• 3 Dinner (D)
• 10 Breakfast (B)
• 4 Lunch (L)

• Lima: Take in the highlights of Lima, the ‘City of the Kings,’ including a panoramic view of the ancient districts. Join a local specialist for a visit to the UNESCO-listed Historic Center. Learn how before it was destroyed by earthquakes in the mid-18th century, observing how the historic buildings display a collaboration between local craftspeople and others from the Old World. Then drive along the coastline as you learn more about the fascinating history of Peru’s capital city. 
• Lima: Dive into the rich history of Casona San Marcos, an ancient building in Lima now part of the property of a university. Learn to play the “cajón” (meaning “box” or drawer”) box-shaped percussion instrument played by slapping the faces with the hands, fingers, or sometimes implements. Continue your musical discovery trying the basic steps of “musica negra”, a dance that originated in Chincha (near Paracas) that is popular during over the Christmas season. Over your lesson, try a snack from a “pregonero”, a vendor who specializes in selling a typical snack through boisterous advertising in the city streets.
• Sacred Valley: We’ll Dive into Culture and meet a Quechua Shaman who will perform a ceremony welcoming you to Peru.
• Machu Picchu: Discover how Peru’s most famous cocktail, the Pisco Sour, is prepared with a Local Specialist. You’ll explore the ingredients, techniques and secrets behind the drink, as well as its cultural importance in Peru.
• Cusco: Visit the mystical Incan stronghold of Ollantaytambo. These famous ruins are a massive Inca fortress made of large stone terraces stretching out across a hillside. Walk among the stone platforms, the sun temple of six monoliths and the Princess Baths fountain ? the Baño de la Nusta at the base of the ruins flowing from carved stone into a pool. Over your exploration, learn how the old town is an Inca-era grid of cobblestoned streets and adobe buildings.
• Machu Picchu: Soak in every moment of your Machu Picchu tour in style as you descend to the Lost City in the clouds aboard the Vistadome train. Traveling the Inca Trail, you’ll traverse dramatic landscapes with a panoramic view of the soaring peaks, river, and ruins. Sit back and relax as you enjoy this multi-sensory journey complete with background music, an informative audio commentary highlighting interesting sites, and an included light snack.
• Machu Picchu: Take a shuttle to the top of the mountain where you’ll meet your local specialist for a guided hike of Machu Picchu. You’ll learn about Machu Picchu’s history and the use of each section of including ceremonial, storage, agriculture, temples, astronomical, and observatory as well as the possible reasons why the Incas left Machu Picchu.
• Cusco: Enjoy the flavors of chicha, a Peruvian corn beer. Hear about how chicha is brewed by the local indigenous women and its history dating back to the time of the Incas as a favorite drink of the Andes. Learn about the two types of chicha, alcoholic sour chicha de jora made from fermented jora corn and the non-alcoholic, sweet chicha morada.
• Machu Picchu: The ruins of Machu Picchu beckon yet again and we enjoy one final opportunity to reconnect with its story. Journey to take in the ruins at sunrise spending some time on your own to explore the hill-top fortress. Soak in every moment at this iconic site, making stops at points of interest while your guide shares their insights on the archaeological sites.
• Cusco: Join your Local Specialist for a guided walk through Cusco’s colonial center, including the nearby 13th-century Incan settlement of Koricancha. Here in Cusco’s Golden Temple of the Sun dedicated to the Sun God Inti, view the trapezoidal and irregular shapes and rounded edges. Note how the stones fit together and were built simply by placing them on top of each other without using any mortar. This staggered placement also enables them to withstand earthquakes.
• Cusco: Begin your day at the ruins of the UNESCO-listed Sacsayhuamán fortress overlooking Cusco. With zig zagging walls and ruins of giant stones, see how the shape and harmony of the landscape is similar to Machu Picchu. Stroll through this Incan architecture of sacred buildings such as residential buildings, towers, shrines, warehouses, roads and aqueducts. And while you may not be able to take in the grand scale, the complex design is based on the shape of the head of a puma, a sacred animal in Inca spirituality.
• Puno: Bring Peru’s culture to life as you decorate your own torito de Pucará – a colorful ceramic bull steeped in Andean tradition. Found on rooftops across the region, these painted icons symbolize protection and prosperity, offering a hands-on way to connect with local heritage through creativity.
• Lake Titicaca: Cruise the deep blue waters of Lake Titicaca with a Local Specialist, discovering its floating islands constructed from reeds by the Uros Indians. 

