Peruvian Food Tour: Visit Lima and Cusco in just 10 days

Day 1: City Lima International Airport Arrival

You are met at Jorge Chavez International Airport in Lima and taken to your selected hotel.

Day 2: Lima Culinary Excursion + City Tour

After breakfast, you’ll head out with your special culinary guide to a wholesalers market, where buyers from some of Lima’s finest restaurants do their daily shopping, selecting only the freshest ingredients.

Here your guide will introduce you to the vendors and offer insight into the bountiful array of fish, vegetables, and exotic fruits that line their stands. You will have the opportunity to sample the products and produce delivered daily from Peru’s four corners.

Then you will go to a local restaurant specializing in traditional dishes from Peru’s coast. The chef will demonstrate how to prepare some of Peru’s most iconic dishes, step-by-step, explaining the origin and significance of each ingredient.

You will also receive a lesson from the head barman on the proper preparation of the Pisco Sour, a cocktail revered as a cultural and national treasure, before you are seated for a delicious lunch.

Next, you will embark on a city tour of Lima’s historic center, the “City of Kings.” Highlights include a walking tour of the Plaza de Armas, bounded by the Government Palace, the Cathedral, the Archbishop’s Palace, and the Municipal Palace.

You’ll explore the Convent and Church of San Francisco, with its exquisitely carved chorus, a library of ancient manuscripts, and the main cloister, decorated floor-to-ceiling in Sevillian tiles. The adjoining halls are lined with beautiful religious paintings.

You will descend beneath the ancient church into the world-famous catacombs, a subterranean crypt from the colonial period, where the bones of 25,000 entombed colonial-era Lima residents are decoratively displayed. (B/L)

Day 3: Lima Pachacamac + Peruvian Paso Horse Exhibition

Following breakfast at your hotel, you will head out of the city, south along the coast, for a guided tour of the archaeological ruins of Pachacamac, one of the most important pre-Hispanic ceremonial centers. Here, right up until the Spanish Conquest, thousands of pilgrims would converge to pay tribute and consult the deity’s priests for information about the past, the future, and their ultimate fate.

Next, the tour continues to the “Casa Hacienda Los Ficus” (Peruvian Hacienda house), located in the valley of Lurin. In its beautiful gardens, a Peruvian Horsewoman “Amazona” will introduce you to the world of the Peruvian Paso Horse (caballo de paso), narrating the story of this noble steed, whose movements are as graceful as a dancer.

Lunch will be served in the hacienda’s beautiful garden restaurant. Then, transfer to your hotel. (B/L)

Day 4: Lima Evening Excursion to the Lima Magic Water Circuit + Dinner and Dance Show

Your day is free to explore on your own, do some shopping, or just take it easy. In the evening, your driver will pick you up and take you to visit the Magic Water Circuit in Lima’s Reserve Park, a collection of more than a dozen water fountains listed in the Guinness Book of Records as the largest municipal fountain complex in the world.

The fountains include a spectacular laser light and music show projected onto the cascading wall of water. Nearby, a towering central fountain shoots more than 260 feet (80 meters) into the air. There is also a tunnel of water you can walk through and a labyrinth of spouts for children who can’t resist a soaking.

From the park, you are taken to one of Lima’s peña night clubs, where you can enjoy a delicious meal and watch a floor show of traditional Peruvian dances and music. Transport back to your hotel. (B/D)

Day 5: Lima / Cusco City Tour and Nearby Ruins

You will head early to the airport to fly to Cusco, where you will be taken to your hotel. It’s recommended that you take it easy and rest for the remainder of the morning for easier acclimatization in the two-mile-high Inca capital city.

In the afternoon, you will explore the city of Cusco and witness the vestiges of Inca culture and the vast changes that took place after the Spanish Conquest.

You will visit the main plaza, the Cathedral, and the Temple of the Sun or Koricancha. We then tour the megalithic ruins on the outskirts of the city, stopping at the Inca ritual site of Quenqo, the water temple of Tambomachay, the customs house of Puca Pucara and the impressive temple fortress of Sacsayhuaman, built strategically above the city of Cusco.

