Peru

If you want to journey to a completely different culture and landscape, consider Peru! A beautiful country with a huge diversity in landscapes, we offer you unique adventures to explore the people and places of a beautiful region of mountains, valleys, and archeological wonders. Home of the infamous Inca people, the Cuzco region is chock full of mind-boggling remnants of the past.

The Inca left the famous Machu Picchu as well as thousands of intricately designed and amazingly intact temples, burial grounds, cities, and farming complexes, all complete with a network of roads and trails so well-built that these same networks are still used today. You really do have to see these wonders to believe them, set within a landscape of huge proportions in the gorgeous Andes Mountains of Peru.

ACTIVITIES

The options are so abundant that it will be hard to decide! We take you off the beaten trail to visit pristine locations and gorgeous ruins found by our experienced leaders who have lived and worked in Peru leading outdoor adventures and volunteering in local communities.

Of course we'll go to Machu Picchu too, but not the way the other 4,000+ people visit this attraction every day. We'll walk down a gorgeous valley for a three-day backpacking trip - taking a dip in some little-known hot springs and visiting other Incan ruins with amazing views of Machu Picchu. Then we arrive to these famous ruins, taking you to areas few people visit, and then we stay late to explore after the crowds have already left. Watch the sunset and ponder the beauty of this place, the ingenuity of the people who built it, and our own amazingly good fortune to be here.

Besides this Machu Picchu adventure, we'll take you on day hikes through ruins high in the mountains, down in the valleys, and in the center of Cuzco.

You can easily add a service component onto this journey, bringing toys and school supplies from the USA to a small village, where you have the chance to play soccer and learn a little Spanish with some new friends! You can even meet an indigenous Quechua spiritual leader and get to observe a special ceremony.