The days
The shape of the 5 days
Hours of planned activity. A day beyond the city counts door to door.
- City dayThe historic center and San Blas4.5 h
- Beyond the cityMachu Picchu12 h
- City dayA sauna session or the viewpoints walk6.5–7 h
- Beyond, or the cityThe Sacred Valley, or a day in the cityUp to 12 h
- City daySacsayhuamán or a cooking class6.5–9 h
A typical route. Yours follows your dates, pace, and interests.
Why this order
- The first day stays lightThe first day carries nothing long or strenuous.
- Heavy days stay apartWhen the trip holds two twelve-hour days, they are never adjacent, and the day between them asks little of you.
- Machu Picchu takes the first long dayFour excursions here run twelve hours or more. The route gives Machu Picchu the first long day, every time.
- Closed days are shownVerified closed days are shown with the place, so you can match the route to your actual dates before booking.
- Road time countsTime on the road is counted as time, not as a footnote.
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See a real Cusco guideOne day belongs to Machu Picchu. The altitude and the valleys decide the other four.
Two things shape the answer. The city sits at almost 3,400 meters, which makes the first day a different kind of day from one at sea level. And the places worth leaving the city for are all long: the days here are either short and close, or twelve hours door to door, with little in between.
City day4.5 h
The historic center and San Blas
The first day stays low
In Cusco the gentle first day is not a courtesy. The city stands at almost 3,400 meters, and the first day belongs to meeting that: the historic center on foot, a long pause in San Blas, nothing strenuous and nothing that has to be anywhere at a set hour.
It is a day with more in it than the pace suggests. The walk reaches Hatun Rumiyoc, where the twelve-angled stone sits in the wall of Inca Roca's palace, cut to meet the blocks already set around it. San Blas above it is known as the artisans' quarter, and its lanes open back onto the tiled roofs of the whole center.
Beyond the city12 h
Machu Picchu
Twelve hours, door to door, most of it moving
Machu Picchu is a twelve-hour day from Cusco: the road to the station, the train down the valley, the site itself, and the same distance home. It cannot share its day with anything, and it does not try.
What waits at the far end is roughly two hundred structures, built in the fifteenth century on a ridge between two peaks. When Hiram Bingham arrived in 1911, he found a name already written in charcoal on a temple window: A. Lizárraga, 1902.
It takes the first long day of the trip, every time. The citadel stands at 2,430 meters, almost a thousand below Cusco, so the walking comes easier than it does in the city.
With Signature, the Machu Picchu day carries an original audio guide, saved before you go and playing without a signal.
Before you book, read how to buy the tickets and which circuit to choose.
City day6.5–7 h
A sauna session or the viewpoints walk
The day between the long ones
The day after twelve hours on the move is never another twelve. It stays in and around the city, built from short pieces that follow what you said you came for, and it is the day that varies most from one traveler to the next.
It might be an hour of sauna and steam, which legs that have taken days of Cusco cobbles tend to ask for. Or the viewpoints walk, past Qorikancha, where the Spanish raised Santo Domingo on the Inca temple of the Sun and the earthquakes of 1650 and 1950 brought down much of the church and left the Inca walls beneath it standing.
Beyond, or the cityUp to 12 h
The Sacred Valley, or a day in the city
The second long day, unless you asked for a slow trip
At most paces the trip holds a second long day, and it goes to the Sacred Valley: the villages, the terraces, and the river the train followed two days earlier, seen from ground level this time.
A slow pace gives this day up entirely and keeps the trip in the city. Machu Picchu stays either way. Rainbow Mountain and Humantay Lake compete for this same day and lose it to the Valley.
Or swap for
- Maras, Moray, and the Chinchero weavers, where spring-fed salt pans are still worked by hand
- The South Valley and Pikillaqta, a Wari city on a strict grid centuries before the Inca
City day6.5–9 h
Sacsayhuamán or a cooking class
The last morning stays close
The last day stays within sight of the city: most trips climb to Sacsayhuamán, the fortress terraces directly above the rooftops, and come back down for the afternoon.
Or the day goes to a cooking class: a market walk leads into a working kitchen, and the meal you sit down to is the one you cooked.
Or swap for
- Two hours at the ChocoMuseo, tasting single-origin cacao before it goes near a mold
When to go
Dry season · Apr–Oct
- Jan19°150
- Feb19°140
- Mar20°110
- Apr18°50
- May20°15
- Jun18°10
- Jul18°10
- Aug19°11
- Sep20°25
- Oct21°60
- Nov21°80
- Dec20°130
Day °CRain mm
The difference
Your 5 days in Cusco. Built around you.
This is the shape. Build the route that fits inside it.
Complete guides from $1930-day money-back guarantee · One-time purchase
| What you get | This page | Yours |
|---|---|---|
| A typical route, day by day | ||
| Matched to your dates, pace, and interests | ||
| Up to 15 activities, by trip length | ||
| Up to 12 hotels and 12 restaurants | ||
| A PDF of up to 13 pages and a web guide | ||
| Audio guides at up to four highlights | Signature |
What changes, and what stays fixed
Pace
A slow pace keeps Machu Picchu and gives up the Sacred Valley.
Interests
What you came for decides the short days between the long ones.
Opening days
Where a place has verified closed days, they are shown with it, so you can check them against your dates.
Fixed day
The Machu Picchu day stays in place. Your answers shape the rest.
The mountains that compete for the long day
Two of the strongest day trips from Cusco are rivals for the same day the Sacred Valley holds, and in five days they lose it. Rainbow Mountain is a ridge of iron and mineral below Ausangate, a sacred Apu believed to watch over the surrounding land, at its clearest under open skies. Humantay Lake sits in a glacial bowl below Salkantay, its turquoise ground into the water by ice, and the last climb opens the whole cirque at once.
Each is a twelve-hour day or more, and both run all year. Losing that day is not a verdict on them. It is what one long day and three contenders adds up to. A longer trip gives one of those rivals room to stay.
Questions, answered
Does the route assume I have already arrived?
Is five days enough for Cusco?
Why is Machu Picchu not on the first day?
Can Machu Picchu and the Sacred Valley be done on the same day?
Do I need to acclimatize before Machu Picchu?
Before you go
