Peru

Peru runs on the dry season, May to September–October — the window for the Andes, the Sacred Valley, Machu Picchu and the treks, with reliable skies and walkable trails. The wet season (November–April, wettest January–March) muddies the highlands and clouds the views, and the classic Inca Trail closes every February for maintenance, reopening 1 March; the citadel stays open, reachable by train.

The twist is that Peru has three climates at once. While the mountains are at their best, Lima and the coast sit under the garúa — a grey, damp fog from roughly May to October — and the warm, sunny coastal summer (December–April) is the Andean wet season. The Amazon is hot and humid year-round; its low-water months (June–November) open the forest trails and bring wildlife to the riverbanks, while the high-water season floods the forest for boat access. Plan around the highlands; the coast and jungle fit around that choice.

Machu Picchu is no longer a turn-up-and-wander site. You buy a timed ticket in advance from the official Ministry of Culture platform — high-season dates sell out, and only about a thousand tickets a day are held back for in-person sale in Machu Picchu town, where they go fast. Since 2024 entry has run on three fixed, one-way circuits with hourly slots; your ticket pins you to one route rather than the whole citadel.

The fee is per route: S/64 for foreign adults on the standard circuits (students and 3–17s S/32), and a separate S/112 for the mountain climbs. A licensed guide is officially required for the citadel; enforcement has fluctuated, so arrange one to be safe. This whole system has changed repeatedly in recent years — treat the specifics as live and confirm close to travel.

There is no road up to Machu Picchu. You arrive by train (next section) and then ride the only authorised shuttle — Consettur, about US$24 return, every 10–15 minutes from around 05:30 — up the switchbacks, or walk up in 60–90 minutes. One warning the brochures skip: the bus concession expired in September 2025 and the dispute is unresolved. In that episode it brought a strike, rocks on the rail line and some 900 visitors stranded until they were evacuated — the single most likely thing to disrupt a Machu Picchu day at short notice.

The classic four-day Inca Trail cannot be done independently: permits are sold only through licensed operators, are strictly capped each day (guides and porters count against the cap), and sell out six to eight months in advance — especially for the June–August high season, when they can go within days of release. If the classic trail is full, reputable operators run the Salkantay and Lares alternatives, which reach the same area with their own scenery and need no trail permit.

Two fixtures. The trail closes for the whole of February for maintenance — in 2026, 31 January to 28 February, reopening 1 March — though the citadel stays open that month, reached by train. And a long-running headache has eased: after a spell when the trail permit and the citadel ticket were sold separately (and people arrived permit-in-hand without an entry ticket), the 2026 permits again bundle the same-day Machu Picchu entry. Confirm it with your operator all the same.

2026 permits were released in staggered batches from late October 2025, and the peak dates go within days of opening. If your trip hinges on the classic trail, pick the operator and the date first and build the rest of the itinerary around what you can actually get — not the other way round.

Soroche — altitude sickness — typically arrives 6 to 12 hours after you land in Cusco, and it is no respecter of fitness: headache, breathlessness and broken sleep hit seasoned hikers as readily as anyone. The practical moves: give yourself a day or two before any hard walking, ideally acclimatising lower in the Sacred Valley (Urubamba and Ollantaytambo sit around 2,800 m, gentler than Cusco); hydrate hard; and — on the clearest medical advice — skip alcohol and strenuous exercise for the first 48 hours, since alcohol blunts the very breathing response your body needs to adjust.

Mate de coca (coca-leaf tea) is legal and everywhere in the highlands and eases mild symptoms; many travellers also start acetazolamide (Diamox) a couple of days ahead on a doctor’s say-so. One border note: the leaf is legal to use inside Peru but illegal to carry out — do not pack coca tea for the flight home, where several countries, the United States included, treat it as contraband.

Peru is big and slow overland, so domestic flights do the heavy lifting — Lima–Cusco is the workhorse, flown by LATAM, Sky and JetSMART, all now through Lima’s new Jorge Chávez terminal (opened June 2025, same airport name). On the ground the premium overnight “cama” buses — Cruz del Sur, Oltursa — are comfortable and cover the long corridors, but the distances are serious: Lima to Cusco is a 22–25 hour haul by road against a 90-minute flight.

For Machu Picchu the train is the only way in for most visitors. PeruRail and Inca Rail both run year-round, mostly from Ollantaytambo (about 1h45 down to Machu Picchu town), and seats need booking well ahead in the June–August peak. There is no broad national passenger railway otherwise — the one other line that matters to visitors is the scenic Andean Explorer between Cusco, Puno and Arequipa.

A week realistically covers one region done well — almost everyone’s is Lima plus Cusco and the Sacred Valley. Add a second only with ten days or more: Titicaca and Arequipa pair naturally in the south, the Amazon is an easy flight from Cusco, and the far north (Chan Chan, the Lord of Sipán tombs, the Huaraz trekking) is a trip in its own right.

Weighing Peru against its neighbours? See Peru vs Bolivia — the two share Lake Titicaca and the high-altitude Andes — plus Peru vs Ecuador and Peru vs Chile for the measured differences.

Rainbow Mountain (Vinicunca, ≈5,036 m — not the 5,200 m the brochures round up to) has become a conga line of day-trippers on a steep, breathless ridge. Colca Canyon’s condors are a morning event — they ride the thermals at Cruz del Cóndor roughly 07:00–10:00, which is also when the tour buses mass. And the Nazca Lines are seen properly only from a light aircraft; note that a sightseeing flight crashed in August 2026, so check the current operating and safety picture before booking one.

Most of the crush has a quieter alternative a short move away — the trick is knowing the swap before you go:

• Cusco floors you on day oneSkipstarting a hard trek the day you landGosleep lower first — Urubamba or Ollantaytambo in the Sacred Valley, around 2,800 m
• Vinicunca is mobbedSkipthe single-file queue up the main ridgeGoPalccoyo — flatter, far quieter, three coloured ridges and a stone forest
• the classic Inca Trail is sold outSkipabandoning the idea of a trekGoSalkantay or Lares — no trail permit needed, their own scenery, the same finish

On safety, keep the map in proportion. The advisories’ "do not travel" zones — the VRAEM and the far-north jungle on the Colombian border — are nowhere near the tourist circuit, and the US State Department (Level 2 overall, reissued September 2026) explicitly notes that Cusco, the Sacred Valley, the Inca Trail and Machu Picchu are not in them. The everyday risk is ordinary: petty theft and scams in Lima and Cusco, and tap water you should not drink. Emergency help is the police line 105 — a unified 911 has been announced but is not yet working nationwide, so use 105.

On money, the currency is the sol (S/, about 3.3–3.5 to the dollar); cards work in city hotels and bigger restaurants, but cash rules markets, small towns, tips and trail fees, so carry small notes and pay in soles rather than dollars for the better rate. Entry is visa-free for most Western visitors, and the immigration card (the TAM) is now digital, generated automatically when your passport is scanned at the border.

The one risk that is genuinely Peru’s own is political. The country has run through seven presidents in under a decade — President Boluarte was removed in October 2025, an interim government is in place, and a general election is set for 12 April 2026. Recurring protests and road-and-rail blockades, concentrated in the southern Andes and the Cusco corridor, can strand travellers or cut Machu Picchu access with little notice (as the September 2025 bus-concession strike did). None of it should put you off — it should make you build in slack and check the current situation in the days before you travel.