Top 10 Best Things to Do in Peru

Lake Titicaca is the world's highest navigable lake at 3,812 metres, offering a unique cultural immersion on 42 floating reed islands built by the Uros people since the 15th century. These islands, constructed from totora reeds that require monthly replenishment, support a community of about 1,200 Uros who sleep on reed mattresses and cook on reed stoves. A boat tour from Puno costs roughly $15 per person, which is 70% cheaper than a typical day trip to the Nazca Lines. The lake's depth reaches 281 metres, making it larger than any high-altitude water body in the Andes.

The Amazon River Cruise from Iquitos offers unparalleled access to the most biodiverse ecosystem on Earth, harboring 10% of all species within 700,000 square kilometers of Peruvian Amazon. Iquitos, reachable only by boat or plane, is the world's largest city inaccessible by road, serving as the gateway to riverboat cruises that navigate pink river dolphin habitat, piranha-fishing villages, and canopy walkways above primary jungle with 55 million years of continuous forest cover. This ecosystem, however, is disappearing at a rate of 270,000 hectares per year, making a visit particularly urgent.

Lima has solidified its status as the world's culinary capital, with Central ranked number 1 globally in 2023, Maido at number 7, and Astrid y Gaston consistently in the top 50, showcasing a fusion of Inca, Spanish, Japanese (Nikkei), Chinese (Chifa), African, and French influences. This vibrant food culture employs 30% of all Peruvian workers and rivals the culinary diversity of Tokyo and New York, offering unforgettable dining experiences.

Colca Canyon near Arequipa is one of the world's deepest canyons at 3,270 meters—twice as deep as the Grand Canyon—and home to the Andean condor, the largest bird by wingspan at up to 3.3 meters, which soars on thermal currents daily from dawn. The colonial villages of Chivay, Yanque, and Coporaque have been continuously inhabited since pre-Inca times, with irrigation terracing systems built over 1,000 years ago.

Huacachina Oasis is a natural desert lagoon surrounded by 100-meter sand dunes in the Ica Desert, one of the driest places on Earth, and the only such oasis in South America, inhabited since 1700 BC by the Paracas culture for ceremonial purposes. Its dunes now host sandboarding and dune buggy racing, making it the most visited inland attraction in Peru after Machu Picchu, with the green lagoon and Art Deco villas creating one of South America's most photographed landscapes.

Chan Chan Archaeological Zone is the world's largest adobe city and the largest pre-Columbian city in South America, covering 20 square kilometers with nine royal compounds that once housed 60,000 people. Erosion from El Niño flooding has damaged the site so severely that UNESCO inscribed it as a World Heritage Site in 1986 and immediately placed it on the Endangered list, with preservation efforts costing an estimated $3 million annually to protect against further degradation.

Rainbow Mountain, or Vinicunca, offers one of Peru's most striking landscapes, with mineral stripes of red, yellow, green, and pink revealed only after the glacier cap that once covered it melted in the early 2010s. Largely unknown to outsiders until mass tourism arrived in the mid-2010s, the mountain now draws large crowds daily in peak season, reflecting its rapid transformation from a hidden gem to a major tourist destination.