.jpeg?width=1200&auto=webp&quality=75 "A two-week Peru itinerary from Machu Picchu to the Amazon rainforest")
One of South America’s most beguiling destinations, Peru has long been associated with backpackers tracing the famous Inca Trail.
Yet it’s equally compelling when experienced at a more luxurious pace.
I recently spent two weeks travelling from the high-altitude heartlands of the Andes to the fringes of the Amazon — here’s the perfect two-week itinerary for travelling around Peru.
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.
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.
Bed down at boutique bolthole Fausto in Miraflores which is well placed for easy exploring. This intimate property has just five bedrooms, and feels more private home than it does a hotel.
Days 3-4: Sacred Valley and Machu Picchu
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.
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.
Stay at Belmond hotel Rio Sagrado, a hushed sanctuary tucked deep within the valley, wrapped by vast mountains and lush, manicured gardens.
Quiet casitas are scattered among the greenery — where the hotel’s resident alpacas roam freely. Spend your days exploring the concentric Inca terraces at nearby Moray, or the salt mines of Salineras de Maras.
While in the Sacred Valley, tick off one of the Seven Wonders of the World by boarding Belmond’s bells-and-whistles Hiram Bingham train to Machu Picchu, easily the most glamorous way to reach the ancient citadel.
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.
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.
Cusco remains one of Peru’s most historically rich destinations, where layers of Inca and colonial history sit visibly atop one another.
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.
Days are spent traipsing between the most famous sites and museums (Qorikancha, Cusco Cathedral and the Pre-Columbian Art Museum to name a few).
Make Belmond’s Monasterio hotel your base: one of the city’s most storied addresses housed within a former 16th-century Jesuit 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.
Day 7-8: The Andean Explorer
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.
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.
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.
We alight to make a detour deep into the Colca Valley, where the team at PUQIO scoops us up for the next two days.
This eight-bed tented camp by Andean feels far more boutique hideaway than glamping pit 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
We make CIRQA our base, a stripped-back sanctuary housed within a former 16th-century monastery that feels holy in more than one 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.
This riverboat drifts through the steamy rainforest, allowing an up-close-andpersonal view of the glossy waterways and dense jungle. 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.
Other excursions take us fishing for piranha and visiting remote river 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.
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.
Luxury travel guru Abercrombie & Kent offers a 16-day tailormade Peru itinerary from £18,395 based on two sharing; abercrombiekent.com
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