A first trip to Peru: a 15-day itinerary

Why this order works

The route follows the logic of altitude before the logic of distance. The first seven days stay at or near sea level: Lima is on the coast, Paracas on the edge of the Pacific and Ica at about 400 m. This time is used to recover from jet lag, to pick up your first bearings in Spanish and to understand the country’s history in a museum before finding it again at the sites.

On day 8, the plane arrives in Cusco, at about 3,400 m. Instead of sleeping there, this programme heads straight down to the Sacred Valley and spends three nights in Urubamba, at about 2,870 m. The valley visits take place between the valley floor and the Chinchero plateau (about 3,750 m), then you reach Machu Picchu, lower still (about 2,430 m). Cusco comes last, when your body has already spent several days at altitude. This progression avoids starting with the highest night of the trip; it does not, however, protect you from altitude sickness. The signs that mean you must go down or see a doctor are detailed in the Altitude guide.

The return to Lima takes place on day 14 and not day 15: a delayed or cancelled domestic flight will then not make you miss the international flight.

The three transfer days

This schedule includes three transfer days, not two as an earlier version of this page said:

• Day 7, Ica → Lima. The companies’ timetables give 4 hr to 5 hr 30 min, to which you add the journey to the bus terminal and crossing Lima on arrival. Leave in the morning and plan nothing other than dinner.
• Day 8, Lima → Cusco → Urubamba. The flight takes about 1 hr 25 min; the road from Cusco to Urubamba, about 1 hr by car, 1 hr 30 min by bus, for some 45 km. With the time spent at Lima airport, it is a full day, even if the journeys themselves seem short.
• Day 14, Cusco → Lima. A morning flight frees up the afternoon, but the day is still built around the airport.

Two other days include a journey without being transfer days: day 4 (Lima–Paracas, 3 hr 15 min to 4 hr 10 min) and day 5 (Paracas–Ica, 1 hr to 1 hr 30 min), because a visit takes up the rest of the day. Day 12 strings together the visit to Machu Picchu, the train and the road: it is the longest day of the trip.

Where you sleep, and at what altitude

Total: fourteen nights. The first seven are spent at or near sea level, the next six at altitude, the last one in Lima again.

Day by day: what each stage brings

Days 1 to 3: Lima, to understand before you see

The first evening has only one goal: getting to your accommodation without complications. The Arriving in Lima guide compares the ways of leaving the airport.

Day 2 is devoted to the historic centre, a UNESCO World Heritage site. The Plaza Mayor brings together the powers of the colonial city: the cathedral, the Government Palace and the city hall. A few streets away, the San Francisco monastery can be visited with its library and catacombs. The pedestrian Jirón de la Unión leads to the Plaza San Martín, built at the beginning of the 20th century and lined with buildings from the Republic. The detailed route, with what can be visited inside and what is admired from the street, is on the Historic centre page.

Day 3 begins at the Museo Larco, in Pueblo Libre. Its galleries present the cultures that succeeded one another or lived side by side on Peruvian territory over thousands of years: Paracas and Nasca on the south coast you will see in two days, Moche and Chimú in the north, Inca in the Andes. Seeing Paracas textiles and Nasca ceramics on day 3 gives meaning to the visit to Paracas on day 4 and to the Ica museum on day 6. In the afternoon, the Miraflores malecón, the clifftop promenade, or the Barranco neighbourhood let you finish facing the Pacific.

Days 4 to 6: the desert coast, between cold sea and dunes

On day 4, the bus leaves Lima in the morning. In the afternoon, the Paracas National Reserve shows a desert that falls into the sea: cliffs, red-sand beaches and abundant wildlife, fed by the cold, rich waters of the Humboldt Current. Entry costs S/ 11 per adult. The name of the peninsula also refers to a pre-Hispanic culture, known for its embroidered funerary textiles.

Day 5 begins with the boat trip to the Ballestas Islands, which takes place in the morning. You do not land: you sail along islands where sea lions, Humboldt penguins and seabirds live. On the way, the boat passes the Candelabra, a large figure traced in the sand of a hillside. On top of the price of the boat, the islands belong to a national reserve that charges an entry fee (S/ 11 in the published rate). After lunch, the road leads to Ica, an oasis town in the middle of an irrigated valley. A late afternoon at a bodega lets you understand how pisco is made, a grape brandy distilled without ageing in casks.

Day 6 is divided between the Ica regional museum, which holds Paracas and Nasca collections, and the Huacachina oasis, a few kilometres from the centre. Buggy rides in the dunes are common but not compulsory: you can walk up a dune at sunset, more slowly, or look at the landscape from the lagoon. The FDFA reports that the safety of risky sports, including buggies, varies greatly from one company to another: check the seat belts, the roll bar and the condition of the vehicle before getting in.

Day 7: back to Lima

The bus to Lima leaves in the morning. Choose where to spend the night according to the next day’s flight: a hotel near the airport if the flight is very early, your usual neighbourhood otherwise.

