Classic Peru: Lima, the Sacred Valley & Machu Picchu

The journey opens in Lima, the Pacific stretched beneath clifftop parks and a dining scene that has quietly become one of the finest on the continent, before the Andes take over entirely. Two nights in the Sacred Valley follow, the circular terraces at Moray and the market town of Pisac revealing a landscape still shaped by Inca hands.

Rail travel through the Urubamba gorge leads to Machu Picchu itself, a private early entry timed ahead of the day’s first arrivals, the citadel’s terraces still holding the last of the night’s mist as the sun clears the surrounding peaks. A final night in Cusco, its Inca walls still visible beneath four centuries of colonial stonework, closes the Andean leg of the journey.

From there, the journey crosses an entire hemisphere of experience, connecting through Lima and Guayaquil to the Galápagos archipelago, where six days aboard a small expedition vessel bring guests face to face with giant tortoises unbothered by an audience, marine iguanas draped across volcanic rock, and blue-footed boobies going through courtship rituals found nowhere else on earth.