The Sacred Valley Deserves a Night, Not a Morning

Written in Cusco by the people who run the trips.

Look at almost any Peru itinerary, including the ones on this site, and you will find the Sacred Valley on a single line: Chinchero, Moray, Maras, Ollantaytambo, then the train. One morning, four stops, gone by lunch.

I have been running trips here for fifteen years and I think that line is the biggest mistake in the standard Peru itinerary. Here is what it costs you, and what I would do instead.

What the morning version gives you

You see four places from a vehicle, with twenty minutes at each. You eat at a buffet built for tour groups. You reach Ollantaytambo already tired, and then you board a train.

None of that is wrong. The sites are real and the guide is good. But you have passed through the one part of this region where nothing is asking anything of you, and you did it at the pace of everything else.

What a night changes

The Valley sits lower than Cusco. That single fact does more for your trip than any activity in it.

Cusco is a working city at altitude: traffic, horns, steep streets, crowds. Arriving from sea level and walking up through all of that on your first afternoon is how people lose two days. Sleep in the Valley instead and your body does the adjusting while you do nothing. By the time you reach Machu Picchu, and Cusco after it, you are a person on holiday rather than a person recovering.

That is the practical argument. The rest is just that it is the best place in the region to spend a day.

A free day in the Valley

The towns sit close together, there is almost no traffic, and a taxi costs very little. Ask at reception, go, come back when you feel like it. That is the whole logistics section.

• Pisac — the bakeries. Walk in, point at what looks good, eat it warm.
• Urubamba — fried trout, ice cream, coffee, a craft beer. Also the practical things: ATMs, exchange houses, a bank, handicrafts.
• Calca — quieter still, and the reason to go is lunch.

What I would order, and I am not neutral: pastel de choclo, the Andean corn pie. It is my favourite thing to eat in this country. White peaches if they are in season. Chancho al horno. Any soup put in front of you.

If you do not speak Spanish, you will be fine, and better off here than in the city. Use the translator on your phone. People in the Valley walk you to the place rather than point at it. And the restaurants are full of other travellers, so lunch often ends in a conversation with someone from somewhere else.

Where you would sleep

The Valley has the best hotels in this part of Peru, and it is not close. Among the ones we use in the Valley: Tambo del Inka in Urubamba, Inkaterra Hacienda Urubamba, Sol & Luna Lodge & Spa and Belmond Hotel Río Sagrado.

Two things about them that matter more than the star rating. Most are not buildings with corridors and lifts — they are small casitas spread across flat ground, with gardens between them. And the best spas in the region are inside them. You are not limited to your own, either: if you are staying at one and want the spa at another, we book it.

The season nobody sells you

Dry season is the easy one: clear days, everything open, everything outdoors.

Rainy season is the one left out of the brochures. The valley turns green, the Urubamba river rises, and it is when the Valley celebrates — carnival, the anniversary of each town, music and food in the squares. If your dates fall then, you are not getting a worse trip. You are getting a different one.

So how long?

Two nights is the number I would give you. One night is better than none and still fixes the altitude problem. Two gives you the free day, which is the part people remember.

And a warning: people come for two nights and start asking what a house here costs. Some of them stay. I am planning to move here myself one day.

How to get it