This 16-day itinerary is action packed, providing an incredible mix of history, culture, nature and adventure. You will explore the city of Lima, the Peruvian Amazon, and also visit Cusco, the Sacred Valley, and trek along the Inca Trail to Machu Picchu!

Begin your tour riding  through  the  charming streets  hidden in  the heart  of  Miraflores  before  heading  to  the  impressive pre-Inca ruins, located in the middle of  the city,  of  the  archeological center of Huaca  Pucllana that  operated  between  the V and  VIII centuries A.C. Continue to the Olivar of San Isidro, that stands out among the parks of the hemisphere and symbolizes  the virreynal and  Republican  tradition  of  this  district,  highlighted  by  its  magnificent  olives  dating  from  virreynal  times. Return to  Miraflores and stop on the way to replenish your energies, enjoying a typical snack in a traditional location. Finish the course riding by the sea and passing by cliffs, parks, and going to modern shopping malls, sculptures, a bridge and an old lighthouse.

Rest of afternoon at leisure.

After having breakfast at the hotel, a transportation service will pick you up from your hotel at the established time and will transfer you to the airport of Lima. Fly from Lima to Puerto Maldonado.

Upon your arrival at Puerto Maldonado Airport, you will visit the Butterfly House and then reach the pier just 15 minutes away. Begin to experience  the enchantment  of the  rainforest,  as you  take the  45-minute  boat ride  along the  Madre de  Dios  River,  to arrive  at Inkaterra Reserva Amazonica lodge. After a short briefing, settle into your beautiful cabaña and enjoy your lunch in the dining room. Take a nap, followed by a refreshing tea time and get ready for the afternoon excursion.

After gathering with your Inkaterra Explorer Guide, choose from the various tours available at Inkaterra Reserva Amazónica. On your first  day,  we recommend a  guided walk  along the  Trail system,  into the  Inkaterra  Reserva  Amazonica natural area,  where you will discover  the  Amazon  Basin. This trail offers  an excellent  introduction to  the jungle  environment,  winding past  impressive trees, such as  the staggeringly  tall kapok,  and the  strangely beautiful strangler fig,  provide excellent  opportunities for  birdwatching and observing exotic insects.

We  also recommend  on the  first night  our  Twilight  River excursion —  a  guided afternoon  boat ride  on the  Madre de  Dios river. Witness the transformation from a diurnal to a nocturnal world: animals and birds of the daytime give way to species specially adapted to the night. As you enjoy their paradise, you will learn about their habits, while you search for nightjars, owls, capybaras and up to three different caiman species.

Enjoy dinner served in the main dining room from 7:30 p.m. to 9:30 p.m. After dinner, you may retire early to your cabaña, or share your experience in the rainforest with other guests and interpreters, as you listen to the intriguing sounds of the jungle at night.

Wake up late or rise early — the choice is yours. Breakfast begins at 5:30 a.m., for those who want to avoid the heat, and enjoy nature at its fullest. A full buffet breakfast is served from 5:30 a.m. to 9:30 a.m. This morning you may visit the Lake Sandoval excursion into the Tambopata National Reserve. Glide in a wooden canoe, across a beautiful, mirror-like oxbow lake that is home to the endangered giant river otter, as well as red howler monkeys, red-bellied macaws, anacondas, side-neck turtles and black caimans. Return to the Inkaterra Reserva Amazonica for lunch.

After lunch, consider the remarkable Inkaterra Canopy Walkway. Ascending the first tower, 29 meters above the forest ground, you begin your encounter with the treetop realm. For more than a quarter of a mile, you will literally walk through the rainforest canopy on a suspension bridge network linking eight observation platforms. During this hour-and-a-half expedition, be on the lookout for colorful toucans, woodpeckers, trogons, monkeys, and sloths. If you wish you may extend your excursion and appreciate the sunset from one of the towers. The excursion finishes by returning to the lodge.

Once at the lodge, enjoy the daily nature presentation in the Eco Center.

