Lima · Cusco
& Machu Picchu

Lima opens the journey, sophisticated and pale above the Pacific, where the pre-Columbian past sits comfortably beside one of South America's great kitchens. The clifftop district of Miraflores looks out over the sea, the colonial Plaza Mayor holds its old dignity, and the museums lay out the country's deep, layered history like a kind of overture.

Inward and upward the road climbs to Cusco, the old Inca capital, where Spanish cathedrals were raised on the stones of temples and the thin air turns the light to crystal. Out in the Sacred Valley the salt terraces blaze white in the sun, markets spill their colour, and ruined fortresses cling to the hillsides, remnants of a people who shaped an empire from rock.

The journey culminates at Machu Picchu, the hidden citadel among the peaks, reached at last by rail and river. When the dawn mist lifts off the terraces and the sun finds the old stones, the whole lost city seems to wake and remember. It is one of history's great civilisations, held in one of its most extraordinary settings, and it asks for silence.