Machu Picchu sets the date. The rest of Peru sets the price.
Which Sacred Valley day actually reaches Moray. What the Uros boat costs out of Puno. Whether Rainbow Mountain is worth a 3am pickup on your second day at altitude. Reviews of every tour you can book in Peru.
Four days that carry a first Peru itinerary.
The citadel, the valley below it, a glacier lake at 4,200 metres and the run down the coast to the dunes. What each one costs, and what the people who took it say.
01The one you came forMachu Picchu Day Trip from CuscoCusco to Aguas Calientes and back inside a day, train and bus and entry all held together by somebody else.
02The valley dayMoray, Maras Salt Mines & Chinchero Weavers TourMoray, the Maras salt pans and the Chinchero weavers. The cheapest good day in the Cusco region by some distance.
03The 4,200m lakeHumantay Lake Tour with Breakfast and Buffet LunchUp before five, breakfast on the road, an hour of switchbacks on foot to a glacier lake. Do it after two nights in Cusco, not before.
04The coast runParacas and Huacachina Oasis Full Day Guided TourBallestas boat in the morning, dune buggies at Huacachina by sunset. The day that breaks up the Lima to Cusco flight.
There are three ways to stand at the Sun Gate. They cost wildly different money.
Everything at Machu Picchu is capped and dated: entry slots, train seats, trail permits. Pick which kind of arrival you want first, then book the rest of Peru around the date you get.
Cusco for the ruins, Lima for the food, Arequipa for the canyon.
Peru travels in a line down the Andes and back up the coast. Six bases, and the day out each one is actually good for.
Peru does its best work over 4,000 metres.
Striped mineral ridges at Vinicunca, a glacier lake the colour of antifreeze at Humantay, the Cordillera Blanca out of Huaraz and the Colca rim where condors come up on the morning thermals. None of it is a gentle walk, and all of it is the reason people come back.
Cusco is the hinge. Almost every Peruvian booking runs through it.
The whole Cusco shelf →
Give the altitude two nights before you ask anything of your legs. Walk the city and the ruins on the ridge above it first, then take the valley, then take the citadel. These three carry more travellers than anything else in the region.
The city, at walking pace
Qorikancha under the Santo Domingo cloister, the cathedral, San Blas and the market at San Pedro. Enough to read the Inca and Spanish layers off each other without climbing anything.
Sacsayhuaman and the four ruins
Stones the size of vans cut to fit without mortar, then Q’enqo, Puka Pukara and Tambomachay on the road out. The standard half-day, and the honest test of how you are handling the air.
Moray and the Maras salt pans
Concentric agricultural terraces that hold their own microclimates, then several thousand salt pools stepped down a ravine and worked the same way since before the Inca. The best value day in the region.
What Peru’s travellers book before they book anything else.
The whole Peru catalogue →Ranked by the people who have already been. What earns each one its slot, and what it costs to join.
1
Humantay Lake Tour with Breakfast and Buffet Lunch
Leave Cusco before dawn for Humantay Lake, hiking from Soraypampa to 4,200 meters with an English or Spanish-speaking guide. Guides such as Jonathan, Eduardo, Kevin, and Waldir are praised for patient pacing and safety checks. Breakfast in Mollepata, a buffet lunch, optional horseback riding, and spectacular Salkantay views are included.
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
What one day out in Peru sets you back.
Every tour on the site, grouped by price. Outside Machu Picchu, Peru is one of the cheapest countries in South America to book a guided day in.
City walks, the ruins circuit above Cusco, the Ballestas boat, the salt pans and most of the coast.
Full days with lunch and a long drive in them: Colca, the Sacred Valley end to end, the Nazca flight.
Machu Picchu with the train, the multi-day treks and the lodges deep in the Madre de Dios.
- 1Full-Day Group Tour of Machu Picchufrom $321
- 2Machu Picchu Day Trip from Cuscofrom $336
- 3Full-Day Tour from Cusco with Optional Lunchfrom $283
Lima is not a stopover any more. Eat before you fly south.
Two of the best restaurants on the continent sit inside twenty minutes of the cliffs at Miraflores, and the market stalls that feed them are open at seven in the morning. Come for a night and you will wish you had kept two.
The whole Lima shelf →
Ceviche at eleven, pisco at six, and a potato you have never met.
Four thousand varieties of potato, a coastline that produces the cold-water fish for ceviche, and a century of Japanese and Cantonese cooking folded into the local one. Book the market walk before the heat and the class that ends as lunch.
Three Peruvian sights with no equivalent anywhere on earth.
Mountains and old stones are everywhere. Lines drawn across a desert by people who could never see them, a ridge striped like a layer cake, and a town built on floating reeds are not.
The Nazca Lines
Hundreds of figures scratched into the desert pavement between 500 BC and 500 AD, most of them too large to read from the ground. A hummingbird, a monkey, a spider, and mile after mile of dead straight lines running over hills. The flights are short, the light is best early, and the little planes bank hard over each figure so both sides get a look. Take the motion sickness warning seriously.
- 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 ridge was under ice until the last decade or so, and the meltback exposed bands of red claystone, green chlorite and yellow sulphide lying in stripes across the slope. It sits at 5,036 metres, which is higher than anything in the Alps, and the walk in from the road is an hour of very thin air. Go on day three in Cusco at the earliest.
- 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
Forty-odd islands on Lake Titicaca woven from totora reed, anchored, and rebuilt from the top every few weeks as the underside rots away. The Uros moved onto the water centuries ago to keep clear of the Inca and stayed. Boats, houses and the ground itself are all the same plant, and you feel it give under your feet.
- 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
Four Peruvian bookings that run on someone else’s calendar.
Most of this country can be arranged over breakfast the day before. These four cannot: they run on government permits, timed entry slots and a train timetable with a fixed number of seats.
- 014-Day Inca Trail to Machu Picchu with AccommodationPermits are capped per day and sold by date, porters included. The dry-season dates go months out and the trail shuts every February.
- 02Huayna Picchu and Machu Picchu from Cusco Full dayThe two peaks inside the citadel sell separate timed tickets with a hard daily cap, and they go long before the plain entry does.
- 03Vinicunca Rainbow Mountain ATV Tour with MealsPickup is around 3am and you should have at least two nights of altitude behind you, so the date is set by when you land in Cusco, not by when you feel like going.
- 0435-Minute Flight Over Nazca LinesThe planes are small and fly a morning window before the desert thermals get up. Afternoon slots exist and they are the bumpy ones.
Cusco is 3,400 metres. Plan the first two days around that.
Soroche does not care how fit you are. The fix is boring and it works: arrive, do nothing strenuous, drink more water than feels reasonable, and spend the first two days on things that sit still. Better still, come up through the coast and Arequipa instead of flying straight in.
By place, coast to jungle
By kind of day, ruin, ridge, kitchen or dune
Lima, the dunes, the canyon, the lake, Cusco: the run almost everybody does.
Huacachina
Colca CanyonPeruvian tour reviews, newest first.
Newer Peruvian reviews →
Walking tour through the Historic Center of Arequipa
Read our review →
Visit to the Cochahuasi Animal Sanctuary with rescued animal
Read our review →
Vinicunca Mountain Tour – Full Day Tour to Rainbow Mountain
Read our review →
Maras and Huaypo lagoon by ATV from Cuzco | Local Operator
Read our review →
TRIP FROM PUNO TO CUSCO WITH THE ROUTE OF THE SUN
Read our review →
