a late dinner. The trail version takes four days and has to be booked months out.
Vinicunca, at 5,036 metres
The stripes are real and so is the thin air, a kilometre and a half above Cusco. Give yourself three days in the city first, and take the horse for the last stretch if the head says so.
Pisac, Moray and the salt pans
The valley floor sits well below Cusco, which is why guides send you here on day two. Terraced hillsides, a Sunday market, and thousands of salt pools cut into a ravine.
The Andes reward the people who walk into them.
Turquoise lakes under hanging glaciers, passes above five thousand metres, and stone stairways the Inca laid four centuries before anyone thought of a train.
What a day in Peru actually costs.
Every tour on the site, grouped by price. A great many of the best Peruvian days come in under the price of a taxi to the airport.
City walks, market mornings, the Uros boat, Sacsayhuaman and the half-day runs out of Cusco and Arequipa.
Colca in a day, the Ballestas and the dunes together, Nazca from the air, cooking classes with the market walk attached.
Machu Picchu by train, the trekking permits, jungle lodges on the Tambopata and the multi-day routes.
- 1Full-Day Group Tour of Machu Picchufrom $321
- 2Machu Picchu Day Trip from Cuscofrom $336
- 3Full-Day Tour from Cusco with Optional Lunchfrom $283
Three things that happen in Peru and nowhere else.
Ruins and mountain views turn up all along the Andes. Lines drawn into a desert by people with no way of seeing them, a hillside striped like a mineral sample, and villages living on floating reed.
The Nazca Lines
Hundreds of figures are scraped into the desert pavement south of Ica, some of them three hundred metres across, and the ground is so dry and so still that they have survived two thousand years. Nobody on foot can read them. Light aircraft take twelve at a time from Nazca and Pisco, banking hard left then hard right so both sides of the cabin see each figure.
- 135-Minute Flight Over Nazca Lines★★★★★★★★★★ 4.6 · 583 reviews
- 2Ballestas & Huacachina Day Trip w/ Nazca Lines Flight★★★★★★★★★★ 4.9 · 117 reviews
- 3Private Tour to the Astonished Nazca Lines and Huacachina Oasis★★★★★★★★★★ 5.0 · 84 reviews
Vinicunca
The bands of red, ochre and turquoise are iron, copper and sulphur laid down in a seabed and then tipped on their side by the Andes. Snow covered the ridge until about a decade ago. It is a five-hour drive and a walk that tops out over five thousand metres, which is higher than anywhere in the Alps.
- 1Vinicunca Rainbow Mountain ATV Tour with Meals★★★★★★★★★★ 4.6 · 1,060 reviews
- 2Rainbow Mountain Tour and Red Valley Hike (Optional)★★★★★★★★★★ 4.7 · 149 reviews
- 3Private Rainbow Mountain Full Day Tour from Cusco★★★★★★★★★★ 5.0 · 129 reviews
The Uros Islands
The Uros built floating platforms out of totora reed to get away from the Inca and never came back down. Each island is anchored, rots from below and is topped up from above, so the ground under your feet gives like a mattress. Boats leave Puno all morning; Taquile and Amantani are a further two hours out.
- 1Uros, Amantaní & Taquile Islands 2-Day Tour★★★★★★★★★★ 4.5 · 452 reviews
- 2Floating Islands of the Uros Half-Day Tour★★★★★★★★★★ 4.4 · 394 reviews
- 3Lake Titicaca 2-Day Tour to Uros, Amantani and Taquile★★★★★★★★★★ 4.4 · 199 reviews
South of Lima the Pacific runs dry for a thousand kilometres.
Sea lions hauled out on guano islands, red cliffs at Paracas, sand dunes four hundred metres high behind a palm oasis, and lines cut into the pampa beyond Ica. Most of it fits into day trips from Lima, and all of it is cheap.
- 1Paracas and Huacachina Oasis Full Day Guided Tourfrom $59
- 2Full Day Paracas Ica and Huacachina from Lima All Includedfrom $85
- 335-Minute Flight Over Nazca Linesfrom $125
Four Peruvian bookings that will not wait for you.
Most of this country can be arranged from a hostel desk the night before. These four run on government caps, permit lotteries and a single railway line that does not care when your flight lands.
- 01Full-Day Group Tour of Machu PicchuEntry is capped per day and sold by timed circuit. High season sells out weeks out, and there is no gate ticket.
- 024-Day Inca Trail to Machu Picchu with AccommodationPermits are limited per day, sold months ahead through licensed operators, and the trail closes for maintenance every February.
- 03Machu Picchu 2-Day Inca Trail with Panoramic TrainOne line runs to Aguas Calientes. Seats go before entry tickets do, and there is no road alternative.
- 0435-Minute Flight Over Nazca LinesThe aircraft are small and the flights are morning-only. Wind and cloud ground them, so leave a spare day in Nazca or Pisco.
The Sacred Valley is where you go to breathe before Machu Picchu.
The Urubamba runs six hundred metres below Cusco, which makes the valley the sensible second day and the best sleeping altitude in the region. Terraced hillsides at Pisac, the circular experiment at Moray, salt pans worked since before the Spanish, and a fortress you climb at Ollantaytambo.
- 1Sacred Valley & Maras Salt Mines Tour with Lunchfrom $28
- 2Moray, Maras Salt Mines & Chinchero Weavers Tourfrom $15
- 3Sacred Valley, Pisac, Ollantaytambo, Salt Mines Morayfrom $28
Lima earns the two days people try to skip.
A colonial centre with catacombs under it, pre-Inca pyramids left standing between apartment blocks, cliffs above the Pacific with paragliders working the updraught, and the kitchens that made Peruvian food famous.
Every Lima day out →
By place — coast, sierra and jungle
By kind of day — ruin, summit, dune or kitchen
Lima, Paracas, Nazca, Arequipa, Puno, Cusco: the run almost everybody does first.
NazcaThe newest Peruvian tour reviews.
The rest of the new ones →
Cusco Tourist Ticket and Sacred Valley Site Pass
Read our review →
City Tour With Demonstration & Tasting of Pisco Sour
Read our review →
City Tour Colonial and Modern Lima Half Day Plus Ticket
Read our review →