Dinner starts at 7:30 p.m.

Enjoy a trip to Gamitana Creek, located 25 minutes by boat from the Inkaterra lodge. For one and a half hours, explore the rainforest along the banks of a winding, dark-water creek that is home to many piranha, caiman, turtles and birds, until the Sanipanga landing point. Navigate your way back downstream, observing the abundant flora and fauna along the way. You will return to Gamitana Farm to do a short guided tour to see how local farmers grow fruits and vegetables. Return to the lodge for lunch.

After lunch, enjoy the Hacienda Concepcion excursion, with over 200 different plant species, and learn about the uses and benefits of local flora. This is followed by a 30 minute canoe trip to look for turtles, sun grebes, nightjars and exotic herons. Return to the lodge.

Then consider the Rainforest by Night excursion through the Inkaterra Ecological Reserve at night for an approximately 2 hour excursion. Venture into the forest and experience the mystery of the animal activity that awakens in the rainforest after dark, enhancing animal resources to create new adaptation mechanisms. Listen to nocturnal forest sounds and spot species that only emerge at night. Return to the lodge.

Enjoy a full breakfast before departure. A 45-minute return trip by boat on the Madre de Dios River takes you to Puerto Maldonado, where you will be transferred to the airport.

A transportation service will wait for your arrival at the Cusco Airport and transfer you to your hotel. You will be accompanied by a guide who will inform you about the attractions and services that the city has to offer.

The tour starts at Sacsayhuaman, one of the most emblematic constructions of the Incas (located just minutes from the city, it is a World Cultural Heritage Site listed by UNESCO) built by Pachacutec in the 15th century. It is a huge fortress made of large stones which transportation is still a mystery. Return to the city to continue your tour along the San Blas neighborhood, originally inhabited by the Inca nobility who built impressive stone constructions within walking distance of the Plaza de Armas. Unmistakable Inca walls can still be seen at the base of many buildings.

Today the neighborhood is a delightful cluster of cobblestone streets popular among artisans who sell their handcrafts on the street. Continue to the cathedral. This is the most impressive monument in the Plaza de Armas. Its construction began in 1560 and ended only in 1654. It took nearly a century to complete. For this purpose hundreds of stones were extracted and transported from the fortress of Sacsayhuaman under the command of the Ecclesiastical Council and the burden of thousands of Indians. The tour ends at the Coricancha also known as “The Temple of the Sun” (or Quri Kancha ‘Golden Temple’), was built by Inca Pachacutec (1438- 1572) becoming the base of the Santo Domingo Convent at the arrival of the Spaniards. At the Coricancha homage was payed to the Sun (“Inti”) during the Inca Empire, a time when the whole building was covered with gold.

Today you will leave Cusco and head into the Sacred Valley! You will start your tour at the Pisac market, where the town’s main square is full of scores of stands that exhibit and sell products created by the residents of the area on a daily basis. Beautiful alpaca textiles, musical instruments, paintings, carvings, necklaces and replicas or ancient Inca pieces stand out. The Mass is celebrated in Quechua every Sunday at the old Pisac Church, which is attended by the seven Indian chiefs (caciques) of the neighboring communities, who wear their typical attires and carry the vara (staff of office), and this is why they are called Varayocs.

After lunch, you will head for the Ollantaytambo citadel, a picturesque Andean town which will maintains the urban planning of the Incas and is crowned by an impressive fortress with ascending terraces over the steep side of the mountain that holds it. Inca Pachacutec ordered to burn the old site and rebuild a new one under the scheme of the Inca architecture, while his army made its way through the jungle toward what later on became Machu Picchu and Vilcabamba.

You will return to your hotel at the end of your visit.

The tour starts early in the morning – you are headed to Chincheros, where Piuray Lake is located. This beautiful lake offers spectacular scenery, perfect flat water for Stand Up Paddleboarding, and plenty of birds. Our base is the home of a local family that lives at the shore of the lake, they will greet us with a smile and share with us a little of their lifestyle and culture. We start with a safety briefing and paddle technique on land. Once in the water the idea is first to get acquainted with the board, paddling techniques and making turns. This is an amazing, idyllic, and unique way to absorb the view and the beauty of the Andes, while having some fun at the same time!