• Selected hotel dinners plus a locally hosted meal
• 4-star stays
• Deluxe coach, cruise and train travel, and select flights

Trafalgar

Meet your Travel Director and fellow travellers over dinner in Lima. This hosted gathering offers a relaxed introduction to the people sharing your journey through Peru.

Settle into the atmosphere of the coastal capital, where Peruvian cooking draws on Indigenous, Spanish, African and Asian influences. The pleasure of this evening is conversation and connection rather than formal sightseeing.

Explore Lima with a Local Specialist, taking in the Main Square and the UNESCO-listed Historic Centre. See the colonial heart of the city and hear how the capital developed after its founding in 1535.

Historic buildings reveal a blend of local craftsmanship and European design, while a drive along the Pacific coast shows another side of modern Lima. The contrasting districts make this a useful introduction to Peru’s capital.

Visit Casona San Marcos with Local Specialists to learn about this historic Lima building. Try a snack from a local street vendor before taking part in a hands-on introduction to the cajón, the box-shaped percussion instrument played by striking its front face.

Practise basic steps associated with música negra, a dance tradition with roots in Peru’s Afro-Peruvian communities. Music, movement and local storytelling bring an important strand of the country’s cultural heritage into focus.

Travel through the Sacred Valley, where the Urubamba River winds between Andean slopes and cultivated fields. Take in the landscape that sustained Inca communities and remains an agricultural heartland today.

Meet a Quechua Shaman for a special welcome ceremony rooted in local spiritual traditions. The encounter offers a personal introduction to Andean beliefs and to the enduring relationship between communities and their mountain surroundings.

Meet Sacred Valley farmers over a hosted Be My Guest lunch and learn about the cultivation of Giant White Corn. Hear how growers combine inherited knowledge with newer agricultural techniques to tend a crop closely associated with the valley.

The shared meal creates space for conversation with your hosts. Food becomes a connection to place as you discover the work, skills and family traditions behind a familiar Peruvian ingredient.

Watch a performance of the Marinera, a Peruvian couple’s dance distinguished by poised footwork, playful courtship and sweeping handkerchiefs. Its gestures give the performers room to respond to one another as the music gathers pace.

The dance reflects Spanish, Indigenous and African influences within Peru’s coastal culture. Seeing it performed in the Sacred Valley adds a lively counterpoint to the region’s Inca sites and farming traditions.

Roll up your sleeves in a hands-on cooking class in the Sacred Valley. Prepare Peruvian food with guidance, learning through the ingredients and techniques rather than simply tasting the finished dish.

Cooking offers a close look at the everyday culture of a region shaped by Andean agriculture. The experience gives familiar flavours a story, connecting what appears on the plate with the people and produce behind it.

Learn to make a Pisco Sour with a Local Specialist. Explore the ingredients and techniques behind Peru’s best-known cocktail, and try your hand at bringing its citrus, pisco and foamy finish into balance.

The session places the drink within Peruvian food and social culture, making it more than a recipe to take home. It is a practical way to learn why this cocktail holds such a prominent place in the country.

Explore Ollantaytambo’s Inca fortress, where broad stone terraces climb a steep hillside above the Sacred Valley. Walk among the remains of ceremonial spaces and admire the scale of the masonry against the surrounding mountains.

Below the ruins, the town retains an Inca-era street layout of narrow cobbled lanes. Together, the settlement and fortress show how Inca engineering shaped both a commanding stronghold and a place still lived in today.

Ride the Vistadome train towards Machu Picchu, watching the Urubamba River and steep Andean slopes through its panoramic windows. The rail journey makes the changing landscape a central part of the experience.

Enjoy an included light snack and onboard commentary as mountains give way to the greener surroundings near the ancient citadel. River views and soaring peaks offer a striking sense of Machu Picchu’s setting before you explore the site itself.

Explore Machu Picchu with a Local Specialist, walking among its stone terraces, temples and ceremonial areas high above the Urubamba Valley. Learn how different parts of the citadel may have served agriculture, worship and daily life.

An additional opportunity to spend time at the ruins independently lets you take in Inca stonework and mountain scenery at your own pace. The site’s precise construction and dramatic position continue to prompt questions about its purpose and abandonment.

Meet local weavers in the Sacred Valley and watch a demonstration of the techniques used to colour and create Andean textiles. Learn how natural dyes produce distinctive hues and how skilled hands turn fibres into patterned cloth.

Weaving is an enduring means of expressing community knowledge and cultural identity in the Andes. This MAKE TRAVEL MATTER® encounter puts the makers and their expertise at the centre of the experience.

Visit a family-run chichería to sample chicha and hear how this corn-based drink is made. Discover the difference between fermented chicha de jora and sweet, non-alcoholic chicha morada.

