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THE NEW PERU

With a culinary revolution, new hotels, and luxury boats to float the Amazon, Peru is now an A-list destination for savvy travelers

You have to love a country that still worships the Sun and other gods, or at least still talks about them. Take, for instance, Father Earth, or Pachatata, and his wife, Pachamama, the goddess of fertility and protector of homes. Here in the Andes, where we start our Peruvian adventure, she is still revered. 

Over the years, I’ve been to Chile, Argentina, and Brazil. But never Machu Picchu. It may be a “been there, done that” for many people, but somehow I and my travel partner, Laura, both missed out on that college backpacking trip. Yet perhaps our timing was right, because now Peru is the savvy traveler’s next great adventure. 

Until recently, a lack of good hotels was Peru’s weak point. But that has changed with new eco-luxe options, luxurious hotels without glitz, and hotels whose design draws on Peruvian motifs and on locally made furniture and crafts. Most of the country’s new or restored hotels are relatively small, personal, smart, and culturally authentic.

The country, which is twice the size of France, offers the traveler so much: mountains, iconic ruins, rivers, lakes, beaches, jungles, deserts.  There are still many small villages where life seems to have changed little over the past century (cell phone and satellite TV notwithstanding). Most of the Peruvian Indians still live traditionally, and they’ll make you reappreciate the beauty of handmade objects as you browse their weavings and sweaters, shawls, and silver jewelry.  And you will eat well.  Louis Velasquez, the GM of the Caribou Club, who was born in Lima, had told us that Peru has fabulous food, even though people don’t think of it as a culinary destination. Locavores will love how its contemporary chefs riff on traditional ingredients like corn, potatoes, quinoa,  fava beans, and, on the coast, ceviche.

On our journey, we will rattle around Peru; we begin our adventure by flying into the Andean capital of Cusco, at 11,000 feet. As we disembark, we take part in the local custom of drinking coca tea. It’s slightly bitter, yes, but it’s been used for centuries to combat altitude sickness, as it increases the absorption of oxygen in the blood. We drive in the Andean highlands, ancestral home of the Incas, known as the Sacred Valley. It is an agricultural center; we pass ancient terraces.  On the horizon: snowcapped mountains. Out our window: beautiful fertile valleys and meadows. Long white ribbons turn out to be corn being dried in the fields for harvest. 

The markets are spectacles unto themselves. At Pisac, which is surrounded by vestiges of Incan stone fortresses, Indian women dressed in bright colors with long braids down their backs come from the surrounding countryside and sit with displays of vegetables and so many varieties of potato to sell. We buy a cooked cob of corn, called paracay. It has the biggest kernels I have ever seen, mealy but delicious.  

The clothing being sold is colorful and, we learn, symbolic. Women’s hats with red flowers mean married; white, single; and mixed, a widow. Women still carry babies on their backs. We visit a weaving collective, and at the entrance sit dishes of boldly colored dyes made from plants.