Things to do in Peru: 36 experiences worth the trip

Timed entry

Choose your circuit well and you get the classic view of the citadel with Huayna Picchu behind it, or the climb itself.

A long lunchNo booking needed

Eat ceviche the way Lima does, at lunch, when the morning's fish is at its best, with leche de tigre first.

Half a dayNo booking needed

Ruins on the ridge above Pisac, a market below and an Inca street grid still lived in at Ollantaytambo, in one morning loop.

Half a day, for a 30-minute flightBook ahead

Most Nazca figures only make sense from the air, so bank over a 93-metre hummingbird and a 134-metre condor scraped into the desert.

Three days or moreBook ahead

From the largest city in the world no road reaches, as Iquitos is often called, the river is the only way on into the Amazon.

Two days from ArequipaNo booking needed

Watch Andean condors ride the warm morning air off the walls of the Colca Canyon, ideally an hour before the tour buses.

1 to 2 hours before dinnerFree

Walk Barranco's bridge and seaside path as the sun drops into the Pacific, then climb back for the first pisco sour.

2 to 3 hours from PunoGo alone or with a tour

Step onto islands of totora reed floating on Lake Titicaca, topped up with fresh reeds by the families who live on them.

A full day from CuscoGo alone or with a tour

Walk up to a ridge striped pink, white, red and green by its minerals, at around 5,000 m.

1 to 2 hoursFree

On Sunday, Quechua families come down to sell their own potatoes, sorted by colour and shape, a dozen kinds on a single table.

One night in Aguas Calientes plus the morningTimed entry

Sleep at the foot of the mountain and you can be inside the citadel at first light, which no same-day trip from Cusco manages.

4 days (classic) or 1 day from Km 104Timed entry

Walk from the railway at Km 82 over Dead Woman's Pass, at 4,215 m, to the Sun Gate above Machu Picchu.

Three days minimumBook ahead

Spend days in a maze of flooded forest and black-water creeks, looking for pink river dolphins, monkeys and caimans.

An hour, more with the CathedralFree

Cusco's main square stands on an Inca ceremonial plaza; look at the base of the walls around it, not the balconies.

2 hours; half a day with the other circuit I sitesNo booking needed

Walk below three tiers of Inca walls above Cusco, built from huge limestone blocks fitted without mortar.

1 hour on siteNo booking needed

Concentric Inca terraces sink into natural hollows on a high plateau, and nobody knows for sure what they were for.

45 minutes to 1 hourGo alone or with a tour

Look down over hundreds of white and ochre salt pools, cut into a hillside and harvested by local families since Inca times.

About 2 hoursGo alone or with a tour

Ride a buggy over the dunes around a small lagoon, slide down the slopes on a board and catch the sunset from the rim.

About 2 hoursBook ahead

Boats edge close to guano islands coated white by seabirds, with sea lions and Humboldt penguins on the rocks.

2 hoursNo booking needed

A convent the size of a small town, with streets of white volcanic stone and whole lanes painted red, where nuns still live.

A full day from Huaraz, about 5 to 6 hours walkingNo booking needed

Climb to a glacial lake at about 4,600 m in the Cordillera Blanca, after a day or two in Huaraz.

A full day from ChachapoyasBook ahead

Ride the cable car up to a walled Chachapoyas city on a limestone ridge, its 421 structures nearly all round.

5 to 6 hours return from CocachimbaNo booking needed

A 771-metre waterfall in two tiers falls out of the cloud forest, and the world only noticed it after a 2002 expedition.

About an hourNo booking needed

Order a double-size pisco sour in the downtown hotel bar that helped keep Peru's national cocktail alive.

About 2 hoursNo booking needed

Rows of fish, waves, fishing nets and pelicans moulded into the mud walls of an adobe palace repay a slow look.

A one-hour night visit plus dinnerBook ahead

See a lit adobe pyramid among the apartment blocks of Miraflores, then dine on a terrace looking straight at it.

An eveningNo booking needed

Start with a ham sandwich and a chilcano at a bar serving since 1937, then follow the guitar and cajón into a late peña.

1 to 2 hoursNo booking needed

Get the context the ruins lack, from mummies and models of Inca sites to what is described as the world's largest collection of queros.

About 1 hourNo booking needed

Watch wool washed with a plant that works as soap, spun, dyed red with cochineal and woven on a backstrap loom.

Half a day from Puerto MaldonadoBook ahead

Paddle a rainforest oxbow lake at dawn, looking for giant otters and birds.

Half a day for the centre and the catacombsNo booking needed

Go underground below San Francisco, where around 25,000 people are thought to lie in catacombs used for burials until 1810.

2 to 3 hoursNo booking needed

Walk between open shelves of some 30,000 ancient ceramics, then see the erotic gallery that shows what most museums leave out.

Half a day, or a night before the trainNo booking needed

Sleep in an Inca town still laid out on its original street grid, and the early train to Machu Picchu is a short walk away.

4 to 5 daysBook ahead

When Inca Trail permits are gone, walk past the snow peak of Salkantay and down into cloud forest towards Machu Picchu.

4 days return from CachoraBook ahead

An Inca site close to Machu Picchu in style, still reached only on foot, with few other visitors.

A full day from Puno, or one nightNo booking needed

On this island far out on Lake Titicaca, the men knit from boyhood while the women spin, dye and weave everyone's belts.