About Cusco Spirit

Cusco Spirit is an independent travel guide dedicated to Cusco and southern Peru — the Sacred Valley villages, Machu Picchu, Rainbow Mountain, the Andean high plateau around Lake Titicaca, and the gateway cities Lima and Arequipa. Our mission is to plan the trip you actually want, honestly: which Machu Picchu ticket tier is genuinely worth it, whether Huayna Picchu or Machu Picchu Mountain is the better climb, how altitude really affects you at 3,400 m, and which Rainbow Mountain tour leaves early enough to beat the crowds.

Our approach

Every guide, itinerary and recommendation on this site is built on first-hand research. We name real restaurants (Chicha, MAP Café, Marcelo Batata, Jack's Café), real markets (San Pedro, Pisac, Chinchero), real treks (Inca Trail, Salkantay, Ausangate, Lares), and we quote real prices in PEN and USD. We give honest assessments of tourist traps — the overpriced airport taxis, the over-hyped "panoramic train" upgrades, the guide tours that rush Machu Picchu in under an hour, the altitude-sickness tea sellers who oversell the remedy. If something is genuinely not worth it, we say so.

What we cover

Cusco Spirit covers Cusco and its surroundings in real depth: the historic centre (Qorikancha, Sacsayhuaman, San Blas neighbourhood, Plaza de Armas, San Pedro Market), the Sacred Valley (Pisac, Ollantaytambo, Chinchero, Maras, Moray, Urubamba), the Machu Picchu complex (site circuits, Huayna Picchu, Aguas Calientes logistics), the high Andean routes other guides treat as bullet points — Rainbow Mountain (Vinicunca), Palccoyo, Humantay Lake, Ausangate — and the wider southern Peru circuit: Puno, Lake Titicaca, Taquile Island, Arequipa, Colca Canyon, Lima and the Amazon at Puerto Maldonado.

How we earn revenue

Cusco Spirit is a free resource. We earn commissions when you book tours and activities through our affiliate links with GetYourGuide (partner ID LDXYA0P). This costs you nothing extra and helps us keep our guides free and up to date. We do not run our own tours, we have no financial relationship with hotels, restaurants or tour operators, and we have no Booking.com / Expedia / Airbnb affiliations. GetYourGuide commissions are our only revenue stream — which is why we can be honest about which treks, ruins and day trips are worth your money. Read our full affiliate disclosure.

Available in 8 languages

Cusco Spirit publishes in English (canonical), Spanish, French, German, Portuguese, Italian, Dutch and Polish. Spanish is a priority because a large share of visitors to Cusco and Peru are Spanish-speaking travellers from Latin America and Spain — and most English-language Peru blogs simply ignore them. Our Spanish content uses native Andean phrasing, not auto-translation.

Contact

Email: agencexen@gmail.com

Hosting

Infomaniak Network SA, Geneva, Switzerland