Insight Vacations

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

• Top-rated dining, from farm-to-table to local restaurants
• 4 & 5-star stays
• Business class coach with extended leg room, train travel and select flights

• Lima: Unwind at your luxury abode, before meeting your Travel Director and fellow travelers in the evening for a dinner.
• Lima:  Make your way to Lima’s Pueblo Libre District and indulge on a lunch in the Museo Larco’s 18th century garden.
• Sacred Valley: Enjoy lunch at Altar Inca with impressive views of the Sacred valley surrounded by the breathtaking Andes Mountains.
• Sacred Valley: Make your way to the small lagoon of Laguna Piuray where you’ll enjoy your lunch of Pachamanca, a traditional Peruvian feast.
• Cusco: Enjoy an immersive slow-cooked Cusquenian lunch at Pacha Papa. Lunch will be served al fresco at the courtyard of a historic mansion in the artsy neighborhood of San Blas.
• Cusco: In the evening, join your fellow travelers for a memorable dinner at Inka Grill, where you’ll embark on a journey of flavors from Ceviche Palteado to Quinotto and Aji de Gallina.

• Sacred Valley: Learn to play the zampoña at Laguna Piuray, where local musicians introduce one of the Andes’ most recognizable instruments. As you try the panpipe for yourself, the workshop offers a direct connection to the music and traditions still heard across the region.
• Machu Picchu: Travel to Machu Picchu aboard IncaRail’s The Prime, where spacious seating, attentive service and premium finishes bring added comfort to one of Peru’s most memorable rail journeys. Along the way, enjoy an Andean-inspired tasting made with local ingredients and live music on board as the landscapes of the Sacred Valley begin to unfold.
• Cusco: Visit Cusco’s planetarium to learn more on how the Incas interpreted the stars. After a reception with hot wine (or tea) and appetizers, Local Specialists will explain and share stories about the influence the stars had on Andean culture. You’ll then be led to a room specially accommodated to view the ancient night skies, weather permitting.

• Cusco: Explore Cusco’s lively San Pedro Market with your Local Specialist, browsing stalls filled with colorful produce, regional grains and everyday ingredients used in Andean cooking. Select essential food items to donate to a local community, supporting families in need while gaining a more personal insight into daily life in Cusco.
• Cusco: Visit Cusco’s magnificent Cathedral with your Local Specialist, built between 1560 and 1664 on the site of the Inca Wiracocha’s former palace. Admire its Renaissance facade, intricate colonial goldwork and celebrated religious art, including a distinctly Peruvian interpretation of ‘The Last Supper’ and the revered Lord of the Earthquakes statue.

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

Conversation begins in a capital celebrated for its food culture, where coastal ingredients and culinary traditions from across the country meet. It is an opportunity to get acquainted before exploring Peru’s historic cities and Andean landscapes together.

Explore Lima’s historic centre with a Local Specialist, taking in the Cathedral of Lima, Government Palace, Archbishop’s Palace and City Hall. Visit Casa Aliaga, a colonial mansion that has remained in the same family for 17 generations.

The streets around Plaza Mayor reflect Lima’s former role as the centre of Spanish power in South America. Inside the family home, its long history offers a more personal perspective on the city’s colonial heritage.

Discover Museo Larco with a Local Specialist in Lima’s Pueblo Libre district. Explore its collection of pre-Columbian art and objects to learn how ancient Peruvian societies expressed belief, power and daily life. Enjoy regional dishes at Café del Museo Larco, set in the museum’s bougainvillea-draped garden.

Housed in an 18th-century viceregal mansion, the museum brings together works from cultures that flourished long before the Incas. The garden setting gives the meal a character distinct from an ordinary restaurant lunch.

Visit the Maras salt pans with a Local Specialist to see thousands of shallow pools fed by mineral-rich spring water. Explore nearby Moray’s concentric Inca terraces, where varying levels created different growing conditions.

Salt has been harvested at Maras for generations, leaving a striking patchwork of pale pools against the Sacred Valley hillsides. Moray reveals another form of Andean ingenuity: an ingenious use of terrain believed to have supported agricultural experimentation.

Meet a traditional Quechua weaver near Laguna Piuray for a private presentation of Andean textile-making. Learn about techniques passed through generations and the role woven patterns play in expressing community and regional identity.

Textiles are both practical objects and bearers of cultural knowledge in the Andes. This MAKE TRAVEL MATTER® visit offers direct insight from a local practitioner and supports the continuation of living weaving traditions.

Share a traditional pachamanca lunch beside Laguna Piuray, with food cooked in the earth using hot stones. Listen to local musicians and try playing the zampoña, the Andean panpipe, with their guidance.

The cooking method connects the meal to the land, while the musicians bring a sound heard across Andean communities. Taking part in the panpipe workshop makes this a hands-on encounter with regional food and music, rather than simply a scenic lunch.

