Boats to the Ballestas islands of sea lions and penguins, and the desert reserve next door.
The adobe city of Chan Chan, the Huacas of the Sun and Moon and the surf at Huanchaco.
The port on Lake Titicaca, the floating Uros islands and a homestay on Amantani.
The trekking capital of the Cordillera Blanca: Laguna 69, the Santa Cruz trek and Huascaran.
Join Peru's national ritual: charcoal-spit pollo a la brasa, fries, and the great ají sauce debate
Eat causa — chilled towers of lime-and-chilli mashed potato, proof Peru does things with potatoes nobody else imagined
Watch the sun rise along the Thirteen Towers of Chankillo, a 2,300-year-old solar calendar in the desert
Descend from cloud forest to jungle floor in Manú, the most biodiverse protected area on the planet
Eat picarones hot from the street fryer — squash-and-sweet-potato rings drowned in raw-cane syrup
Read Conversation in the Cathedral, Mario Vargas Llosa's great novel of power, corruption and Lima
Eat anticuchos at dusk — smoky beef-heart skewers from a street grill, Afro-Peruvian soul food
Learn enough Runasimi — the language of the Incas — to greet a Cusco market vendor properly
Drink an Inca Kola — the bubblegum-gold soda that beat Coca-Cola on its own turf
Eat ají de gallina — shredded chicken drowned in velvet yellow-chilli cream, Lima comfort food since colonial days
Visit Marcahuasi, a 4,000 m plateau of giant stone faces that stare back
Drink chicha morada, the violet corn nectar Peruvians pour with everything — and meet its wild fermented ancestor
Meet the thousand-year-old dead of Chauchilla, sitting in their open desert graves with hair and textiles intact
Hike to Millpu, a staircase of a hundred turquoise travertine pools hidden in an Ayacucho gorge
Walk the ghost settlement of Santa Bárbara, the colonial mercury mine they called 'the mine of death'
Eat lomo saltado, the wok-flamed beef stir-fry where Canton met the Andes — fries in the dish, rice on the side
Walk original paving of the Qhapaq Ñan, the 30,000 km Inca road web that once ran six countries
Twice as deep as the Grand Canyon, with condors riding the thermals past the Cruz del Condor viewpoint each morning.
Roam Huascarán National Park, the highest tropical mountain range on Earth — 660 glaciers under Peru's tallest peak
Stand under the chullpas of Sillustani — pre-Inca burial towers built finer than the Incas managed
Earn the impossible turquoise of Laguna 69, a glacial lake under the white walls of the Cordillera Blanca
Eat ceviche where it was invented — raw fish cured in minutes by lime, chilli and leche de tigre
Explore Kuélap, the walled cloud-fortress of the Chachapoya — older than Machu Picchu and nearly empty
Hike through cloud forest to Gocta, a 771-metre double waterfall the wider world only learned of in 2005
Cross a 4,630 m pass beneath Salkantay's glaciers on the wilder, permit-free trail to Machu Picchu
Watch Andean condors ride the morning thermals out of Colca Canyon, twice as deep as the Grand Canyon
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