Chicha has deep roots in Andean life, reaching back to Inca times. Tasting it where a family prepares or serves it offers a direct connection to a living local food tradition rather than a drink encountered only on a menu.

Visit Sacsayhuamán with a Local Specialist on the heights above Cusco. Walk beside monumental zigzag walls assembled from enormous stones, and look across the city from this commanding Inca complex.

Its carefully fitted masonry speaks to remarkable Inca engineering without the use of mortar. Exploring the ruins brings the scale of Cusco’s former ceremonial landscape into focus, well beyond the colonial streets of the city below.

Walk through Cusco’s historic centre with a Local Specialist and visit Qorikancha, the Inca Temple of the Sun. Examine precisely fitted stonework and learn why this sanctuary held such importance in the Inca Empire.

Visit Cusco Cathedral in the city’s main square and see how colonial-era architecture stands alongside the Inca foundations of the former capital. The contrasting buildings reveal layers of belief, craftsmanship and change in one compact city centre.

Explore Raqchi, an archaeological site on the route between Cusco and Puno that was once connected to the Inca road network. Walk through the surviving remains and consider the role of this settlement in movement across the high Andes.

The visit broadens the story of the Inca world beyond its best-known citadels. Ancient infrastructure set against open Andean scenery shows how communities, travellers and goods were linked across a vast territory.

Share lunch in a local family home while travelling through the Andean highlands towards Puno. Enjoy a warm welcome and the opportunity to exchange stories with your hosts around their table.

The value of this hosted meal lies in everyday conversation and hospitality. Meeting a family offers a personal perspective on life in the region that differs from what can be learned at an archaeological site or scenic viewpoint.

Paint your own torito de Pucará, a colourful ceramic bull associated with the Andean region around Puno. This hands-on workshop lets you take part in a tradition seen on rooftops across the highlands.

Often placed in pairs, the bulls are regarded as symbols of protection and prosperity for a home and its family. Decorating one gives you a closer understanding of the meaning carried by this familiar piece of local craft.

Cruise Lake Titicaca with a Local Specialist, crossing its deep-blue waters to see islands built from totora reeds by the Uros people. Learn about the construction and upkeep of these floating communities.

The reeds are central to a way of life shaped by the lake. Hand-built islands against the high-altitude horizon make this a distinctive encounter with the ingenuity and traditions of Titicaca’s communities.

Visit Taquile Island on Lake Titicaca for a privately guided encounter with local weaving and knitting traditions. Meet islanders, learn about their techniques and share a home-cooked lunch.

Taquile’s textile art is recognised by UNESCO as intangible cultural heritage. Patterns and garments can communicate identity and social status, giving the craft meaning beyond its beauty. This community visit supports the tour’s MAKE TRAVEL MATTER® commitment to reducing inequalities.

Explore Lima’s Miraflores district on foot with a Local Specialist, discovering neighbourhood highlights including the cliffside Larcomar shopping centre. A guided walk offers a closer look at this lively coastal area than a drive through the city.

Miraflores pairs busy streets with views over the Pacific, showing a contemporary side of Peru’s capital. This is an optional experience at additional cost, bookable on tour.

Visit Cusco’s Choco Museum to explore Peru’s relationship with cacao and chocolate. The visit provides a food-focused alternative to the city’s Inca and colonial monuments.

Cacao has a long history in the Americas, and learning about it adds another dimension to Peru’s agricultural and culinary heritage. This is an optional experience at additional cost, bookable on tour; specific demonstrations or tastings are not included in the tour description.

Explore the Maras salt pans and Moray’s circular terraces on an excursion from Cusco. At Maras, see salt gathered from a striking patchwork of hillside pools; at Moray, view concentric terraces set into natural depressions.

The two sites reveal different ways people have worked with the Andean landscape, from salt production to Inca agricultural experimentation. This is an optional experience at additional cost, bookable on tour.

Walk through Cusco after dark on a guided tour of the historic city. Experience its streets and squares in the evening, when illuminated facades and stone lanes give familiar landmarks a different atmosphere.

Cusco’s centre brings Inca and colonial history into close proximity, making it rewarding to explore on foot. This optional experience is at additional cost and can be booked on tour.

Join a Peruvian cooking class in Cusco to practise preparing classic local recipes. A guided, hands-on session offers the chance to learn techniques you can try again at home.

Cooking provides a different route into the city’s culture, connecting dishes with ingredients and everyday food traditions. This Cusco class is optional and at additional cost, bookable on tour, and is separate from the included cooking experience in the Sacred Valley.