Cusco Is Not Just a Base for Machu Picchu
Most people treat Cusco as a stop on the way to Machu Picchu—a place to land, adjust to the altitude, sleep for a night or two, and leave again for the main event.
But after visiting twice, once in 2019 and again in 2025, Cusco has become one of the most memorable destinations in Peru for me entirely on its own.
Machu Picchu deserves every bit of its reputation, but when I think back on both trips, so much of what I remember happened in Cusco itself: evenings in Plaza de Armas, restaurants after long excursion days, slow walks through steep stone streets, and a city that quietly forces you to adjust your pace.
By my second trip, I already knew Cusco wasn’t just the backdrop to everything else we had planned. I intentionally gave us more time in the city because I wanted room for Cusco itself, not just the excursions that started there. And somehow, by the end of that trip, it still didn’t feel like enough.
That’s what changed the way I think about planning Cusco. The first trip taught me how the city works as a base for exploring the region. The second made me realize how much I wanted to experience the city when we weren’t rushing off somewhere else.
Cusco Forces You to Slow Down
Unless you’re accustomed to spending time at 11,000 feet above sea level, Cusco’s altitude will humble you.
The strange thing about altitude is that you don’t really know how much you’ll feel it until you’re there. Some travelers struggle; others barely notice it. Even from one trip to another, your experience isn’t necessarily guaranteed to be the same.
That’s one reason you’ll notice that organized Cusco itineraries tend to build up to the higher-altitude excursions rather than throwing you into the most demanding day immediately after you land.
On our second trip, for example, we added Rainbow Mountain, which reaches roughly 17,000 feet above sea level. Our tour agency scheduled it for our last full excursion day, after we’d already spent several days in and around Cusco. Similarly, a Sacred Valley day will often come before Machu Picchu rather than sending you straight from the airport into the biggest experience of the trip.
And you probably won’t find many people recommending an ambitious itinerary for your arrival day. At most, that’s a good time for something short and relatively easy—like the bus tour my family did on our first visit—or simply time to settle in and explore at your own pace.
I’ve now arrived in Cusco twice, and both times I approached that first day similarly. Before leaving Lima, I took the altitude medication I’d purchased at a pharmacy, had coca tea after arriving in Cusco, and kept the rest of the day intentionally light. Thankfully, on both trips, any effects I noticed were mild and didn’t last much more than an hour.
That’s my experience, not a guarantee of how anyone else’s body will react. The useful planning lesson is to leave yourself room to find out.
Don’t make your arrival day the day your entire itinerary depends on going perfectly. Don’t schedule your highest-altitude excursion immediately. And don’t assume an empty afternoon is wasted time just because you feel fine when you land.
Cusco’s hills and steep streets will give you plenty to do anyway. Walking uphill suddenly feels like a workout. Stairs require more effort than they should. Carrying luggage feels unnecessarily ambitious.
Cusco decides your pace for you very quickly. Building your itinerary around that reality makes a lot more sense than arriving with a packed schedule and hoping your body cooperates.
Make Time for Cusco Without an Itinerary
One of the best parts about giving yourself more time in Cusco is that you don’t necessarily need another tour to fill it.
Plaza de Armas will probably become the center of your trip whether you plan for it or not. We passed through constantly—for meals, before and after tours, or simply because we ended up there again while wandering through the historic center.
From there, you can walk uphill into San Blas, one of my favorite areas to explore without much of an agenda. The neighborhood is filled with narrow streets, small shops, cafés, galleries, and viewpoints over the city. Just remember that “walk uphill” takes on an entirely different meaning at Cusco’s altitude.
You can also spend time around San Pedro Market, explore the streets surrounding the historic center, visit some of the churches and museums, or simply find somewhere overlooking the plaza and give yourself permission to sit there for a while.
That’s the kind of Cusco time I wish we’d built in even more of. Not another 5 a.m. pickup. Not another full-day itinerary. Just a few hours when the city itself was the plan.
The Rhythm of Cusco Evenings
After long excursion days, we would return to our Airbnb completely exhausted and almost always say some version of the same thing:
“Maybe we’ll just stay in tonight.”
We almost never did.
We’d freshen up, drop everything we’d been carrying all day, and within an hour someone would start talking about dinner. Usually it began with a craving—ceviche, lomo saltado, Nikkei cuisine, alpaca, trucha—and before long, someone had picked a restaurant and we were heading back toward the historic center.
We rarely repeated places. Some nights we stayed around Plaza de Armas; other nights we wandered a few streets farther looking for somewhere new. Dinner became less about having another thing on the itinerary and more about having an excuse to be back out in Cusco.
And those evenings are some of the memories I associate most strongly with both trips. Walking through Plaza de Armas after dinner. Hearing music somewhere in the square. Watching the buildings light up as the temperature dropped and the crowds thinned.
There was no excursion to catch, no guide waiting for us, and nowhere we particularly needed to be. We could finally just be in Cusco.
Don’t Overlook Cusco’s City Tours
Most travelers arrive in Cusco focused on the excursions that take them somewhere else: Machu Picchu, the Sacred Valley, Rainbow Mountain. But I wouldn’t overlook the tours that actually keep you in and around Cusco.