It’s famous for its enormous stone blocks, fitted with incredible precision to form the three-tiered zig-zagging external walls of the complex. Some of the stones stand 9 meters high and weigh more than 350 tons. We then return you to your hotel. (B)

Day 6: Cusco Peruvian Cooking Class

After breakfast in your hotel, you have the morning free.

In the afternoon, you will take part in an amazing culinary experience: an eight-step cooking course, designed by Cusco chef and restaurateur Erick Paz, which will open your senses and give you a fuller appreciation of Peruvian gastronomy and culture.

Throughout the class, you will be tempted with delicious creations from the kitchens of Erick’s Marcelo Batata Restaurant and Uchu Peruvian Steakhouse. You will receive a crash course in Peruvian ingredients, putting native products into a cultural context: chocolate, ají pepper, herbs, spices, and coffee aromas.

You will explore the texture of different Andean grains such as quinoa, kiwicha, and canihua, and be introduced to different types of corn, beans, tomatoes, and myriad varieties of potatoes.

You will sample different and exotic native fruits, such as chirimoya, lucuma, pepino, aguaymanto, tumbo, camu camu, and many more.

Then it’s into the kitchen. First, you will learn to prepare the versatile classic Peruvian appetizer, chicken causa. You will chop, dice, mince and slice the ingredients to prepare the main dish, alpaca saltada.

There will be, of course, the very important Pisco break to whet your appetite. You will sample different piscos from several of Peru’s finest bodegas along the Peruvian coast. You will learn how Pisco is produced, and all participants will help to prepare Pisco Sours and Chilcano cocktails.

Heading back into the kitchen, you will then prepare the Alpaca Saltada! The chef will prepare the first dish as a demonstration, and each participant will follow with preparation of their own dishes. Finally, you will plate the dish with rice, corn, and fried potatoes and sit down for a shared meal. (B/L)

Day 7: Cusco / Sacred Valley of the Incas

In the morning after an early breakfast, you set out with your private guide and driver on a tour of the Sacred Valley of the Incas, along the Urubamba River, to visit the famous Andean market town of Pisac.

Following lunch at a local restaurant, you head to Ollantaytambo, one of the longest continually inhabited towns in the Americas. It’s also the site of the Inca temple fortress of the same name, built by the Ninth Inca Pachacutec.

The terraced ruins are located at the confluence of two valleys, which made the temple fortress a natural defensive stronghold against possible invasion from the lower jungles. The central part of the ruins is the Intihuatana group of temples, carved monoliths and rock outcropping with magnificent Inca masonry. You will spend the night in a hotel in Ollantaytambo. (B/L)

Day 8: Ollantaytambo – Aguas Calientes

After breakfast, you head to the Ollantaytambo train station to Machu Picchu, the “Lost City of the Inca.” We arrive at the town of Aguas Calientes, and take a bus for about 30 minutes, ascending the narrow switchback “Hiram Bingham Highway” to reach the iconic Inca citadel. The excursion includes a private tour of the complex, visiting the main plaza, the Circular Tower, the sacred Intihuatana sundial, the royal quarters, and the Temple of the Three Windows. We have lunch in a restaurant in Aguas Calientes, before you settle in at your selected hotel. (B/L)

Day 9: Aguas Calientes – Cusco

After enjoying a buffet breakfast, return to the ruins to explore on your own, in relative quiet before other visitors arrive on the train from Cusco. Taking the earliest bus up from the town will let you witness one of the world’s most spectacular, iconic sunrises over the Inca ruins.

In the afternoon, you will board the train for the return to Cusco and your hotel. (B)

Day 10: Cusco – Lima: End of the Peruvian food tour

Following breakfast, you are picked up and taken to the airport for your journey back to Lima and your international flight home. Finish your culinary vacations. (B)

(B) Breakfast, (L) Lunch, (D) Dinner