from $3,485* per person	7 Days	Year-round
Boutique accommodations		Exertion level: 4
Operator: Geographic Expeditions		18 people max

For some of us, the Incas are rather hazily lumped in there with, let’s see, the Aztecs —no, they were up north—the Incas, yes . . . Conquistadors. Pizarro, wasn’t it? (Or was it Cortés?) Turns out we should have been more alert; these were absolutely fascinating folks, world-class builders and thinkers. And the story of their downfall is heartrending.

After flying to Lima and on to the old Incan capital of Cusco, we explore the fabled Urubamba Valley ruins of Pisac, Moray, and Ollantaytambo, gazing up at the Andean snow giants that rise above the sacred valley. Now by train up to Machu Picchu, the crown jewel of Incan civilization. “This is the most stupendous approach there has ever been,” Sacheverell Sitwell wrote, “to something which in its own right is perhaps the most startlingly dramatic archaeological site in either the New or Old World.” And after our dalliance with Machu Picchu we’re off to Cusco, “a little city of such supreme interest and historical symbolism, of such variety and punch,” Jan Morris has written, “that it combines the compulsions of Stonehenge, a small Barcelona, and a Kathmandu.” We’ll tour its ruins and wander its charmingly narrow streets, many of which are walled with the Incas’ exquisite, inexplicably exact rock-work (this is a good place to send you on a rewarding book search for Charles C. Mann’s 1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus, a masterpiece of good reporting and mind expansion). We return to Lima for an afternoon of sightseeing, taking in the capital’s outstanding archaeological museum, which tells the stories of the many civilizations that preceded the Incas and the story of their sudden, grotesque demise.