Peru Travel Guides: Places to Visit and Things to Do

Peru has spent decades watching millions of travelers fly halfway around the world to photograph one extremely famous collection of rocks on top of a mountain.

To be fair, Machu Picchu is pretty fucking spectacular.

The setting is ridiculous. Ancient stone ruins sit between steep green mountains while clouds drift through the valley below, creating exactly the kind of scenery that makes every photograph look like someone aggressively edited the background.

But Peru is considerably more than Machu Picchu.

Lima is enormous, chaotic and occasionally rough around the edges, but the food alone deserves serious attention. Walk into the historic center and places like Plaza Mayor suddenly make the city feel suspiciously elegant before traffic and general metropolitan fuckery remind you where you are.

Then head into the Andes.

Cusco delivers Inca history, colonial architecture and enough altitude to make climbing a staircase feel like an unexpected medical fitness assessment. Beyond it are mountains, archaeological sites, tiny villages and landscapes that make the journey toward Machu Picchu almost as interesting as arriving.

Peru still isn’t finished.

There’s Amazon rainforest, Pacific coastline, enormous sand dunes, mysterious archaeological sites and enough ancient civilizations to make the Incas seem almost unfairly successful at stealing the historical spotlight.

Travel here can require patience. Distances are large, roads can be slow, altitude matters and transportation occasionally introduces unnecessary plot twists.

But Peru rewards the effort.

It’s ancient, mountainous, chaotic, delicious and ridiculously dramatic.

Come for Machu Picchu.

Absolutely take the fucking picture.

Then keep exploring, because Peru has been hiding an entire country behind it.

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