Most people arrive in Cusco with Machu Picchu booked and three or four days spare.
This is what to do with those days, written by the people who drive them. Every number below is what actually happens, including the ones that make a trip sound less appealing.
Why Machu Picchu is not on this list
Because you have already read about it, and because it is not really a day trip.
It is a permit, a train, a bus, and usually a night in Aguas Calientes. We run it and we are glad to. It just belongs in a different conversation from the one below. If that is what you are after, our Machu Picchu day trip page covers it.
Everything here is a genuine leave at dawn, back for dinner day out of Cusco.
The five, side by side
| Highest point | Time on foot | Entrance | The catch | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Waqrapukara | 4,300 m | 90 min each way | None | Four hours of driving each way |
| Pallay Punchu | 4,700 m | 45 min | S/ 10 | Longest day of the five |
| Qeswachaka | Lowest of the five | Under an hour | S/ 20 | Eight hours driving for one bridge |
| Ausangate 7 Lakes | around 4,700 m | 3 to 3.5 hours | S/ 20 | The hardest day we run |
| Quelccaya | Above 5,000 m | Short | Ask us | Eleven hours driving for ninety minutes |
Read that last column first. It is the part most listings leave out, and it is what actually decides whether you enjoy the day.
Waqrapukara, if you want ruins without a crowd
A stone complex built into a pair of rock horns above the Apurimac canyon, at 4,300 metres.
Ninety minutes on foot each way, no technical ground, and at the moment no entrance ticket at all. On most days you will share the ridge with a handful of people rather than a queue.
Book it if you want an Inca site you can walk around without being moved along.
Do not book it if four hours of driving each way for one site sounds thin. That is a reasonable position and plenty of people hold it.
Waqrapukara tour · How hard is it
Pallay Punchu, if you want three places in one day
A ridge of striped rock fins at 4,700 metres, reached by a walk of about forty five minutes.
The reason to choose this one is not the mountain. It is that the same day includes Raqchi, where the largest roofed building the Inca ever raised still stands as a twelve metre adobe wall with a hundred stone storehouses behind it, and Checacupe, where three bridges from three centuries cross the same river within a few metres of each other.
Most rainbow mountain trips visit one mountain. This visits three places.
Book it if you want the most in a single day, or you want a rainbow mountain without the Vinicunca crowd.
Do not book it if thirteen and a half hours is more than you want to sit through.
Qeswachaka, if you want something almost nobody sees
The last Inca rope bridge whose communities never stopped rebuilding it. Thirty metres of braided grass across the Apurimac, with no metal in it, and you can walk across.
Barely any walking. Four hours each way. Four lagoons on the way home that almost no listing mentions.
Book it if living tradition interests you more than ruins, and you would rather stand on history than look at it.
Do not book it if you need a full day of stops or you want dramatic mountain scenery.
Qeswachaka tour · How the bridge works
Ausangate 7 Lakes, if you actually want to walk
Seven glacial lagoons on the flank of the highest mountain in the Cusco region, then thermal pools at 4,300 metres with the glacier in front of you.
Three to three and a half hours on foot, on uneven ground, none of it below 4,300 metres. That is roughly double any other day trip on this list.
Book it if you walk regularly, you have had two full days in Cusco, and getting into hot water afterwards sounds like the point.
Do not book it if you landed this week. This is the one where that decision shows.
Quelccaya, if the ratio does not put you off
The largest tropical ice cap on Earth, above 5,000 metres, and one of the most studied pieces of ice anywhere. The cores drilled here produced the first year by year climate record from a tropical glacier.
It also costs about eleven hours in a vehicle to spend ninety minutes in front of it.
We put that ratio on the tour page rather than hiding it, because it is the whole decision. Some people read it and stop, which is the correct response for them. Others understand what it takes to reach the largest tropical ice cap in the world, and that almost nobody does.
Book it if the second reaction is yours.
Do not book it if it is the first. There is no shame in it.
Quelccaya day tour · What the ice records
How to choose in one line
Least effort: Qeswachaka. Most packed into one day: Pallay Punchu. Fewest people: Waqrapukara. A real walk, and hot water at the end: Ausangate 7 Lakes. Something almost nobody has done: Quelccaya.
The rule that applies to all five
Give Cusco two full days before you do any of them, and three before Ausangate.
Cusco sits at 3,400 metres and every trip on this list goes higher. The most common way to ruin one of these days is to book it for the morning after a flight lands. We would rather move your date than watch that happen, and there is no charge for it.
If you are not sure, tell us when you arrive and what you have already done, and we will say plainly which of these to book and which to leave.
The short version
Five real day trips, all of them south or east of Cusco, all of them back in the city for dinner.
Qeswachaka asks the least of you. Ausangate asks the most. Pallay Punchu gives you the most stops. Waqrapukara gives you the fewest people. Quelccaya gives you something you will not meet anyone else who has done.
None of them are Machu Picchu. That is the point.