Days 8 to 10: the Sacred Valley, sleeping lower than Cusco

On day 8, the plane lands in Cusco. A car or a booked transfer goes straight down to Urubamba, at the bottom of the Urubamba Valley (the river bears the name of the town). No visits that day: a slow walk, a light meal, an early night.

Day 9 is deliberately kept short. Pisac is both a village by the river, with a market for crafts and farm produce, and a large Inca site perched on the mountain. The agricultural terraces that climb the slope show how the Incas farmed very steep hillsides. If you feel headaches or unusual breathlessness, keep the village and leave the site for another trip.

Day 10 climbs onto the plateau. In Chinchero (about 3,750 m), the colonial church was built on Inca foundations; workshops demonstrate spinning, natural dyeing and weaving, with direct sales. Moray has terraces arranged in concentric circles in natural hollows: the most frequently put forward hypothesis is that of a place for agricultural experiments, but it remains an interpretation. Finally, the Maras salt pans are hundreds of pools fed by a salt spring, worked by families from the community: you look at them from the authorised paths, without walking on the pools. Moray and Pisac are covered by circuit III of the Boleto Turístico (S/ 70); the salt pans have a separate ticket.

Days 11 and 12: Machu Picchu, without a dawn train

Day 11 begins in Ollantaytambo, downstream from Urubamba, where the train leaves. The village has kept its Inca layout, with its streets and water channels; above it, the site combines terraces and a group of huge stone blocks. The afternoon train goes down to Machu Picchu Pueblo in about 1 hr 30 min. Take a small bag for the night: PeruRail allows one 8 kg backpack (100 cm, sum of the three sides) or one 12 kg piece of hand luggage (115 cm), Inca Rail one 8 kg piece of hand luggage (118 cm, sum of the three sides). Big suitcases stay at the hotel in Urubamba or in left luggage at the station, and you collect them on the way back up.

On day 12, the shuttle bus goes up to the site (about USD 24 (foreign visitor) return according to the press in January 2026; the service is operating on a provisional basis). The choice of circuit determines what you will see: circuit 2, recommended for a first visit, combines an overall view (from the lower terrace on route 2-B, from the agricultural sector on 2-A) and a walk through several sectors of the city, depending on what is open that day; the view from the upper terraces belongs to circuit 1. The Machu Picchu page describes the three circuits and the ten routes. After the visit, the afternoon train to Ollantaytambo, then the road to Cusco.

Day 13: Cusco, the Inca city beneath the colonial city

The centre of Cusco keeps the layout and many walls of the former Inca capital. The Santo Domingo convent was built on the Qorikancha, the city’s main temple, whose walls of fitted stone remain visible. Hatun Rumiyuq street has a wall famous for its twelve-angled stone. The San Blas neighbourhood climbs in steep alleys; San Pedro market lets you have lunch at the counter and see Andean produce. Watch out: the Qorikancha temple and the site museum of the same name are not the same visit or the same ticket. The Cusco page explains this point in detail.

Days 14 and 15: return and buffer

The flight on day 14 takes you back to Lima early in the day. The afternoon is free. Day 15 serves as a buffer: a meal, a last market, nothing that cannot be dropped if a flight has been moved.

Around the Machu Picchu ticket: three scenarios

The Machu Picchu ticket is booked for a date, a circuit and an entry time, with a tolerance of 30 minutes in low season, 45 minutes in high season. It is the ticket that sets days 11 and 12.

Book the ticket before the trains, then the trains before the nights. Doing it the other way round often means paying for changes.

Budget: the items to add up

This table lists what this route costs, item by item. The amounts shown are official or published rates, dated; the other items depend on your dates and your quotes.

Enter these items in the budget calculator: it separates nights from days and rooms from travellers.

Arequipa and Colca variant, without the south coast

This variant replaces Paracas and Ica with Arequipa and the Colca Canyon. The trip gains a gradual climb (Arequipa is at about 2,335 m), but the Colca involves crossing a pass at about 4,900 m and a night in Chivay (about 3,600 m), about 1,300 metres higher than Arequipa: this jump exceeds what the CDC advises, and the nights in Arequipa do not make up for it. It is not a “low” stage.

Total: fourteen nights and only two transfer days, since the flights replace the long coast bus. There are fewer direct Arequipa–Cusco flights than from Lima: look at the timetables before choosing this variant. Arequipa and the Colca are detailed in Arequipa and the far south.

Nazca variant: one more day on the bus

To see the Nazca geoglyphs, this variant keeps the south coast but replaces the second day in Ica with a night in Nazca. The price to pay is the return journey: 7 hr to 8 hr 30 min for most services by bus to Lima.

The total remains fourteen nights and three transfer days, but the day at the Ica museum disappears and day 6 becomes busy. An overflight in a small plane and viewing from the ground-level towers are two different experiences, compared in The south coast.