April 2010
The "Kingdom of the Sun", encapsulates the essence of America, the "New World", in geography as well as in the mix of native Indian and European cultures. A country of antique cultures, where the traditional way of life of the Indians still has validity; great scenic contrasts, perhaps the greatest treasure of the Americas. The Spanish conquistadors came to Peru in a ruthless search of gold, although they never found their most elusive prize of all, the "Lost City of the Incas". Besides the impressive Inca ruins close to Cuzco and the "lost city" Machu Picchu, Peru is also home of the famous "Nazca lines", the Chulpa-grave buildings of the Colla at Lake Titicaca. With its stunning variety of landscapes Peru is also one of the most spectacular countries on earth. Of 103 possible ecological zones on earth 83 are represented only in Peru.
Itinerary
Day 01 l Toronto - Lima Wednesday, April 14th
Departure from Toronto to Lima on Air Canada non –stop.
Arrival in Lima, welcome by our local representative and transfer to the hotel.
Accommodation: HOTEL CASA ANDINA CENTRO 3* - STANDARD ROOM, Breakfast
Day 02 l Lima Thursday, April 15th
Breakfast at the hotel. This morning you will enjoy a half-day City Tour of Lima Colonial and Modern. Pass by Lima’s principal attractions: Plaza de Armas, Government Palace, and Cathedral. Later will arrive to the modern and residential district of San Isidro where we will find numerous parks, including the Olivar San Isidro set in an olive grove. Continue to the “garden districts” of Lima, characterized by their green areas and lively commerce. Here are the best restaurants, hotels and entertainment centres of Lima. While San Isidro maintains of the solemnity of the luxurious suburb it used to be, Miraflores is the city’s modern district, brimming with shops, restaurants, cafes, wide avenues and an active nightlife. You will visit the Central Park of Miraflores, which has a small amphitheatre and a circular open area for the exhibition of Peruvian handicraft. Also you will visit the Love Park; this tiny park has a small amphitheatre and a belvedere facing the ocean.
Accommodation: HOTEL CASA ANDINA CENTRO 3* - STANDARD ROOM, Breakfast
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The Spanish conquistador Francisco Pizzaro founded Lima in 1535."
Here you will find the broken glamour of the colony as well as the boiling vitality of an oriental bazaar. You have melancholic cloud covered winters and light warm summers, and next to extensive slums you will see beautiful old buildings in quiet, elegant corners, where the evening air smells of jasmine.
In Lima you will find the decadent glamour of the colonial time as well as the boiling diversity that reminds of an oriental bazaar.
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Day 03 | Lima – Cuzco Friday, April 16th
Breakfast. Transfer to the airport for your flight to Cuzco.
Cuzco is a city living in the past as well as in the present. Almost half a millennium after the Spaniards arrived; Cuzco is a meeting point for two cultures. The Indian traders on the markets speak Spanish with the tourists and Quechua among themselves. The Incas called their most important city Cuzco, the navel of the world, as they held the navel for the centre of life.
Arrival in Cuzco, welcome by our local representative and transfer to the hotel.
Pick up at the hotel for an afternoon city tour. We show you the centre of the Inca Empire, the Plaza de Armas. There you will find the cathedral built on the ruins of the Inca Palace. The cathedral borders on other churches on both sides. The next stop will be the old town with its magnificent restored colonial buildings, of which some are being used as hotels. You will also visit Sacsayhuaman, a ruin located approximately 3 km above Cuzco. Sacsayhuaman also offers a fabulous view of the city. You will then shortly stop in Tambo Machay, the bath of the Inca, Kenko, the giant rock whose niches and gaps were carved in a strange way, and Puca Pucara, the ruin of a small fort.
Return to the hotel. Rest of the day at leisure.
Accommodation: HOTEL CASA ANDINA PLAZA 3* - STANDARD ROOM, Breakfast
Day 04 l Cuzco – Machu Picchu - Cuzco Saturday, April 17th
Buffet breakfast.
Today you will enjoy a full day excursion to the ruins of Machu Picchu.
