Salkantay Expedition

A late-afternoon landing and a straight run into Miraflores, the district Lima built along the cliff edge above the Pacific. The clifftop is a chain of parks the length of the neighborhood, with paragliders working the updraft off the face. The evening is open on purpose: two nights at sea level make Cusco, two miles higher, much easier.

A guided day through Lima's historic center, laid out by Pizarro in 1535 and run as the capital of Spanish South America for the next two hundred years. Then the Larco Museum and its five thousand years of Peruvian gold, ceramics and textiles. The evening is the Magic Water Circuit, where the fountains in the old city park run to music after dark.

Cusco sits at 11,150 feet, so the first few hours are yours to settle in and the sightseeing waits until afternoon. It starts at Qoricancha, where the Spanish built a church straight onto the Temple of the Sun, then climbs to Sacsayhuaman, the fortress above the old capital, with the whole city open below. Last is the little lookout fort at Puka Pukara, out where the road turns down toward the Sacred Valley.

A full day down into the Sacred Valley, which runs lower and warmer than Cusco. The morning is Pisac, market stalls filling the square and Inca terraces curving around the hillside above it. Then the stone stairs at Ollantaytambo, the one place the Inca turned back Spanish cavalry, by flooding the plain below the fortress. Back in Cusco by evening.

The van leaves Cusco before first light, and breakfast comes in a village along the way. The walking starts gently across the Soraypampa plain, then climbs to Humantay Lake, glacier-fed and improbably turquoise under the ice wall that feeds it. Back down at camp (12,467 ft) the afternoon ends with dinner under Salkantay itself, and the night in a glass-roofed cabin built for exactly this sky.

The highest ground of the whole trip comes before lunch. Three hours of steady climbing end at the Salkantay Pass, 15,190 ft, with the glacier hanging close enough to hear it crack. Everything after is downhill: out of the rock and ice and into the first green of the cloud forest, to a domed camp at Wayracmachay.

The longest walking day, and all of it descending into warmth. The trail follows the river down through orchids and waterfalls into coffee country around Collpapampa (9,678 ft), where the fruit trees start. It ends at a small eco-lodge at Loreta, with hot showers and a jungle evening a vertical mile below where the day began.

A morning's climb through coffee farms ends at Llactapata (8,861 ft), the ruined outpost the Incas placed exactly where Machu Picchu first shows itself across the valley. That first sighting is the day's summit. The trail drops to the river at Hidroelectrica, and the last stretch runs flat beside the rails into Machu Picchu Town, where a hotel bed and a hot shower stand in for the tent.

One of the first buses up the switchbacks, and the citadel opens below the morning mist with the mountain you crossed four days ago on the horizon behind it. Your guide walks you from the upper terraces, where the whole city is laid out at once, down through the temples and plazas. After your visit to the Machu Picchu sanctuary, the train follows the Urubamba out of the canyon and a private van has you back in Cusco by early evening.

If the flight out is late enough, there is a last morning in Cusco: the steep lanes of San Blas, the artisan workshops, the market stalls off the main square. Then the transfer to the airport and your onward connection.