The citadel of Machu Picchu from the upper terraces, with Huayna Picchu behind. Photo: Diego Delso, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons.
In 2024, 604,251 Americans flew to Peru, 23 percent more than the year before, according to Peru's Ministry of Foreign Trade and Tourism. Almost all of them came for the same place. And a surprising number of them made the same handful of mistakes: the wrong ticket, the wrong month, the wrong first night.
The rules changed in 2024, and most of what you read online has not caught up. These are the seven questions travelers ask most before they go, with the answers that actually matter on the ground.
Machu Picchu sits at 2,430 meters, about 7,970 feet. That is the number most people look up. The number that matters is Cusco's: 3,399 meters, or about 11,150 feet. The city you fly into is almost a thousand meters higher than the ruins you came to see.
That is why so many travelers feel fine at the citadel and terrible on their first night in Cusco. The altitude problem is the city, not Machu Picchu.
The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention puts acclimatization at three to five days and recommends only light activity, and no alcohol, for the first 48 hours. In practice that means two things. Keep day one short, with an afternoon walk and an early night. Then get down to lower ground on day two. Ollantaytambo, in the Sacred Valley, sits at 2,792 meters, and Aguas Calientes, at the foot of Machu Picchu, at 2,040 meters.
Since June 1, 2024, you can no longer wander freely through Machu Picchu. The Ministry of Culture sells access by circuit and route, and the route printed on your ticket is the only one you are allowed to walk. It is checked at the gate. It cannot be changed once you are inside.
This is the part most travelers find out too late.
The upper circuits give you the famous postcard view from the terraces, with Huayna Picchu behind. The lower routes take you among the temples and houses, including the Temple of the Sun, which the panoramic routes never reach. Circuit 2, the classic route that includes both the viewpoint and the heart of the site, is the first to sell out.
Tickets are sold by time slot, tied to your passport number, and capped at five per purchase. The only official channel is the government portal, tuboleto.cultura.pe. Every other site is a reseller. For June, July and August, book months ahead, not weeks.
No road reaches Machu Picchu. You arrive by train, or you walk.
Two companies run the line, PeruRail and Inca Rail, and every class uses the same track and takes the same time. From Ollantaytambo, in the Sacred Valley, the ride is about an hour and twenty minutes. From Poroy, on the edge of Cusco, it is about three and a half hours. The train stops in Aguas Calientes, and a bus climbs the last stretch to the gate in about twenty-five minutes.
A blue PeruRail train running along a green slope above the rapids of the Urubamba River
*A PeruRail train above the Urubamba River. Photo: Sashimi-b, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons.*
What changes between classes is the glass and the service. PeruRail's Vistadome has windows that curve up into the roof, which pays off as the line drops from the Andes into cloud forest along the Urubamba River. Inca Rail's 360° adds an open-air observation car. PeruRail's Hiram Bingham, named after the Yale lecturer who made Machu Picchu famous in 1911, turns the trip into a meal on board with live music.
One rule catches everyone: luggage. The standard classes allow one small bag of around 8 kilograms. Leave the suitcase at your Cusco hotel.
If you would rather walk, the classic Inca Trail takes four days and the Salkantay trek five. Inca Trail permits sell out, and the trail closes every February for maintenance.
July has the best weather on paper. It also has the most people and the highest prices. The months that locals recommend are May and September: dry, clear in the mornings, and far quieter than the peak from June to August.
February is the one to avoid. It is the wettest month of the year, and the Inca Trail is closed.
The time of day matters as much as the month. Mist often fills the valley at dawn and lifts between eight and ten. Take the first entry slot and you are inside when it clears, before most of the day-trip groups arrive from Cusco. The daytime temperature barely moves all year, around 20°C, or 68°F.
This is the single change that improves the trip most, and the one most itineraries skip. Instead of going back to Cusco the same day, sleep in Aguas Calientes, the small town at the foot of the sanctuary.
Aguas Calientes, where the train tracks run down the main street. Photo: Diego Delso, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons.
The town is car free, warm and humid, with hot springs, cafés and the river running through it. Staying there solves three problems at once. You sleep more than 1,300 meters lower than Cusco. You can take the first bus up in the morning. And you are not racing a train back the same evening.