The bus takes you to the train station, from there you travel up the steep hills of Cuzco and down into the Urubamba valley, you then continue in small buses up the steep roads to the ruins of the city that was never discovered by the Spaniards and only in 1911 by accident discovered by Hiram Bingham. The beauty of its location and the genius construction make Machu Picchu the most precious jewel of all Inca settlements.
Train Ticket, Shuttle Bus and Entrance fee to the ruins are included. Lunch included at Sanctuary Lodge restaurant.
In the afternoon, return to Cuzco by train.
Accommodation: HOTEL CASA ANDINA PLAZA 3*- STANDARD ROOM, Breakfast/Lunch
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Machu Picchu is a mystical place, a monument to divinity, where people can feel that
they are a creation of God. The high sense of spirituality that inhabits this place seems to transport its visitors to a place where everything "in an unimaginable way" is possible.
It is a place where strange forces of nature allow the individuals to reach an incomparable cosmic state, a state that can only be experimented in Machu Picchu. It is one of the most popular archaeological sites of the world, and therefore, the most visited attraction in Peru.
The Citadel of Machu Picchu (in Quechua language " Old Mountain") is known throughout the world for its amazing ruins and its unusual location on a high mountain overlooking the mighty currents of the Urubamba River. Even today nobody has been able to solve the mystery how the builders and designers managed to transport the huge blocks of limestone to the top of the mountain required for the construction of the city.
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Day 05 l Cuzco – Sacred Valley – Urubamba - Cuzco Sunday, April 18th
Breakfast. Today enjoy a full day tour to the Sacred Valley of the Incas, called this way to the end of the extensive valley of Urubamba, near Cuzco where the agricultural cattlemen and beautiful towns were concentrated since Inca times. Here will take the opportunity to visit the Indian Market of Pisac, where every Tuesday, Thursday and Sunday a crafts fair is carried out in the Main Square, outstanding beautiful textile crafts, sweaters, ponchos, bags, etc. and the crafts made out of ceramic with reproductions of Inca archaeological pieces, the queros (ceremonial glasses), necklaces, etc.
Lunch will be served at restaurant Tunupa Valley.
After lunch, visit the town of Ollantaytambo and its great fortress. Legend counts that Ollántay (the titan of the Andes) of plebeian origin, loved the princess Cusi Coyllor (cheerful star) the Inca king's daughter Pachacútec, who was in disagreement with this love. Pachacútec sent the princess to a house of Virgins; Ollántay tried to abduct her, without getting her, being able to escape. From the fortress that Ollántay controlled he rebelled against Pachacútec, and after bloody battles was defeated, but the generosity of Pachacútec forgave the life of Ollántay.
Return to the hotel in Cuzco
Accommodation: HOTEL CASA ANDINA PLAZA 3* - STANDARD ROOM, Breakfast/Lunch
Day 06 l Cuzco - Puno Monday, April 19th
Breakfast. Transfer to the train station to take the Orient Express train to Puno (11 hours ride including lunch and tea).
Arrival in Puno, meeting with your local guide and transfer to the hotel.
Accommodation: HOTEL CASA ANDINA PRIVATE COLLECTION 4* - STANDARD ROOM, Breakfast/Lunch
Puno. - Rich in archaeological remains and historic monuments, since there once were three different civilizations on the banks of Lake Titicaca: Aymara, Quechua and Spanish, giving origin to a mestizo race that is shown by their artistic and cultural expression and specially their unequalled folklore which has made Puno the Folklore Capital of Peru.
Day 07 | Puno Tuesday, April 20th
Breakfast at the hotel. Today enjoy a half day tour to the floating islands of the Uros. The Uros, one of the most primitive pre-Inca people of Peru. This ethnos lived in a perfect symbiosis with the Titicaca and they lived exclusively in artificial islands that they knitted on the not very deep waters of the lake. As pure race Uro was extinguished almost 50 years ago, today their descendants are the miscegenation Uro Aymara; they speak the Aymara, and conserve many of their ancestral customs.