Explore Ollantaytambo’s Inca ruins with a Local Specialist, examining the stonework and stepped terraces above this Sacred Valley town. In the old town, visit a local home and meet the family who lives there.

Ollantaytambo’s surviving street plan makes Inca urban design unusually tangible. The family visit adds a present-day perspective, showing how everyday life continues among streets and buildings shaped by centuries of Andean history.

Travel aboard IncaRail’s The Prime towards Machu Picchu Pueblo, enjoying an Andean-inspired tasting made with local ingredients and live music on board. Spacious seating and attentive service make the rail journey an experience in its own right.

Watch the Sacred Valley’s mountain scenery from the train as regional flavours and music introduce another side of Peru. This premium service offers more than a transfer to the citadel: it gives the journey its own distinct sense of place.

Explore Machu Picchu with a Local Specialist, walking through the 15th-century Inca citadel in a small group. Examine its carefully fitted stonework, ceremonial spaces and terraces while learning how its builders worked with the steep mountain terrain.

This UNESCO World Heritage Site stands amid the cloud-forest peaks of the Andes. Expert interpretation brings its engineering and cultural significance into focus, while the setting reveals why the citadel remains one of Peru’s most compelling historic places.

Return to the Machu Picchu landscape for time to explore at your own pace, with your Travel Director available to answer questions. A second opportunity lets you look more closely at the Inca stonework and mountain setting introduced during the guided visit.

The citadel’s terraces, structures and surrounding cloud-forest peaks reward unhurried attention. This experience is described as independent exploration rather than another Local Specialist-led tour; no particular additional circuit is specified.

Walk through Cusco with a Local Specialist, visiting Plaza Mayor, the precisely fitted 12-Angled Stone and Qorikancha, once among the Inca Empire’s most important temples. Discover how the city’s streets preserve traces of its former role as an imperial capital.

Inca stone foundations and colonial-era buildings stand side by side throughout the historic centre. Their contrasting forms make Cusco’s layered history visible at close range, particularly around Qorikancha.

Visit the Cusco Planetarium after hours for an introduction to the southern sky and the place of astronomy in Andean culture. Explore Inca constellations through dome projections and stories shared by local specialists, with telescope observation when conditions allow.

Andean sky-watching included patterns found in the dark spaces of the Milky Way as well as its stars. This private evening experience connects those ways of seeing with the night sky above Cusco.

Explore the Inca sites above Cusco, visiting Tambomachay, Puka Pukara and Qenqo before seeing Sacsayhuamán’s monumental zigzag walls. Together, these places reveal different aspects of Inca ceremony, architecture and control of the surrounding landscape.

Water channels, carved stone and immense fitted blocks show the range of techniques used around the imperial capital. From Sacsayhuamán, look across Cusco while considering the scale and precision of its surviving stonework.

Explore San Pedro Market with a Local Specialist as your choice of Cusco activity. Browse stalls of colourful produce, regional grains and ingredients used in Andean cooking, then select essential food items to donate to a local community.

The busy market offers a close view of everyday shopping and food traditions in Cusco. Choosing items for donation adds a practical community connection to this guided visit. This is one of two included activities available to choose from.

Step inside Cusco Cathedral with a Local Specialist as your choice of Cusco activity. Admire gilded altars, carved woodwork and religious paintings, including a Peruvian interpretation of The Last Supper.

Built on the site of an Inca palace, the cathedral brings colonial architecture and Andean artistic traditions into the same space. Its works from the Cusco School reveal how local artists adapted European religious imagery. This is one of two included activities available to choose from.

Join your small group for a farewell dinner at Inka Grill in Cusco. Share stories from your travels over dishes drawing on Peruvian flavours, with examples including ceviche palteado, quinotto and ají de gallina.

Set in the former Inca capital, this hosted meal is a chance to reflect together on Peru’s cities, living traditions and Andean landscapes. Its shared, celebratory purpose distinguishes it from an ordinary evening meal.

Learn about cacao and chocolate-making at ChocoMuseo in Cusco on an Optional Experience. Discover more about the ingredient behind chocolate and the steps involved in turning cacao into a finished product.

Cacao has deep roots in South America, giving this visit a cultural dimension beyond a sweet treat. It offers a food-focused alternative to Cusco’s archaeological sights. This experience is at additional cost and bookable on tour.

Explore Rainbow Mountain on an Optional Experience from Cusco. Travel into a high-altitude Andean landscape to see the bands of colour that give the mountain its name, set against the surrounding peaks and open terrain.

Its distinctive stripes come from mineral-rich geological layers exposed across the mountainside. The excursion offers a landscape-focused alternative to time in the city. It is at additional cost and bookable on tour; the itinerary does not specify a particular walking route.