After our paddleboard excursion concludes, we will proceed to visit the Moray terraces and the Maras salt mines. Moray’s archaeological vestiges are composed of mysterious concentric circular terraces which, according to some scholars, would be an agricultural research center. The higher external terraces would be at a higher temperature than the inner terraces and could simulate the conditions of the different ecological strata of the empire. Maras is a surreal view. It is near Moray and it is an impressive salt exploitation complex. Its huge salt deposits were used to trade them for other products with other parts of the empire.

Early morning departure from your hotel in Urubamba to drive to the locality of Pachar, located 8 kms from Ollantaytambo, where you will find the Via Ferrata, a climbing route 300 meters high. Here you will have the opportunity to climb a mountain with a safety system permanently installed, for which you do not require any previous experience. While climbing, enjoy the mystical landscapes of the Sacred Valley of the Incas. Upon completing the ascent, enjoy an energizing snack while you admire the spectacular scenery and recover your energies. Then climb 100 more mts until you reach the second cable of the canopy or zip-line, which will allow you to fly over the beautiful landscapes of the Sacred Valley of the Incas, in a very safe and fun way. The canopy or zip-line, also called flying fox, zip wire, death slide, or aerial runway, is an unforgettable experience. Through a pulley suspended by 6 cables of 100 to 500 m (with a total of 2000 m), located in an inclination, you hook the cable through a pulley fixed to your harness and you will be impulsed by gravity, sliding from the top to the bottom, increasingly losing speed as you approach the end of the cable.

At the end of your adventure, transfer back to the hotel.

Today we begin our hike on the Inca Trail!

We pick you up early in the morning from your hotel to transfer to Piscacucho (Km. 82), which is the start point of the Inca Trail. Once we reach Piscacucho, we begin our hike until reaching a nice and quiet campsite near Wayllabamba where you will stay for the night.

We hike 5 – 6 hours (7.7miles).

After having breakfast, we begin the most difficult part of the trek, which consists of an abrupt and steep ascent toward the highest pass on the trail known as Dead Woman’s Pass (4200m/13776ft). Then we begin the descent to our second campsite in Pacaymayo, where we will have lunch and dinner.

This day we hike 6 – 7 hours (7.2 miles).

The third day is the longest one, but also the most impressive and the most interesting, due the number of archaeological sites and the lush cloud forest area that we cross that is so rich in Andean flora and fauna. From Pacaymayo we climb to Runquracay Pass, and then descend to our lunch stop at Chaquicocha. Next we will continue up an easy climb, until we reach Phuyupatamarca Pass (3700m/12073ft), walk on through the cloud forest and the Inca site of Intipata, and then reach our third and final campsite at Wiñayhuayna (8792ft).

This day entails 8 – 9 hours and 10 miles of hiking.

After a particularly early breakfast, we depart from the campsite around 5:30 am in order to arrive to Inti Punku (‘Sun Gate’) before sunrise. From here, you will experience your first extraordinary view of Machu Picchu at dawn. Walk on to this iconic ancient city, where your guide will lead a 2 hour tour, and then enjoy some time to explore on your own.

After visiting Machu Picchu you will take the bus to Aguas Calientes to check-into your WONDERFUL hotel, clean up, and enjoy a delicious lunch at Café Inkaterra.

Enjoy the rest of the afternoon at leisure; enjoy the fabulous grounds and hot-spring pools at Machu Picchu Pueblo hotel!

Have a free morning to enjoy the facilities of the hotels and take advantage of some of the services included with your stay here.

Early afternoon, at 2:55 P.M., you will take the train back to Ollantaytambo, where there will be a van waiting for you to take you onward to your hotel in Cusco.

A transportation service will pick you up from your hotel at the established time and will transfer you to the airport.