Authentic Peru Tours

Authentic travel in Peru is less about which ruins you tick off and more about who you spend the day with: a weaving family in the Sacred Valley, a farming family showing how they still work their fields, the Uros families who rebuild their islands from totora reeds on Lake Titicaca. Our authentic Peru tours keep the essential sites, Machu Picchu included, and add unhurried time with the people who live around them.

The clearest example is our 8-day Authentic Peru Tour, from USD 2,489. After a day in Lima you visit Pisac, then spend a morning with a Sacred Valley community learning how they live and farm before Maras and Moray. A Pachamanca lunch, cooked underground on hot stones, comes before the train to Machu Picchu. After the citadel you sleep at the Mountain View Experience, a small glamping ranch near Maras with resident alpacas and llamas, and on the last full day you walk with alpacas and take part in an Andean offering to Pachamama, Mother Earth.

Other tours take that contact further afield. Peruvian Wonders (9 days, from USD 2,279) ends with the Uros floating islands, Taquile Island and a night on Lake Titicaca. Amazon & Inca Wonders (8 days, from USD 1,989) visits the Yagua community near Iquitos before Cusco and Machu Picchu.

How we work with communities. Since 2015 we have worked directly with Quechua communities around Cusco. Our longest partnership is with Palccoyo, a village above Cusco whose rainbow mountains we started visiting before they were on most itineraries. Guides, drivers, porters and artisans are paid fairly, and visits run on the community’s terms rather than as a show. Our social project page explains what that means in practice.

Homestays, honestly. Most nights on these tours are in hotels and lodges chosen for comfort, which suits the majority of our travelers. The night on Lake Titicaca is the closest the standard itineraries come to staying with a community. If you want to sleep in a family home, tell us when you inquire and we check what is possible for your dates.

Authentic or cultural? If you are more drawn to Inca history, museums and festivals such as Inti Raymi, our Peru cultural tours put those first. Both can be combined in one private, tailor-made trip.