Peru tours

Peru travels in a line rather than a loop. Lima sits on the coast, Cusco at 11,150 feet holds the middle of the country, the Sacred Valley drops away below it, and Machu Picchu waits at the end of the line, reached either by train up the river gorge or on foot over a mountain pass. Lake Titicaca at 12,500 feet and the rainforest at Puerto Maldonado hang off that spine, added as the days allow. How many days you have decides more here than anything else. Four covers the citadel and the valley around it. A week adds the Sacred Valley properly, and ten days is what it takes to walk in, over the Inca Trail's stone stairways or the higher Salkantay pass. Altitude sets the opening either way: Cusco is high enough that the first day is deliberately a slow one, which is why the trips start there rather than at the trailhead.