Travellers, List things to do in Peru beyond visiting Machu Picchu

Mysterious and visually stunning, seeing the well-preserved Inca city of Machu Picchu is a trip of a lifetime. Visiting Machu Picchu requires advanced planning—and we’ve collected tips on how to buy tickets and hike the Inca Trail here. But a trip to this beautiful part of Peru shouldn’t only be about seeing Machu Picchu. Here are things that you should do apart visiting Machu Picchu and make your trip a complete good trip.

• Take a train ride – Train travel is an essential and most convenient and beautiful way to see Peru

• • Sample Local Food and Visit a Market – For a slice of Peruvian life, head to any produce mercado (market)—there’s one in virtually every town. You’ll find only-in-Peru fruits, like aguaymanto (gooseberry), cherimoya(custard apple), and lucuma (eggfruit) to name a few.

Quinoa, a grain that has made its way to North American shores and is touted as a super food, comes in a variety of colors and is widely available here.

 

• Visit an Indigenous Community – Under an hour from Cusco, there are indigenous communities that preserve an ancient way of life few visitors are granted access to.

        

• • Climb Huayna Picchu – Machu Picchu is spectacular, but being let off a bus at the entrance can make you feel like you missed out on the adventure of hiking the Inca Trail.

If you want to earn your visit to the Inca city but don’t have three days to spend on the trail, opt to hike Huayna Picchu, sometimes called Wayna Picchu, the sugarloaf mountain that towers above Machu Picchu.

• Attend a festival – Colorful costumes, marching bands, religious processions, and fireworks—when Peru celebrates it’s a sight to see. Cusco’s Corpus Christi festival in June is a deeply religious affair with mass in the Plaza de Armas surrounded by fifteen statues of virgins and saints. The statues are brought from churches in nearby districts, which come to Cusco to be blessed.

          

• Visit Lima, the modern Peru – Peru’s capital city is on the Pacific coast, where you can enjoy the richness of the sea all year long. It features modern restaurants, shopping malls and entertainment venues along with colonial neighbourhoods and museums.

 

 

• Rafting in the Urubamba River, Cusco – This sacred river of the Incas features short rapids of low technical difficulty as well as thundering rapids of greater difficulty and risk.