10-Day Peru Culinary Tour: Lima, Sacred Valley & Machu Picchu

Today’s Highlight: Touch down in Peru’s culinary capital and spend your first evening at one of Lima’s celebrated restaurants.

Welcome to Peru. Upon arrival, our team will greet you at the airport and transfer you to your hotel in Miraflores or Barranco. The evening begins with a welcome dinner at one of Lima’s finest restaurants, your first introduction to Peruvian cuisine and the flavors that will define the next 10 days.

Dinner included.

Overnight in Lima

Optional: Add our Lima half-day city tour and explore the city’s beautiful neighborhoods, local markets and more.

Today’s Highlight: Discover why Lima is one of the world’s great food cities, colonial history in the morning, unforgettable flavors in the afternoon.

Start with a guided tour of Lima’s UNESCO-listed historic center: the grand Plaza Mayor, the ornate Cathedral, and the baroque architecture of the old colonial quarter. In the afternoon, your culinary tour takes you through local markets, pisco bodegas, and into one of Lima’s celebrated restaurants, from ceviche and causa to the legendary pisco sour, Peru’s culinary identity reveals its extraordinary depth.

Breakfast & Lunch included.

Overnight in Lima

Today’s Highlight: Witness Peru’s most elegant equestrian tradition, then explore an ancient pre-Inca site where food and ritual were inseparable.

Head south of Lima for a morning at Mamacona, where Peru’s famous Paso Fino horses perform their extraordinary naturally gaited show, one of the country’s most refined cultural traditions, recognized by UNESCO. Continue to Pachacamac, the vast pre-Inca ceremonial complex dedicated to the god of earth and time, where ancient offerings and agricultural rituals reveal how deeply food and spirituality were intertwined in Andean civilization long before the Incas.

Breakfast & Lunch included.

Overnight in Lima

Today’s Highlight: Trade Lima’s coast for the Andean highlands and discover traditional Peruvian ingredients at a working artisan collective.

An early flight brings you to Cusco (11,150ft). Rather than heading into the city, we transfer you directly to the Sacred Valley, lower in altitude and perfect for acclimatization. Along the way, stop at Manos, a traditional artisan and food producers collective where ancient Andean ingredients, textiles, and techniques are kept alive by local communities. Settle into your valley hotel and rest.

Breakfast & Lunch included.

Overnight in Sacred Valley

Today’s Highlight: The Inca’s agricultural laboratory, a surreal salt landscape, and lunch with an Andean family still cooking by the old ways.

Visit Moray, the Inca’s remarkable circular agricultural terraces designed to create different micro-climates for growing crops at altitude. Continue to the Maras salt mines, where thousands of terraced pools have harvested mineral-rich spring water since pre-Inca times, still worked by the same local families today. The afternoon takes you into a local Andean community for a traditional weaving demonstration before sitting down to a home-cooked lunch with a local family.

Breakfast & Lunch included.

Overnight in Sacred Valley

Today’s Highlight: Peru’s ancient beer, its best-preserved Inca town, and a feast cooked underground, all before boarding the train to Machu Picchu.

Begin the day at a traditional chicha de jora brewery, one of the oldest beverages in the Americas, this fermented corn drink has been brewed in the Andes for over 3,000 years and remains deeply woven into Andean culture and ceremony. Continue to Ollantaytambo for a guided visit of the most intact example of Inca urban planning still standing. Then sit down to a traditional Pachamanca feast: marinated meats and vegetables slow-cooked in an earth oven with hot volcanic stones, just as Andean communities have done for over 1,000 years. In the late afternoon, board the scenic train to Aguas Calientes as the valley narrows and the mountains rise around you.

Breakfast & Lunch included.

Overnight in Aguas Calientes

Today’s Highlight: Machu Picchu before the crowds, early entry, expert guiding, and the citadel almost to yourself.

Rise early for first entry into Machu Picchu, morning mist, golden light, and the ruins nearly to yourself. Your licensed guide brings the architecture, astronomy, and Inca history fully to life. After time to explore at your own pace, descend to Aguas Calientes and board the train back toward Ollantaytambo or Urubamba for an overnight rest in the Sacred Valley, the ideal base for tomorrow’s early departure into the jungle.

Breakfast & Lunch included.

Overnight in Sacred Valley

Today’s Highlight: Spend a full day with two farming families in Cusco’s high jungle, roasting cacao, grinding coffee, and tasting both at the source.

An early departure takes you on a scenic drive across the Andes and cloud forest to Cusco’s high jungle. Your first stop is Julia’s cacao farm in Huayopata, where you walk among fruit trees, learn about cacao varieties, roast dried beans on-site, grind your own cacao paste, and taste fresh cacao pulp.

After lunch, continue to the Pérez family’s coffee farm to learn how shade-grown high-altitude coffee is produced, from hand-roasting and grinding to tasting the final brew, before beginning the scenic return journey to Cusco.

Optional alternative: Cusco cooking class (half day) for those who prefer to stay in the city.

Breakfast & Lunch included.

Overnight in Cusco

Today’s Highlight: Two civilizations in one afternoon, then an evening of traditional Andean dance and Peruvian cuisine overlooking the Plaza de Armas.

A 14:00 guided city tour takes in Koricancha, the Inca Temple of the Sun, where perfectly fitted stonework still stands beneath a Spanish colonial church, the vibrant Plaza de Armas, and the monumental ruins of Sacsayhuamán overlooking the city.

At 19:30, the evening culminates at one of Cusco’s most celebrated restaurants, where a spectacular traditional Andean dance show accompanies a full dinner of Peruvian cuisine in a setting overlooking the Plaza de Armas, the perfect final night in the Andes.

Breakfast & Dinner included.

Overnight in Cusco