One of South America’s most beguiling destinations, Peru has long been associated with backpackers tracing the famous Inca Trail.
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Peru → associate → Trail
Yet it’s equally compelling when experienced at a more luxurious pace.
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it → ’ → pace
Days 1-2: Lima
Lima is South America’s culinary capital — and foodies should carve out at least 48 hours here to properly appreciate the city’s enviable restaurant scene.
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foodies → carve → scene
Book a table at Mérito, one of Lima’s most sought-after fine dining restaurants, where Amazonian and Andean ingredients collide in mind-bogglingly creative dishes — or head to its more relaxed sister spot, Clon, for natural wines and sharing plates.
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ingredients → book → wines
Bed down at boutique bolthole Fausto in Miraflores which is well placed for easy exploring.
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which → place → exploring
This intimate property has just five bedrooms, and feels more private home than it does a hotel.
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it → have → hotel
It’s a short 1.5-hour flight to Cusco — the former capital of the Inca Empire and gateway to the region — though it’s worth skipping the city initially and driving straight into the Sacred Valley, allowing a couple of days to acclimatise to the sharp shift in altitude.
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couple → ’ → altitude
The landscape transforms dramatically, with Lima’s hazy coastline giving way to rolling green terraces, shimmering lakes and scattered villages tucked deep within the mountains.
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coastline → transform → mountains
Quiet casitas are scattered among the greenery — where the hotel’s resident alpacas roam freely.
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alpacas → scatter → greenery
Departing from Rio Sagrado’s private station, the journey is half the joy: settle into 1920s-inspired carriages and tuck into an elegant three-course lunch as the train chugs through the mountains, pisco sours flowing and a live jazz band swinging from one end of the dining car to the other.
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band → depart → other
Tickets and an intimate guided tour of Machu Picchu are included as part of the experience — and nothing quite prepares you for the moment the citadel reveals itself: stone terraces tumbling down cloudstitched peaks, with llamas gently wandering through the ruins.
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llamas → guide → ruins
Cusco
Cusco remains one of Peru’s most historically rich destinations, where layers of Inca and colonial history sit visibly atop one another.
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layers → remain → one
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This is Peru’s most tourist-trodden city: its cobbled streets are filled with backpackers and market stalls — but its beauty and history still cut through the crowds.
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beauty → read → crowds
Days are spent traipsing between the most famous sites and museums (Qorikancha, Cusco Cathedral and the Pre-Columbian Art Museum to name a few).
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Days → spend → few
Make Belmond’s Monasterio hotel your base: one of the city’s most storied addresses housed within a former 16th-century Jesuit monastery.
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hotel → make → monastery
Next door sits sister property, Palacio Nazarenas, a former convent, home to a boutique spa and Mauka, easily the city’s most exciting fine dining restaurant, helmed by celebrated Peruvian chef Pía León.
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property → sit → León
The most spellbinding way to traverse these ever-shifting landscapes of the Andes is on board the Andean Explorer, Belmond’s all-frills luxury sleeper train.
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way → traverse → Explorer
Over two days, its cream-and-blue carriages wind their way from Cusco to Puno, threading past glistening lakes, endless marshland and fields of feathery pampas.
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carriages → wind → pampas
A stay on board feels like a luxury hotel on rails.
Guided activities include meeting the Uros people of Lake Titicaca (who live on floating islands constructed entirely out of reeds), tucking into a beach barbecue on unspoilt
Taquile Island and wandering through Raqchi, an Inca temple complex.
Days 9-10:
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who → feel → Raqchi
We alight to make a detour deep into the Colca Valley, where the team at PUQIO scoops us up for the next two days.
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team → alight → days
This eight-bed tented camp by Andean feels far more boutique hideaway than glamping pit stop.
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camp → tent → stop
Dressed in soft linens and vintage furnishings, with an outdoor bathtub waiting on the deck, it’s more spacious than many hotel suites I’ve stayed in.
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I → dress → suites
It’s the little touches that make the stay count: hot water bottles slipped between the sheets come evening, the fire lit when we return from dinner, and a 24/7 WhatsApp line to the team whenever we fancy drinks or snacks.
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we → ’ → drinks
By day, we venture into the valley with our private guide, Daniel, winding through terraced mountainsides and small Quechua villages until we reach the base of the Chimpa Fortress.
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we → venture → Fortress
From here, we pant our way up the hillside, spying condors soaring overhead, before cresting the ridge for one of the most heartstopping views of the trip: the Colca Canyon yawning open beneath us, one of the deepest gorges in the world.
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we → pant → world
Day 11-12: Arequipa and Lima
Twenty four hours here is just enough to scratch the surface of Peru’s second city Arequipa before our onward flight back to Lima.
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hours → scratch → Lima
We make CIRQA our base, a stripped-back sanctuary housed within a former 16th-century monastery that feels holy in more than one sense.
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that → make → sense
For the final leg of our trip, we head north into the thick tangle of the Peruvian Amazon, boarding Pure Amazon, an A&K Sanctuary, to traverse the vast Pacaya-Samiria National Reserve.
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we → head → Reserve
This riverboat drifts through the steamy rainforest, allowing an up-close-andpersonal view of the glossy waterways and dense jungle.
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riverboat → drift → waterways
Mornings begin with sunrise skiff rides, gliding silently through flooded forests and narrow creeks: monkeys leap through the canopy overhead, sloths cling to their branches and elusive pink river dolphins surface alongside us.
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dolphins → begin → us
Other excursions take us fishing for piranha and visiting remote river communities.
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excursions → take → communities
Ulber and Javier, the boat’s resident naturalists, are both born and raised in the region: they read the rainforest like a book, picking out the wildlife our untrained eyes would miss entirely.
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eyes → bear → wildlife
This feels less like a cruise and more like a floating safari: a fitting end to a trip that has carried us from Andean peaks to canyon depths, by way of Machu Picchu and all the river-rich jungle in between.
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that → feel → between
The Aporia
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