I’ve done a different city tour on each of my two trips, and I’d recommend both for very different reasons.
On my first trip, when I was traveling with my family, we chose a bus tour that turned out to be a perfect introduction to the city. You’re mostly sightseeing from the bus rather than constantly getting out to explore, which may not sound particularly exciting, but in Cusco, especially during those first days at altitude, that’s actually part of the appeal.
We could continue acclimating without spending the day sitting in our hotel. We were still seeing different parts of Cusco, learning about the city, and taking in the scenery, just without asking our bodies to do quite so much while they were adjusting.
As the tour continued, the bus climbed higher into the hills surrounding Cusco. The sun began to set, the city stretched out below us, and then we slowly made our way back down toward the historic center. The view over Plaza de Armas on that drive back remains one of my favorite views of Cusco from either trip.
When I returned in 2025, I tried the more traditional city tour instead. This one gets you out exploring, taking you beyond the historic center to archaeological sites surrounding Cusco, including Sacsayhuamán, Qenqo, Puka Pukara, and Tambomachay.
If you have time, I wouldn’t necessarily choose one over the other. The traditional tour gave me a much closer look at the history surrounding Cusco, while that first bus tour gave my family exactly what we needed when we’d just arrived: a way to start experiencing the city without immediately exhausting ourselves.
And that became something of a theme on both trips. Even when Cusco gave us every excuse to take it easy, we rarely seemed to want to stay in for long.
There’s Always More to Do Around Cusco
Even after two trips to Cusco, I still feel like I’ve barely made a dent in everything there is to do in the surrounding area.
Machu Picchu, the Sacred Valley, and Rainbow Mountain tend to dominate first-time itineraries—and understandably so. But walk around Cusco for a few minutes and you’ll pass local travel agencies advertising excursion after excursion to places you may not have even considered while planning from home.
That’s how the FOMO started for us.
By the end of both trips, instead of feeling like we’d checked Cusco off the list, we kept noticing everything we hadn’t done. Humantay Lake is still high on mine, with its turquoise water surrounded by mountains. So are the Maras Salt Mines, with the thousands of terraced salt pools built into the hillside.
And that’s before getting into all the smaller archaeological sites, villages, hikes, and day trips that rarely make it onto a first Peru itinerary.
The problem, of course, is that adding more excursions isn’t necessarily the answer. Every day trip you add is also another day you’re not actually spending in Cusco.
That’s the part I didn’t fully appreciate on my first visit—and even after deliberately giving us more Cusco time on my second, I still left feeling like I wanted more.
Why I Think Cusco Deserves More Time
Looking back at both trips, I think one of the easiest mistakes to make when planning Cusco is counting the days you need for the excursions and assuming whatever is left over will be enough for the city.
Machu Picchu takes a day. The Sacred Valley takes a day. Rainbow Mountain takes a day. Add Humantay Lake or another excursion and suddenly you’ve built a week in Cusco without actually leaving yourself much time for Cusco.
That’s essentially what happened on my first trip. By the second, I knew better. I deliberately planned more time in the city because I already knew I wanted those slower afternoons, dinners, walks through Plaza de Armas, and hours when we didn’t have somewhere else to be.
And somehow, it still didn’t feel like enough.
That’s why I don’t think the answer is necessarily adding another day so you can squeeze in another tour. I’d add the day so you don’t have to squeeze anything into it.
Give yourself time to acclimate when you arrive. Give yourself an afternoon to wander through San Blas without watching the clock. Leave room to sit somewhere overlooking the plaza, go back to a restaurant you noticed the night before, or decide at the last minute that you’re too tired to do much of anything.
Those weren’t the headline moments of either trip, but they’re some of the moments I remember most clearly.
Cusco has plenty to keep you busy. The harder part is giving yourself enough time that you don’t have to be busy for all of it.
Final Thoughts
The first trip taught me how Cusco works logistically. The second taught me what Cusco feels like.
And those are very different things.
My first visit was with my parents, my sister, and cousins we rarely get to travel with. Years later, I returned with one of my closest friends and got to watch her fall in love with a place I had already fallen in love with on that first trip.
Those two trips looked completely different, but somehow Cusco worked for both of them.
Maybe that’s part of why the city has become so meaningful to me. I don’t just associate it with Machu Picchu or any one excursion. I think about the people I was there with, the dinners after long days, the walks through the plaza, and all those ordinary hours that somehow became part of what I remember most.
Some destinations are incredible once. Others become places you know you’ll return to again and again.
Cusco has become one of those places for me.
Continue Exploring Cusco
If you’re planning your own trip to Cusco or Machu Picchu, these posts dig deeper into two very different parts of my experience:
The Day Cusco Gave Us Back Time — how a delayed flight unexpectedly gave us one final slow day in Cusco, and why that unplanned time became one of my favorite memories from the trip.
I’m So Glad We Let a Local Agency Handle Machu Picchu — what I learned from planning Machu Picchu twice, why I still chose a local Cusco agency the second time, and what actually goes into coordinating the trip.