I have a nagging feeling that if there was one place on my Peruvian itinerary that I did not have enough time for, it was Cuzco. Due to the arrival and departure timings, in Cuzco I had less than the day-and-a-half allowance for exploring that I enjoyed at my other…
Machu Picchu is one of the few places in the world whose mere mention establishes traveling bona fides. If it is not on someone’s bucket list, chances are that particular someone has not been bitten by the travel bug. Anyone touring Peru for the first time would certainly make Machu…
As I mentioned in the previous post, two historic sites draw the lion’s share of the tourist crowd in the Sacred Valley. Incidentally, they are located at the opposite edges of the valley, serving as its bookends. Pisac is at the eastern end, close enough to Cuzco for plenty of…
The Sacred Valley of the Inkas, also known as Urubamba Valley, lies between Cuzco and Machu Picchu. Its main attractions, Pisac and Ollantaytambo, draw a fair measure of day-trippers. The rest of the valley, despite its great natural beauty and plentitude of pre-Hispanic points of interest, feels rather low-key and…
Sillar – in effect, solidified volcanic ash – plays a significant part in the architectural makeup of Arequipa and is one of the reasons the city is recognized as a World Heritage site. You are made aware that most of the buildings in the city center are made of sillar…
Arequipa is the second largest as well as the second most economically important city in Peru, and a World Heritage site to boot, and yet it does not enjoy a destination profile anywhere near that of Cuzco. Not being in the heart of the Inka Empire has that effect. Truth…
Lima is a huge metropolis of over 11 million people, comprised of 43 municipal districts. Of those, only 3 would be of any interest to a foreign visitor. The historic center of Lima is obviously one. The other two are Barranco and Miraflores, hugging the coast in the southern part…
My preferences for multi-leg travel itineraries dictated having two overnight bookends in Lima for the Peruvian trip, giving me two and a half days in the capital in total. The city objectively does not have a destination profile high enough for such time allocation, even though its historic center, known…