Gather on Plaza de Armas for a festive finale at Inka Grill. Taste a curated menu that might feature Ceviche Palteado, creamy Ají de Gallina and quinoa-based quinotto, paired with Andean produce and spices.

The landmark setting and convivial ambiance offer a fitting close to your Andean journey, celebrating shared experiences around the table.

Take to the skies over the UNESCO-listed Nazca Lines to spot vast geoglyphs etched into the pampa—hummingbird, monkey, condor and more. Only fully appreciated from above, these shapes stretch hundreds of meters across the desert.

Your pilot or guide explains hypotheses behind their creation between 500 BCE and 500 CE, and why these desert drawings still captivate archaeologists and travelers alike.

Visit Hacienda La Caravedo, founded in 1684 and often cited as the oldest continuously operating distillery in the Americas. Walk vineyards and copper stills to learn how grape varietals become Peru’s national spirit.

Conclude with a guided tasting that highlights styles and aromas, and hear about on-site sustainability initiatives—an engaging look at heritage craft and modern stewardship.

Meet your Travel Director and fellow guests over a convivial evening meal in Lima. Share a first toast to the journey ahead as you sample coastal flavors and classic Peruvian ingredients, from a bright ceviche to native tubers and ají chilies.

This relaxed introduction sets the tone for the trip, pairing warm hospitality with a primer on the country’s vibrant culinary scene—ideal before delving into Peru’s history and high Andes.

Walk in the footsteps of Inca engineers at Machu Picchu, the 15th-century sanctuary perched between jungle and stone. With your Local Expert, decode the Temple of the Three Windows, ritual baths and solar alignments that marry architecture to astronomy.

Hear how dry-stone walls flex to resist earthquakes and how this citadel escaped conquest, hidden by the Andean cloud forest until its modern rediscovery.

Board a boat to the Ballestas Islands, a rocky sanctuary alive with sound and spray. Look for Humboldt penguins, Peruvian boobies, pelicans and lounging sea lions as you navigate arches and sea caves shaped by Pacific swells.

This rich ecosystem, nourished by the Humboldt Current, offers close-up wildlife encounters amid striking coastal geology—a photographer’s delight.

• 12 Breakfast (B)
• 3 Dinner (D)
• 7 Lunch (L)

• From time to time, your Travel Director will delight you with an Insight Flourish, which is a local specialty representing the destination.
• Hotel and restaurant tips are included – you’ll never have to worry about how much to give, nor search for foreign currency. We also include all taxes and porterage charges at hotels.
• We carry your bags for you and promptly deliver them to your hotel door.
• Our highly-skilled Travel Director will ensure your journey is seamless, serving as your expert guide, consummate organiser, and friend overseas.
• If your arrival and/or departure flights are as per the itinerary start and end dates, then transfers are available at scheduled times. If your flights are outside these times, or you have booked additional nights accommodation with Insight Vacations, you may purchase transfers or make your own way from/to the airport.
• Personal radio headsets give you the freedom to wander during visits to famous highlights, without missing any of your Local Expert’s fascinating commentary.
• Prices include economy air and air-related charges for the flights between Lima – Cusco. This trip experiences high elevations, we recommend guests with preexisting medical conditions talk with a doctor prior to travel.

• 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 experts 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.
• Paracas: Take to the skies on your Peru tour to see the iconic Nazca Lines, archaeological enigmas scratched in the ground 500 B.C. and A.D. 500. Gaze down in awe of these massive designs and patterns you can only view from above. Your private flight will show you many of the lines, complete with their names and a bit of history. From above, you’ll observe the different types: straight, geometric (such as triangles, rectangles, trapezoids, spirals, arrows, zigzags, and wavy lines), and pictorial (including a spider, hummingbird, cactus plant, monkey, whale, llama, duck, flower, tree, lizard, dog, and even a mysterious humanoid figure). Some of the animal geoglyphs are up to 1,200 feet long! You’ll also learn why the Nazca culture created these lines in the desert plains of the Rio Grande de Nazca River basin and how the Nazca people were able to carve out such massive designs.
• Paracas: In Paracas, meet a local fisherman who will share how traditional practices are passed down through generations. Gain insight into daily life at sea, learn how small-scale fishers contend with industrial fleets and discover what a day’s catch is worth in a community where the ocean still shapes survival.