Visit Sillustani. Sillustani, an archaeological site, 34 km from the City of Puno. The necropolis, which is one of the largest in America, and one of the most impressive in the world, and borders the beautiful Umayo Lake.
Accommodation: HOTEL CASA ANDINA PRIVATE COLLECTION 4* - STANDARD ROOM, Breakfast
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Lake Titicaca - is the highest navigable lake on earth and center of a region, where thousands of farmers nourish themselves by fishing in the ice cold water, cultivate potatoes at its stony shores and breed llamas in the height. Lake Titicaca, once considered holy water, today forms the natural border between Bolivia and Peru.
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Day 08 | Puno – Lima Wednesday, April 21st
Breakfast at the hotel. Transfer to the Juliaca airport for your flight back to Lima.
Arrival in Lima and transfer to the hotel.
Accommodation: HOTEL CASA ANDINA CENTRO 3* - STANDARD ROOM, Breakfast
Day 09 l Lima – Ica Thursday, April 22nd
Buffet breakfast. Transfer to the bus station for your bus ride to Ica. Upon arrival in Ica, welcome and transfer to your hotel. Afternoon drive to Nazca and over flight of the famous Nazca markings. The Nazca Lines are an enigma. No one has proof who built them or why. Since their discovery, the Nazca Lines have inspired fantastic explanations from ancient gods, a landing strip for returning aliens, a celestial calendar created by the ancient Nazca civilization -- putting the creation of the lines between 200 BC and 600 AD, used for rituals probably related to astronomy, to confirm the ayllus or clans who made up the population and to determine through ritual their economic functions held up by reciprocity and redistribution, or a map of underground water supplies.
There are also huge geoglyphs in Egypt, Malta, United States (Mississippi and California), Chile, and Bolivia and in other countries. But the Nazca geoglyphs, because of their numbers, characteristics, dimensions and cultural continuity, as they were made and remade through out the whole pre-hispanic period, form the most impressive, as well as enigmatic, archaeological group.
Accommodation: HOTEL LAS DUNAS 3*- STANDARD ROOM, Breakfast
Day 10 l Ica – Paracas - Lima Friday, April 23rd
Breakfast. Morning drive to Paracas for an excursion to Paracas Island to admire the interesting local wildlife. The abundance of marine fauna - birds, fish and sea mammals - found in the Reserve attracts visitors and ecologists who are amazed by the profusion of sea life. Peculiar rocky formations and geological stratus have made them the object of many studies of origin of the Planet. In the ocean floor, on a straight line from the Paracas peninsula another wonder has been found, the Peruvian marine fault, formed millions of year ago when the coastal mountain range fell into the ocean. Return to the hotel.
Check- out at 400pm and transfer to back to Lima.
Arrival in Lima and farewell dinner at Rosa Nautica restaurant.
After dinner transfer to the airport for your return flight, Breakfast/Dinner
Suggested hotels or similar:
TOUR INCLUDES:
Direct Flights with Air Canada to Lima from Toronto and:
• Domestic airfare (Lima/ Cuzco /Juliaca / Lima) Overflight of Nazca Markings
• 9 nights accommodation at tourist class hotel with continental breakfast
• Private transfers and tours as per the itinerary with English speaking guide
including the Orient Express to Puno
• Meals as per the itinerary – fixed menu without drinks (3 lunches + 1 dinner)
• Entrance fees to all sites included
• Porterage (1 piece per passenger)
• Assistance by our local representative
• Hotel and service charges
NOT INCLUDED:
• Airport taxes and fuel surcharge
• Local departure airport taxes
(US $6.5 per passenger for each local airport & US $31.00 for the international airport)
• Drinks during the meals
• Additional excursions and meals other than those indicated
• Telephone calls, laundry and other items of a personal nature
• Travel insurance
• Gratuities to drivers, guides and restaurant staff
• Items not mentioned above
Call or email us for complete pricing and more details
FOR FULL DETAILS AND INFORMATION
contact our
Travel experts at info@pgtravel.ca
or Call: 905 303 0200-------------Toll free: 1 877 586 8747
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