CUSCO · PERU
Inca trails, high passes, the lost city.
Machu Picchu and the Inca Trail, the Sacred Valley, Rainbow Mountain and the glacier lakes. Every day trip out of the old Inca capital, and the best way to do each one.
Only here
Three things you can only do in Cusco.
Ruins and viewpoints turn up all over the Andes. Walking the Inca road to the Sun Gate, climbing a mountain striped like a rainbow and standing in Machu Picchu at dawn belong to this one corner of Peru.
The lost city
Machu Picchu
A whole Inca city set on a knife-edge ridge above the Urubamba gorge, terraces and temples and the green peak of Huayna Picchu behind it. Abandoned before the Spanish ever found it and left to the cloud forest for four centuries. There is nowhere else like the moment you come around the ridge and see it.
- 1 Machu Picchu Day Trip from Cusco
- 2 Machu Picchu: Full-Day Tour from Cusco with Optional Lunch
- 3 Cusco: 4-Day Inca Trail to Machu Picchu with Accommodation
Painted by minerals
Rainbow Mountain
Vinicunca rises above 5,000 metres south-east of the city, its slopes laid down in bands of rust, gold, turquoise and rose where iron and copper and sulphur stain the rock. The glacier that hid it has only retreated in the last decade. The walk up is brutal in the thin air and worth every step.
- 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
The original road
The Inca Trail
Four days on the actual stone road the Inca laid between Cusco and Machu Picchu, over the 4,200-metre Dead Woman’s Pass and through cloud-forest ruins the train never reaches. You arrive on foot at the Sun Gate at first light, the way the messengers did, before the day trippers come up from the valley.
- 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 book one day, book this one.
More trips out of Cusco are planned around this single day than anything else on the list.
Where most people start
Cusco's Most Popular Tours
Machu Picchu, Rainbow Mountain, Humantay Lake and the Sacred Valley. The days most travellers come to Cusco for.
Where to begin
The trips a week in Cusco is built around.
Machu Picchu, the Sacred Valley, Rainbow Mountain, Humantay Lake, the Inca Trail and the salt pans of Maras. The handful of days most trips are planned around, and the best way to do each.
The big question
How to reach Machu Picchu.
There is no road to the gate, so the how matters as much as the when. Three ways up from Cusco — the easy train, the famous trek and its wilder cousin — depending on the days and the legs you have.
The Sacred Valley
The whole valley is one long Inca terrace.
The Urubamba runs lower and warmer than the city, which is why the Inca built their best work here. The market at Pisac, the fortress terraces of Ollantaytambo, the white salt pans of Maras stepping down the hillside, the circular crop beds of Moray. Most travellers spend their second day here, and wish they had given it three.
Read the guide: the best Sacred Valley tours →Maras & Moray
Salt pans and circles cut for crops.
High above the valley, three thousand salt ponds at Maras have been worked by the same families since before the Inca, glowing white and rose down a steep ravine. A short drive on, the concentric terraces of Moray drop into the earth like an amphitheatre — an Inca farm laboratory, each ring a few degrees warmer than the last.
See the Maras & Moray tours →Machu Picchu
The lost city, found at first light.
Come up before the day trippers and the cloud is still draped over Huayna Picchu, the terraces wet and empty, llamas grazing the grass the Inca cut by hand. For an hour after the gate opens you almost have it to yourself. It is the reason the whole trip exists.
All Machu Picchu tours →Humantay Lake
A glacier lake the colour of turquoise.
Three hours out of Cusco and a steep hour on foot above the trailhead, the meltwater of the Salkantay glacier pools into a lake so vividly turquoise it looks dyed. At 4,200 metres the climb leaves you gasping, and the wall of ice and rock standing over the water is worth every breath. An early start beats both the crowds and the afternoon cloud.
- 1 Cusco: Humantay Lake Tour with Breakfast and Buffet Lunch
- 2 From Cusco: Excursion to Humantay lake from Cusco
- 3 Humantay Lagoon Tour
Plan by altitude
Let your lungs catch up first.
Cusco is higher than almost anywhere you have been, and the order you do things in matters. Rest in the old city, ease into the lower valley, then save the 5,000-metre days for the end of the trip.
3,400 m · day one or two
Start in the old city.Cusco sits at 3,400 metres and the air is thin. Give it a day or two first — the Plaza de Armas, the cathedral, the Inca walls and Sacsayhuamán above the rooftops — before you climb any higher.
2,800 m · easier on the lungs
Drop to the Sacred Valley.The valley runs lower than the city, which makes it the smart second day: the Pisac market, the great terraces of Ollantaytambo and the salt pans of Maras, all gentler while your body adjusts.
5,000 m · save it for last
Then go high.Rainbow Mountain and Humantay Lake both top 4,500 metres, and the final climb is hard work until you have a few days of altitude behind you. Leave them till the end of the trip.
Off the ruins trail
Cusco at full throttle.
When you have seen enough stonework, take the dirt. Quad bikes out to the Maras salt pans and the Moray rings, the Inca moon temple at Killarumiyoc, the high lagoons above the city — an afternoon of dust and altitude on roads the tour vans never bother with.
See all 26 ATV & quad tours →By place
The old capital, and the high country around it.
Cusco City for the plaza and the Inca walls. The Sacred Valley for the markets and terraces. Machu Picchu for the citadel. Rainbow Mountain for the colour. Humantay for the glacier lake. Puno for Lake Titicaca.
By activity
Pick how you want to spend the day.
Trek if you want to earn the view. The train if you want the easy way in. A quad bike if you want the dust. A cooking class if you want to take Peru home with you.
Plan it
Three days, the right way round.
First time in Cusco? Here is how three days plays out — easing up through the altitude before the big climb, without a wasted hour.
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