Overview
Cusco City Tour Half Day, Cusco is the center of the Inca history and home to some of the most important ruins. Exploring them with a member of the To Machu picchu team will help make this period of history come alive. Visit the beautiful cathedral in the main square, Temple of the Sun and then head by car to the city limits to visit the 4 main Inca ruins including Sacsayhuaman. From here you will also see some of the most beautiful views of Cusco, so don’t forget your camera.
Note: The hotel must be booked on the main town due the early pick up for our services we are unable to go to the airbnb as most of them do not have a name or address easy to find and some of them are located far away from the main town.
Briefing between 5pm – 7pm the evening before the trip in our office, explaining all tour details from our guide.
Be inspired as you walk through the ancestral streets and plazas of Cusco! You can walk through each era of history in this regal city; it is the oldest continuously inhabited city in the Americas! We can trace time from Native Americans to Incans to Spaniards and now to modern-day citizens of Cusco. Besides its historical importance, Cusco is an absolutely breath-taking city with a living culture and a cuisine highly-acclaimed on the world stage!
For your first day in this majestic city, we recommend visiting all nearby archaeological sites and admiring the surrounding landscape. As a city, Cusco maintains its customs and traditions along with the mysteries and tales about a legendary past.
- Cusco’s Cathedral: Located in Cusco’s Main Square, the cathedral is a colonial monument of great artistic value. It was built on top of the Wiracocha Inca Palace and houses works of carved wood such as the choir, pulpit and altars, beautiful paintings from the Cusquenian School of Art (including a Last Supper painting in which Christ and His disciples eat cuy – guinea pig!) and works of embossed silver. This cathedral flanks the grandiose Plaza de Armas – the historical and cultural heart of Cusco.
- Koricancha Temple and Santo Domingo Convent: This religious center was built to worship the Sun, the most revered deity during the Inca Empire. Inside the temple, you will find smaller temples dedicated to the sun, moon, stars, etc. Outside are beautiful, regal gardens and fountains on the grounds of the monumental temple. Here, the combination of the extraordinary Inca architecture and the Spanish colonial architecture is what stands out the most. In addition, the Cusquenian School of Art’s gallery offers you the opportunity to appreciate some of their colonial art pieces.
- Saqsayhuaman: Located 2 km from Cusco City, this fortress was built using enormous carved rocks joined with compelling precision. It is composed of three overlapping platforms with an average length of 360 meters. In its construction, you can see stones as big as 9 meters in height! From here, you can enjoy a spectacular view of Cusco city along with the beautiful landscape formed by the surrounding mountains.
- Q’enqo: Located 1 km from Sacsayhuaman, this complex was an Inca ceremonial cult center. The most prominent feature of this complex is an open space called the amphitheater. Back in its day, you would have found Inca mummies in the 19 trapezoidal niches found here. Today, the amphitheater is half of its original height.
- Puca Pucara: This complex is known as the “red fortress” due to its reddish tints resulting from the vast amounts of iron in its rocks. It is thought that this fortress was perhaps an old tambo (dairy farm?) that served both as a resting and guarding spot to protect Tambomachay. Here you can see attractive architecture, fountains, aqueducts, and several Incan enclosures.
- Tambomachay: This complex is made up of a combination of finely carved stones, waterfalls, and aqueducts to carry water coming from nearby springs and hot springs. For this reason, Tambomachay is associated with the water cult. In front of this construction, there is a tower that is said to have served as a guarding post and communication tower.
Tour Cusco City Tour Half Day
After finishing the guided tour, we will visit a traditional market where you can see beautiful works of art from Cusco and buy products made in this region. The tour finishes at approximately 18:15 hrs when we arrive back in Cusco city.
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Cusco City Tour Half Day FAQs
The Cusco City Tour in shared service includes transportation and a guide for a group of diverse people (up to 20 tourists). The private service, on the other hand, is a special service for a closed group of from 2 visitors.
To make the payment of the tour you must complete the reservation form on our web platform. Then payment must be made with Visa, MasterCard or PayPal cards. To separate the reservation you must cancel at least 60% of the tour value. Once in Cusco you must finish making the payment.
For the City Tour Cusco, you should wear a sunscreen, a hat, comfortable shoes, rain poncho, snacks, mineral water and extra cash (if tourists like to buy handicrafts).
It is advisable to adapt to the climate of the city of Cusco at least 1 day before doing the Cusco City Tour. It is also advised to drink plenty of water like coca tea.
The tour includes a shared or private tour guide in English or Spanish. To book a guide in another language one must be requested by sending an email and paying the extra cost of the service.
Airway: It is the fastest way to get there, the trip lasts 1.10 hours from Lima. It is preferable to buy tickets or flight tickets in advance, the cost is USD 150.00 (base price).
Land route: You can take direct buses from Lima, the trip lasts approximately 21 hours.
There are also buses from Arequipa, in this case the trip lasts 10 hours.
The price varies depending on the transport company and the type of service they offer.
Cusco presents warm days with cold nights. The best time to visit Cusco and Machu Picchu are from April to October – November. The rainy season in Cusco is from December to March.
It is a ticket that contains the income to various tourist attractions in the city of Cusco. There are 2 kinds of tickets:
Partial tourist ticket
There are 3 circuits of this type of ticket that cover the following routes:
Circuit 1 – Sacsayhuaman, Qenko, Puka Pukara, Tambomachay (they are the 4 surrounding ruins that are visited during the city tour)
Circuit 2 – Museum of Contemporary Art, Regional Historical Museum, Popular Art Museum, Qoricancha Site Museum, Qosqo Native Art Center.
Circuit 3 – Ollantaytambo, Pisac, Chinchero, Moray (tour of the Sacred Valley tour).
The cost is S / 70.00 (USD 27.00 approximately) in any of the circuits mentioned above and the validity of the ticket is 1 day (in circuit 1 and 2) and 2 days (in circuit 3).
General Tourist ticket (BTG)
This ticket allows admission to 16 tourist attractions located in the city, outside the city, and the 3 touristic circuits of the partial ticket. The cost is S/. 130.00 (USD 45.00 approximately) and the validity of the ticket is 10 days from the date of issue.
In order to achieve a better preservation of Machupicchu, there are currently limited places for daily income to this wonder of the world. As for the train ticket they also have limited capacity in each type of service offered by the railway companies. For this reason we recommend buying them in advance and not wait at the last minute since there is a risk of not finding available spaces because Cusco is one of the busiest destinations throughout the year.
Cusco is located at 3300 m.s.n.m. (11,000 feet), so there is the possibility of feeling difficult to breathe, headaches or fatigue, all these are symptoms of altitude sickness. So we recommend resting a few hours after landing or arriving in the city and drinking a lot of liquid (bottled water or coca leaf infusions preferably) to acclimate.
In the event that the rest does not calm the discomfort, you can buy pills against altitude sickness (or soroche) in a pharmacy or you can also buy a small oxygen ball, both have affordable prices.
