The southern route through Cusco, the Sacred Valley, and Machu Picchu, then two nights at a Tambopata rainforest lodge reached by boat down the river.
Lima and the Larco Museum first, then the high country: Cusco at 11,150 ft, Pisac and Ollantaytambo in the Sacred Valley, a climb above the citadel. Then the trip drops off the Andes altogether, east to Puerto Maldonado and upriver by boat, for two nights in the Tambopata rainforest at a lodge the Ese'eja community owns and runs.
A late-afternoon landing and a straight run into Miraflores, the district Lima built along the cliff edge above the Pacific. The clifftop is a chain of parks the length of the neighborhood, with paragliders working the updraft off the face. The evening is open on purpose: time at sea level before Cusco, two miles higher, makes the altitude much easier.
A guided day through Lima's historic center, laid out by Pizarro in 1535 and run as the capital of Spanish South America for the next two hundred years. Then the Larco Museum and its five thousand years of Peruvian gold, ceramics and textiles. The evening is the Magic Water Circuit, where the fountains in the old city park run to music after dark.
Cusco sits at 11,150 feet, so the first few hours are yours to settle in and the sightseeing waits until afternoon. It starts at Qorikancha, where the Spanish built a church straight onto the Temple of the Sun, then climbs to Sacsayhuaman, the fortress above the old capital, with the whole city open below. Last is the little lookout fort at Puka Pukara, out where the road turns down toward the Sacred Valley.
A full day down into the Sacred Valley, which runs lower and warmer than Cusco. The morning is Pisac, market stalls filling the square and Inca terraces curving around the hillside above it. Then the stone stairs at Ollantaytambo, the one place the Inca turned back Spanish cavalry, by flooding the plain below the fortress. Back in Cusco by evening.
The train follows the Urubamba down into the gorge, where the mountains close in and the cloud forest starts. The bus climbs the switchbacks above the town, and the whole site is suddenly in front of you: temples, plazas and terraces cut into the ridge between two peaks. Machu Picchu was built as a country estate for a single emperor and stood empty within a century of his death. The night is spent at the foot of the mountain, because tomorrow starts with a climb high above the ruins.
A self-guided climb, on whichever of the two peaks your dates allow. Huayna Picchu is the peak standing behind the ruins in every photograph of them: a steep hour of Inca stairs to 8,920 ft, looking straight down on the city. Machu Picchu Mountain is the longer, steadier climb to 10,111 ft, with the whole valley below. The afternoon is the train back to Cusco, running up the valley beside the river most of the way.
A morning flight crosses the eastern Andes and drops to Puerto Maldonado, 600 feet up and a different climate. The road out of town runs as far as the river, and the rest of the way in is by boat, upstream, to a lodge the Ese'eja community of Infierno built and runs on its own land. Rooms open on one side straight into the forest, with no glass between you and it. The afternoon is the canopy tower, 130 feet of staircase to a platform above the treetops, and you come back down in the dark, slowly, for the frogs.
Tres Chimbadas is an oxbow lake, a bend the Tambopata cut off and left as still water, and you cross it early on a paddled catamaran. A family of giant river otters fishes it, and about six visitors in ten see them. The afternoon is Centro Ñape, where the community grows the plants it still treats people with, and a walk to the kapok tree standing above the canopy behind the lodge.
An early run to the clay lick, where parrots and parakeets come down to a seam of river clay for the sodium the forest leaves them short of, watched from a blind close enough to hear them. Then the boat down with the current and the road into Puerto Maldonado for the flight out.
Pricing can vary by season, hotel or cabin standard and other factors. Local holidays and major dates like Christmas and New Year carry supplements. A single room adds $835 per person. Prices shown are for the current year. Inquire to check rates for future years.
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