Most visitors see the Sacred Valley through a bus window. Given a full day, it is one of the best parts of the trip.
**Chinchero** is a hilltop town with Inca walls, a colonial church built on Inca foundations, and weaving cooperatives where Quechua women still dye wool with plants and insects.
**Moray** is a set of circular, stepped terraces sunk into the ground like an amphitheater. Researchers believe the Incas used the different levels, each with its own temperature, to study how crops grew at different altitudes.
The circular terraces of Moray. Photo: Sucram Yef, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons.
**The Maras salt pans** are more than four thousand small pools stepping down a hillside, fed by a single salty spring and still worked by local families.
The Maras salt pans, still worked by local families. Photo: Diego Delso, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons.
**Ollantaytambo** is often called the last living Inca town, still laid out on its original street grid, with a fortress of stone terraces rising above it. It is also where most trains to Machu Picchu leave from, so it is the natural place to end the day.
The terraces of the Ollantaytambo fortress. Photo: Steve Fung, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons.
Rainbow Mountain, also called Vinicunca, is the other photo everyone wants. Its viewpoint is at about 5,036 meters, roughly 16,500 feet, which is more than 1,600 meters above Cusco.
Vinicunca, or Rainbow Mountain. Photo: Steve Fung, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons.
On day two of a trip it sends many visitors back to bed. After a few days in the Sacred Valley and at Machu Picchu, it is a hard but very doable morning. Go between April and October. From November to March the mountain is often in cloud, and a two-hour climb can end in a view of gray.
Put all seven answers together and you get a five-day trip from Cusco, with no domestic flights in the middle and the altitude working for you instead of against you.
**Day 1, Cusco.** Arrive, rest, drink coca or muña tea. In the afternoon, a gentle guided walk to Qorikancha, the Inca Temple of the Sun, and the stone walls of Sacsayhuamán. Night in Cusco.
**Day 2, the Sacred Valley.** Chinchero, Moray and the Maras salt pans, lunch in the valley, Ollantaytambo, then the afternoon train. Night in Aguas Calientes, at 2,040 meters.
**Day 3, Machu Picchu.** First bus up, a guided visit of about two hours on your circuit, free time, then the train and road back to Cusco.
**Day 4, Rainbow Mountain.** A 4 a.m. start, three hours by road, and 90 minutes to two hours of climbing from about 4,600 meters to the viewpoint. Horses are available for the uphill section. Back in Cusco by early evening.
**Day 5, departure.**
The five-day route, day by day, by altitude. Infographic: Viajes Cusco Perú.
Short on time? Drop Rainbow Mountain and keep the first three days. Have more? Add a sixth day for Humantay Lake, a turquoise glacial lake below the snow peak of Salkantay.
Not every trip has room for five days, or even a second night. Machu Picchu in a single day from Cusco is possible, and thousands of people do it. It helps to know the shape of the day before you choose it.
It is long. Pickup is around 4 a.m., two hours by road to Ollantaytambo, the train down the Urubamba valley to Aguas Calientes, and the bus up to the gate. You get about two hours inside the citadel with a guide, then the same trip in reverse, back in Cusco around 10 p.m.
The one thing that decides the day is your entry time. It is fixed when the ticket is bought, and the train, the bus and the pickup are all built around it. In June, July and August the popular slots sell out weeks ahead, so booking late usually means the hottest part of the afternoon. And there is a small surprise in your favor: at 2,430 meters, Machu Picchu is lower than Cusco, so most people feel better at the ruins, not worse.
Viajes Cusco Perú, a licensed agency based in Cusco, runs a [Machu Picchu day trip from Cusco](https://viajescuscoperu.com/machu-picchu/from-cusco-full-day-train-ollantaytambo/) with hotel pickup, the round-trip train, the bus both ways, the entrance ticket and a licensed guide included, from US$317 per person. The same team runs the two-day version with a night in Aguas Calientes and the five-day route above, for travelers who can stay longer.
Machu Picchu was built by people who planned around the mountains, the sun and the seasons. The travelers who enjoy it most do the same.
*Sandru plans trips to the Peruvian Andes with the team at Viajes Cusco Perú.*
