Peru: Machu Picchu & the Amazon

Peru's highlands are a dry-season destination. From May to September the rain that closes trails and clouds the peaks holds off, the days are clear and the nights cold, and Machu Picchu stands out sharp in the morning before the valley heats up. The Amazon runs to its own calendar but is at its most navigable in the same months.

Fourteen nights, and altitude that has to be respected. Lima on the coast to begin, then up to the Sacred Valley, deliberately lower than Cusco, to acclimatise, then Machu Picchu and Cusco, and finally down to the Amazon to end at sea level in the heat. The order is not negotiable: the valley before the city, because Cusco sits near three thousand four hundred metres and the body needs the day or two.

The set pieces are worth the logistics. Machu Picchu on the first train or after the day crowds have gone, reached by the Belmond Hiram Bingham along the Urubamba; the Sacred Valley at Ollantaytambo, Moray and the salt pans of Maras; Cusco's stonework and the San Blas lanes; and Lima's kitchens, which stand with any in the world and are best left understated. In the Amazon it is the macaw clay licks, the oxbow lakes and the canopy from a river vessel.

The aviation has one real constraint. Lima takes any long-range aircraft, but Cusco sits high, hemmed by terrain, and operates best in the morning before the afternoon wind gets up, so we time the highland leg accordingly. There is no road to Machu Picchu, it is the train from the valley, and the Amazon is reached by a short flight to Puerto Maldonado and then the river.

Among our preferred hotel partners we use Belmond in Lima, Explora and Inkaterra in the Sacred Valley, Belmond Sanctuary Lodge at Machu Picchu itself, and an Aqua Expeditions vessel on the river.

Ask your advisor about Machu Picchu outside the day crowds, acclimatising low in the valley first, and a river vessel rather than a fixed lodge in the Amazon.