• Experience enhanced hygiene protocols to align with the latest guidance following COVID-19.All Travel Directors, Well-Being Directors and Drivers have completed training in enhanced well-being and hygiene protocols.
• Hand sanitizer is freely available on board for you to use throughout the day.

• Sacred Valley: Learn to play the zampoña at Laguna Piuray, where local musicians introduce one of the Andes’ most recognisable 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.

Explore Peru’s capital on a guided orientation through the UNESCO-listed historic center. Join a guided panoramic tour around Plaza Mayor to admire the Government Palace, Archbishop’s Palace and City Hall before you step inside the Cathedral of Lima, where colonial altars and Cusco School paintings reflect faith and empire.

Hear how the city evolved from Spanish viceroyalty to modern Lima, and see the blend of Moorish balconies, baroque facades and republican-era grandeur that defines the capital’s cultural heart.

Visit Casa Aliaga, one of the oldest continuously inhabited colonial homes in the Americas. Walk through tiled courtyards, carved cedar salons and a private chapel as you trace the Aliaga family’s story from the 16th century to today.

Your Local Expert reveals how this residence—granted to conquistador Jerónimo de Aliaga—encapsulates Lima’s layers of power, devotion and artistry, with heirlooms and architecture that speak to five centuries of urban life.

Discover Peru’s pre-Columbian legacy at Museo Larco, housed in an 18th-century vice-regal mansion. Explore masterworks in gold and silver, exquisite ceramics and the museum’s famed galleries with insight from a Local Expert.

Between collections, savor lunch beneath bougainvillea in the museum’s garden café. The pairing of world-class archaeology and serene colonial surrounds offers a refined window into 5,000 years of Andean culture.

Visit two of the Sacred Valley’s most intriguing Inca-era sites with a Local Expert. At Maras, gaze across thousands of terraced salt pans fed by a saline spring that has sustained Andean communities for centuries. Continue to Moray to walk the concentric agricultural terraces where Inca engineers tested crops across distinct microclimates.

These landscapes reveal the empire’s brilliance in resource management and experimental farming amid sweeping Andean vistas.

Meet a traditional artisan for a private demonstration of Andean textile arts on the shores of Laguna Piuray. Learn natural dyeing and backstrap-loom techniques that encode identity, stories and cosmology into cloth.

Your visit directly supports local livelihoods while illuminating how ancestral knowledge endures in everyday garments and ceremonial weaves—threads that tie families and communities to mountain landscapes and seasons.

Savor a traditional Pachamanca cooked in an earth oven, where hot stones gently roast meats, tubers and Andean herbs. Musicians introduce the zampoña, and you’ll learn to play the panpipe in a hands-on workshop by the lagoon.

This Small Group Exclusive blends flavor and sound, connecting guests to highland hospitality and the rhythms that animate festivals and family gatherings across the Sacred Valley.

Explore the terraced stronghold of Ollantaytambo with a Local Expert, tracing precision-built ramparts and ritual spaces that guard the Sacred Valley. From the heights, appreciate how the Inca planned settlements around water, sun and stone.

In the old town, step into a family home built on Inca foundations to glimpse daily life in one of the Andes’ best-preserved living towns, where ancient street grids and canals still shape community.

Travel deeper into the Sacred Valley on a premium rail journey. Settle into spacious seats as Andean landscapes unfurl through panorama windows, from terraced fields to cloud-draped peaks.

On board, enjoy an Andean-inspired tasting and live music that celebrates regional traditions, heightening the sense of arrival as the rails trace the Urubamba River toward the gateway of Machu Picchu.

