Highlights of Peru

This escorted tour by Just You takes you from Lima’s colonial squares and museums through the Sacred Valley and the high-altitude splendour of Machu Picchu. After a leisure morning in Lima, a short flight to Cuzco is followed by transfer to the lower-altitude Sacred Valley to help acclimatise before the famous ruins.

The route weaves through the former Inca capital, with its mixture of Incan walls and Spanish baroque churches, and then ascends to Puno on Lake Titicaca’s edge, stopping along the way at 17th-century churches and Inca archaeological sites. On Lake Titicaca, you’ll visit families living on reed islands and the island of Taquile, where traditional dress and textile patterns endure.

Alongside the ruins, museums and remote communities, there’s the practical side too — a cookery and pisco sour class in Cuzco, and time left to take in city bars, always a reminder that travel includes ordinary moments as well as the spectacular. The trip ends back in Lima for the flight home.