Top 7 Highlights of Southern Peru

Sixteen nights and around 1,900 miles across southern Peru entirely on tarmac, taking in the coast, the Andes and the Amazon. The hire is included, with upgrades available.

Arequipa opens it, UNESCO listed and built in white volcanic stone, then Puerto Inka on the Pacific and Nazca, with the Chauchilla cemetery and an optional flight over the lines, which is the only way they make sense. Huacachina follows, a desert oasis with dune buggies and sandboarding, and Paracas with a boat to the Ballestas islands, where Humboldt penguins, sea lions and boobies crowd the rocks.

Ayacucho comes next on the climb into the Andes to 3,400 metres, a city with a church for most weeks of the year, then Abancay on mountain roads, and Ollantaytambo in the Sacred Valley. Machu Picchu takes a day off the bikes by train and bus, and Cusco follows with its Inca stonework and tombs.

A flight reaches an Amazon lodge near Puerto Maldonado on the Madre de Dios for three days, then Puno on Lake Titicaca, the highest navigable lake in the world at 3,830 metres, with the Uros reed islands offshore. Colca Canyon closes the route, twice as deep as the Grand Canyon, where Andean condors with wingspans over three metres ride the morning thermals, and the road returns to Arequipa. Prices are quoted in US dollars, and no wildlife sighting can be promised. Keeping to tarmac throughout is what makes this the most accessible of the operator’s Peruvian trips, and the three days in the Amazon and the day at Machu Picchu mean a fortnight that is not spent entirely in the saddle.