The Choquequirao Trek

Why so few travellers have stood there

Choquequirao matches Machu Picchu in scale — by some accounts it is three times its surface area — and yet only the smallest fraction of travellers to Peru will ever stand at its terraces. There is a single reason: there is no train and no road. The site is reachable on foot only, via a brutal descent into the Apurímac canyon and an equally brutal climb out the other side, with cumulative elevation change in the order of three thousand metres each way. The site itself is roughly thirty per cent excavated, which means most of what you walk among is still encased in moss and root, exactly as the empire left it.

For whom we reserve this trek

Choquequirao is the trek we reserve for serious trekkers — those who have already done the Classic Inca Trail or the Salkantay, who understand what 1,500 metres of descent and reascent means in their legs, and who want to stand inside an Inca city without another visitor in the frame. It is, at this moment, the closest a traveller can come to the experience of Machu Picchu before global tourism arrived: an Inca site walked in near silence, on its own terms. We do not recommend it as a first trek in Peru. We recommend it as the one a serious traveller saves for the second visit.

• Approximately 64 km over four days, returning the same route on foot
• Cumulative elevation change of approximately 3,000 m each direction
• Access to a 30%-excavated Inca city with terraces, plazas and ceremonial sites
• Reserved for trekkers in strong condition with prior high-altitude experience