Uncover Cusco’s layered past on a guided stroll through its old center. Walk Plaza Mayor beneath arcaded balconies, seek out the 12-Angled Stone on Hatun Rumiyoc Street, and visit Qorikancha, the Inca Temple of the Sun later crowned by the Church of Santo Domingo.

Stone by stone, see how imperial Inca masonry set the foundations for colonial faith and today’s vibrant Andean city.

Explore the ceremonial and defensive sites above Cusco with a Local Expert. At Sacsayhuaman, trace massive zigzag ramparts fitted with cyclopean stones; at Qenqo, study carved altars and channels.

Continue to Puka Pukara’s red-hued outpost and Tambomachay’s flowing ritual fountains. Together, these sites reveal the Inca mastery of terrain, water and sacred landscape.

Experience an intimate evening at the Cusco Planetarium. Learn how Inca astronomer-priests mapped the Milky Way and read animal-shaped dark constellations to guide planting and ceremony.

Under the dome and, weather permitting, at the telescope, trace the southern sky and connect stellar lore with Inca architecture and agricultural cycles—an illuminating link between cosmos and culture.

Choose to join your Local Expert at San Pedro Market, a bustling hall of produce, breads and herbal remedies. Practice simple Spanish with vendors as you purchase items later donated within the community.

This included Choice experience highlights everyday foodways and reciprocity, turning a market walk into a meaningful exchange rooted in Andean values.

Alternatively, step inside Cusco Cathedral on Plaza de Armas to admire gilded altars, carved choir stalls and paintings from the Cusco School, where European techniques merged with Inca motifs.

This included Choice visit reveals how faith and artistry shaped the city’s identity from conquest to independence, with masterpieces that still anchor civic life.

Dine al fresco in the artsy San Blas neighborhood at Pacha Papa, where a rustic oven turns out slow-cooked highland specialties. In a leafy courtyard of a historic casona, savor classics like causa, trout, or adobo seasoned with local herbs.

The setting and flavors evoke traditional Cusqueñian hospitality, pairing time-honored recipes with the district’s bohemian atmosphere.

In Paracas, meet a community fisherman to hear how the cold Humboldt Current supports livelihoods along this desert coast. Gain first-hand insight into daily routines, seasonal species and the challenges posed by industrial fleets.

The conversation illuminates the balance between tradition and modern pressures, and how the sea remains central to identity and survival on Peru’s south coast.

Delve into south-coast civilizations at Ica’s regional museum. Examine Paracas textiles and Nazca ceramics, alongside mummies and cranial surgery evidence that reveal sophisticated ancient knowledge.

Curated displays place each culture in context—trade, ritual and daily life—offering a focused complement to the geoglyphs seen from the air and the coastal communities you’ve met on land.

Stop at Hacienda San José in the Chincha Valley to explore a baroque chapel, period salons and the underground passages associated with the slave trade era. Guides trace the plantation’s role in sugarcane wealth and the lives it shaped and constrained.

This visit offers space to reflect on a difficult chapter of Peruvian history, and on the enduring contributions of Afro-Peruvian culture along the coast.

Return to the sanctuary for a fresh perspective. Book an additional entry to follow a different designated circuit—perhaps focusing on the lower sector’s ritual fountains, Inca house remains or agricultural terraces.

This optional experience is at additional cost and bookable on tour, ideal for travelers who wish to linger with quieter viewpoints and nuanced details beyond the first guided visit.

Go hands-on with Peru’s prized cacao in a fun, informative workshop. Roast, grind and temper chocolate as you learn how beans from the Amazon basin become bars and bonbons.

This optional activity is at additional cost and bookable on tour—perfect for sweet-toothed travelers keen to taste terroir, compare cocoa percentages and craft an edible souvenir to take home.

Challenge yourself on a high-altitude trek to Vinicunca, famed for its mineral-striped slopes of ochre, rose and turquoise. Hike across open puna with llamas and distant glaciers framing the route.

This optional excursion is at additional cost and bookable on tour. Due to altitude and weather, it suits fit travelers prepared for thin air and changing conditions, rewarded with big-sky Andean panoramas.