Peru, altitude and all.
Machu Picchu at first light, Vinicunca striped at 5,000 metres, condors riding the Colca thermals, a slow boat leaving Iquitos. Read the day before you pay for it.
Seven days worth the flight.
First time in Peru or third, a plan tends to hang off these: the early bus up to the citadel gate, the Maras salt pans terraced into their hillside, a buggy over the Huacachina dunes at last light.
Cusco: Humantay Lake Tour with Breakfast and Buffet Lunch
Early start for Humantay Lake. Tough 3km climb, panoramic Salkantay views, breakfast and buffet lunch included, small-group pace.
From $22 per person
Read our review →
★ 4.8Books out firstFrom Cusco: Sacred Valley & Maras Salt Mines Tour with LunchFrom $282,227 reviews
★ 4.8Worth the early startFrom Cusco: Moray, Maras Salt Mines & Chinchero Weavers TourFrom $151,925 reviews
★ 4.5Traveller favouriteMachu Picchu Day Trip from CuscoFrom $3361,644 reviews
★ 4.6Easy to slot inCusco: Half-Day City Tour with Sacsayhuaman and Q’encoFrom $131,129 reviews
★ 4.6The classicCusco: Sacred Valley, Pisac, Ollantaytambo, Salt Mines MorayFrom $281,058 reviews
★ 4.5Small groupFrom Arequipa: Colca Canyon Full-Day Guided Tour with MealsFrom $42982 reviews
Machu Picchu pays back an early start.
The first buses climb out of Aguas Calientes at half past five, and the cloud usually lifts off Huayna Picchu somewhere around eight. Get through the gate on that first wave and the terraces are almost yours, llamas included. Every route below ends at the same turnstile; they just take different amounts of your week.
Which way up to Machu Picchu?
Three routes, one turnstile. What separates them is how many days they eat, how high you sleep, and how far in advance you must commit. Altitude is the honest part: the city you set off from already sits 3,400 metres up, and every trek climbs well above that, so take two nights there before you walk anything.
By rail
Take the train
2 to 4 hours · from $855 · 182 reviews
Down the Urubamba gorge from Ollantaytambo with windows in the roof, then the switchback bus up from Aguas Calientes and back in Cusco the same night. No permit, no camping, no acclimatisation gamble. This is the route for a short trip, and the only one that works with grandparents or small children in the group.
See the rail routes →
Four days on foot
The classic Inca Trail
4 days · from $820 · 69 reviews
Kilometre 82 to the Sun Gate over four days, across Warmiwanusca, the 4,215 metre pass the guides still call Dead Woman’s. Permits are capped by the state and the dry-season dates go five or six months ahead, so book this one first. Porters carry the camp. You carry a day pack and your own lungs.
Check the Inca Trail dates →
No permit cap
The Salkantay route
5 days · from $593 · 88 reviews
Over a pass at 4,600 metres, right beneath the glacier, then down through cloud forest and coffee country to the train at Hidroelectrica. Nothing to reserve months out, so you can decide late, and the landscape changes more in five days than on any other approach. Harder walking, thinner air, far fewer people.
Compare the Salkantay treks →
Lima gets better after seven.
The Circuito Magico del Agua starts firing at dusk in the Parque de la Reserva: thirteen fountains, a laser reel across the water, children soaked to the knee. Then Barranco, where the pisco sours get poured properly, the cebicherias only wake up late, and an Afro-Peruvian cajon crew can fill a bar with twenty chairs in it.
Lima cooks better than it lets on.
Ceviche cured in the ten minutes it takes to walk to your table. Anticuchos off a street grill in Surquillo. A pisco sour with the egg white whipped, not shaken in. Book one market morning and one class, and you will order better for the whole fortnight.
The lakes are worth the thin air.
Humantay turns turquoise once the sun clears the ridge. The seven lagoons under Ausangate almost never see a coach. Laguna 69 lies under a Cordillera Blanca glacier that feeds it. Walk slow, take the coca tea, and keep a spare day in Cusco ahead of any of them.
Most of Peru is rainforest.
Fly into Puerto Maldonado or Iquitos and the map you have been using stops applying. Days run on river time: macaws at a clay lick before breakfast, a torch walk after dinner, caiman eyes on the black water at dusk. Three nights is the least that justifies the flight, and the lodges furthest from town see the most.
Where Peru actually takes you.
Cusco and the Sacred Valley take the biggest share of a first visit. Lima is the food. Arequipa is the white city with a canyon behind it. Puno is the lake. Iquitos and Puerto Maldonado are the river. Between them lies the desert.
Trek it, ride it, eat it, or fly over it.
Twelve entry points that ignore the map. Come in this way when the plan starts with a four-day trek, a buggy over the dunes, or an afternoon learning to fold a lomo saltado properly.
Leave before six.
The good ones begin before sunrise. The Colca rim at first light for the condors, Vinicunca ahead of the coaches, Ballestas while the swell is flat, the Nazca flight while the air over the desert is still smooth.
Ten days, in the right order.
Sequence beats itinerary here. Land at sea level, climb slowly, and take Machu Picchu once your body has had a few nights up high rather than before.
Days 1–3
Lima, at sea level
Stay at zero metres and let the flight settle out of you. Barranco and Miraflores on foot, a market morning in Surquillo, the Pachacamac pyramids a short drive south. Eat everything now; nothing inland comes close.
Plan the Lima days →
Days 4–6
Cusco, slowly
Fly up to 3,400 metres and do almost nothing on the first afternoon. Coca tea and an early night, then the city and the valley: Pisac’s terraces, the salt pans at Maras, the fortress steps at Ollantaytambo. It counts as acclimatisation and it is usually the stretch people talk about afterwards.
Plan the Cusco days →
Days 7–10
The citadel, then a second country
Machu Picchu by rail or on foot, and after that pick one more Peru: Arequipa and the Colca rim, the reed islands on Titicaca, or the flight east into the rainforest. Whichever it is, hold one spare day back for weather.
Plan the last days →
Peru, most recently reviewed.
★ 4.5LIMA: HALF-DAY SANDBOARDING TOURFrom $1503 reviews
★ 5.0Excursion Salinas Lagoon and NationalFrom $233 reviews
★ 5.0Sacred Valley Tour 1 DayFrom $393 reviews
★ 3.1Lima: Escapada de 2 Días a la Reserva Nor Yauyos-CochasFrom $1503 reviews
★ 5.0Excursion Cusco – Puno – Titicaca Observatory TrainFrom $4453 reviews
★ 4.7Sacred Valley Vip Cusco3 reviews
★ 4.5From Arequipa: Full Day Colca Canyon TourFrom $533 reviews
★ 5.0Cusco | Humantay Lake 1-Day Tour with Breakfast and LunchFrom $283 reviews