CUSCO · PERU
The Inca capital, and the road to Machu Picchu.
Machu Picchu day trips, the Sacred Valley, Rainbow Mountain and Humantay Lake. The Inca Trail, the Salkantay passes, and the old stone city you set out from.
Only here
Three things that exist nowhere else.
Markets, ruins and mountain views turn up across the Andes. A 15th-century citadel the Spanish never found, a mountain striped like cloth, and the original Inca road to its gate belong to this one province alone.
The lost city
Machu Picchu
A royal estate built for the emperor Pachacuti around 1450, abandoned within a century and never found by the Spanish. A ridge between two peaks, 2,430 metres up, reachable only by train and bus or on foot. Time it for the moment the sun clears the Sun Gate and the terraces come out of the cloud.
- 1 From Cusco: Full-Day Group Tour of Machu Picchu
- 2 Machu Picchu Day Trip from Cusco
- 3 Machu Picchu: Full-Day Tour from Cusco with Optional Lunch
Painted ground
Rainbow Mountain
Vinicunca only appeared a decade ago, when the ice cap that had hidden it for centuries finally melted off. The stripes are real, iron reds and sulphur golds and copper greens laid down in the rock. It is a hard walk above 5,000 metres, and the air at the top is the thinnest most people ever breathe.
- 1 Cusco: Rainbow Mountain Tour and Red Valley Hike (Optional)
- 2 Private Rainbow Mountain Full Day Tour from Cusco
- 3 Cusco: Full-Day Rainbow Mountain & Red Valley Trekking Tour
On foot
The Inca Trail
Forty-three kilometres of original Inca-laid stone over four days, across two passes above 4,000 metres, ending at the Sun Gate as Machu Picchu appears below at dawn. Permits are capped and sell out months ahead, and the trail closes each February to be repaired. There is no other walk like it.
- 1 Cusco: 4-Day Inca Trail to Machu Picchu with Accommodation
- 2 Cusco: Machu Picchu 2-Day Inca Trail with Panoramic Train
- 3 From Cusco: 2-Day Inca Trail to Machu Picchu
Start here
If you only book one day from Cusco.
More travellers build their trip around this one than anything else on the list.
The classics
Cusco's Most Popular Tours
Machu Picchu, the Sacred Valley, Rainbow Mountain and Humantay Lake. The days most people fly to Cusco for.
Where to begin
The days a Cusco trip is built around.
Machu Picchu, the Sacred Valley, Rainbow Mountain, the Inca Trail, Humantay Lake and the old city itself. The handful of days most trips are planned around, and the best way to do each.
The big decision
How to reach Machu Picchu.
Everyone comes for the citadel; the real question is how you get there. Three routes from Cusco, from a long day on the train to a five-day walk over the passes, depending on the time and the legs you bring.
The Sacred Valley
The valley the Inca farmed.
The Urubamba runs through a broad green valley below Cusco, six hundred metres lower and warmer than the city, which is why most travellers acclimatise here first. Inside it: the terraced fortress of Ollantaytambo, the cliff-side market at Pisac, weaving villages, and the river towns where the road to Machu Picchu begins.
Read the guide: the best Sacred Valley tours →Maras & Moray
White terraces and a round Inca farm.
Thousands of salt pans step down a hillside at Maras, fed by a warm spring the locals have harvested since before the Inca. Up the road at Moray, concentric stone terraces ring down into the ground like an amphitheatre, an Inca laboratory for growing crops at different heights. Most trips pair the two in a half day.
See the Maras & Moray tours →Humantay Lake
A jade lake at the foot of a glacier.
Meltwater off the Humantay glacier pools into a lake the colour of milky jade at 4,200 metres, ringed by snow and the prayer cairns trekkers leave on the shore. It is a steep pre-dawn drive and a hard hour’s climb from Cusco, and the colour at the top does not look real until you are standing over it.
Humantay Lake tours →The old city
The capital the Spanish built on top of.
Cusco was the navel of the Inca world, and the conquistadors raised their churches straight onto its walls rather than tear the stonework down. The result is a city of mortarless Inca foundations under colonial arcades: the twelve-angled stone, the sun temple of Qorikancha, and the vast zig-zag ramparts of Sacsayhuaman on the hill above.
- 1 Cusco: Half-Day City Tour with Sacsayhuaman and Q’enco
- 2 City Tour Cusco Qoricancha Sacsayhuaman y Tambomachay
- 3 Cusco: Sightseeing Tour of the City on an Open-Top Bus
By effort
Pick your days, by effort.
At 3,400 metres, Cusco rewards a gentle start. Ease in around the plazas and the valley, work up to the high day trips once you have acclimatised, and save the multi-day passes for last.
Take it gently
Plazas, markets and a slow start.A walking tour of the old Inca capital, a cooking class off the San Pedro market, an easy afternoon in the Sacred Valley while you find your breath at altitude.
A full day out
High passes and coloured ground.A pre-dawn run to Rainbow Mountain, the jade water of Humantay Lake, the salt terraces of Maras and quad bikes across the altiplano.
Days on the trail
Over the passes to Machu Picchu.The four-day Inca Trail to the Sun Gate, the wilder Salkantay route under the glaciers, the long high-altitude treks that end at the citadel.
Salkantay
Five days under the glaciers to the citadel.
When the Inca Trail permits run out, this is the walk people take instead, and plenty choose it first. From Cusco it climbs under the ice face of Salkantay, crosses a 4,600-metre pass, then drops through cloud forest and coffee country to reach Machu Picchu from the valley below. No permit cap, bigger country.
See all 37 Salkantay treks →By place
Cusco and its day trips, six ways.
Machu Picchu for the citadel. The Sacred Valley for the terraces and markets. Rainbow Mountain for the colour. Humantay for the glacier lake. Cusco itself for the stonework. Maras and Moray for the salt pans.
By activity
Pick how to spend the day.
The train if you want the citadel without the climb. The trail if you want to walk in. Ruins and city tours if you want the history, quad bikes and horses if you want the altiplano, a cooking class or a pisco night if you want to slow down.
Plan it
Three perfect days.
Never been? Here is the order that works at altitude, with the hard days saved until your lungs have caught up.
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