I just took my 7-year-old son on a mother-son trip to Peru, and it's SO much more than just Machupicchu. In 9 days we went from hunting tarantulas by flashlight in the Amazon to making our own pan flutes on a rooftop in Cusco, feeding alpacas in the Sacred Valley, and finally standing in the Lost City of the Incas. He gave Machu Picchu 67 thumbs up, which as far as I can tell, is the highest rating available.
The country packs an enormous amount into a short distance: coastal desert, high Andes and Amazon rainforest, all reachable within a few flights.
We travelled on Intrepid's 9-day Peru Family Holiday with two other families, which meant I didn't book a single flight, train ticket, entry pass or transfer. As someone who normally plans every detail of our trips down to the hour, handing that over and just going with the flow was a bigger relief than I expected, and also meant I could fully enjoy the solo time with my son! Our guide Tina was wonderful and the whole experience was better than expected.
Here's the full itinerary, what each stop was actually like with a 7-year-old, and everything I'd want to know before booking.
Before You Go: The Things Worth Knowing
Altitude is the real planning constraint. Cusco sits at roughly 3,400 metres, which is higher than most people realise and high enough that a lot of families feel it on arrival. The standard advice is to go slow for the first 24 hours, drink a lot of water, and skip anything strenuous on day one. Our itinerary was built around this, with a deliberately gentle first evening in Cusco. If you're planning independently, build the same buffer in and consider talking to your doctor before you travel, especially with young kids.
Peru is bigger than it looks on a map. The classic route covers coastal desert, Amazon rainforest and high Andes, and you can't drive between them in any reasonable time. Internal flights are how it's done, which is part of why a tour that handles the bookings is also worth considering - there are a lot of logistics involved!
The dry season runs roughly from May to September. We went in late August, which meant cool nights in Cusco, warm dry days in the Sacred Valley and proper humidity and heat in the Amazon. Layers are essential, and so is sun protection.
Sun protection is not optional. The UV index hit 16 in Cusco while we were there. That is extreme by any measure, and it is the one thing I'd tell every parent to take seriously. 50+ sunscreen, hats, and lip balm with SPF, reapplied constantly.
Days 1 to 3: Lima
We built in a couple of free days in Lima before the tour officially started, and I'd recommend the same to anyone. It breaks up a long flight, it gets you two easy days at sea level before the altitude begins, and Lima is genuinely a great city with kids.
We stayed in Miraflores, which is the obvious base for families. It's an upscale coastal neighbourhood, walkable, full of parks, and everything is close enough that you can taxi or Uber anywhere in a few minutes.
Kennedy Park (aka the cat park)
Our first morning we walked over to Parque Kennedy in the middle of Miraflores, where dozens of stray cats live full time. This isn't a sad situation; it's an organised one. Volunteers feed them, cover their vet care, and set up adoption tables and little cat houses around the park. There’s also a great little gated playground in the park, which is perfect for getting some wiggles out.
Love Park and the cliffs
Lima sits in a coastal desert, which is a strange thing to get your head around until you see it. The Miraflores and Barranco neighbourhoods sit up on enormous cliffs above the Pacific, and Parque del Amor is right on the edge of them. It’s beautiful and there are mosaic walls, a giant statue of a couple kissing, paragliders going past at eye level, and a cute cafe selling fresh orange juice.
The historic centre and the catacombs
We took a taxi downtown to the main square to meet our Intrepid guide for a private walking tour. Tip: budget more time than you think to get downtown; Lima traffic is no joke! The colonial architecture in Lima's centre is stunning, with those carved wooden balconies on nearly every building, and having a guide meant we got the history in a way a 7-year-old could follow rather than reading plaques.
My son’s favourite part were the catacombs beneath the San Francisco church and convent, where around 25,000 people are buried and the bones are arranged in patterns in open pits. He called it "super cool and creepy." If you have a kid who likes anything remotely spooky, this is the highlight of Lima for them. If you have one who doesn't, it's a short section of the tour and easily skipped. We came back up and finished with chicha morada from one of the local food stalls, the deep purple drink made from purple corn boiled with pineapple and cinnamon, which is sweet enough that most kids will drink it.
Larcomar Mall
I asked a taxi driver to take us to the Larcomar mall that our guide recommended, and when we arrived, I asked him where it was, he pointed at the ocean. After the initial confusion, I realized the entire thing is built into the cliff face below street level, so you walk down into it and every level looks straight out at the Pacific. There's a Paddington sculpture and a little playground just above it, and we grabbed dinner at one of the restaurants overlooking the ocean.
Biking the malecón
If you're in Lima with kids, rent bikes (we got ours from Lima Bici). This was our best Lima decision. The malecón has a proper separated bike lane running about 6km from Miraflores into Barranco, up on the clifftop with the ocean beside you the entire way. It's flat, it's safe, and it turns sightseeing into something a kid will actually opt into.
We rode it straight through into Barranco and ended at the Bridge of Sighs, a little wooden bridge from 1876 where the tradition is that you hold your breath the whole way across and make a wish.
The beach in Lima
Was I naive to think we'd go down to the beach and just play with rocks? An hour later I was dragging a fully clothed soaking wet child into an Uber and drying his shoes in front of the hotel air conditioner. He has never been happier! But lesson learned: bring a spare outfit.
Eating in Lima
Peru has over 3,500 varieties of potato, and you taste that in the French fries alone. We ate the famous chicharrón sandwich at La Lucha Sanguchería Criolla, crispy pork with sweet potato and pickled onion, alongside mango juice, thick cut fries and more chicha morada. My other essential is Inca Kola, the bright yellow national soft drink that kind of tastes like a banana cream soda (it’s SO good!)
Days 4 and 5: The Amazon
This is the part my son called the best place he has ever been, which is a real statement from a kid who has been to a lot of places. If you take one thing from this post, it's that the Amazon is not the hard add-on you skip because you've got kids. For us, it was a core memory that I’m 100% sure my kid will be talking about for years to come.
Getting there
We flew Lima to Cusco, stayed on the same plane for a 30 minute hop over the Andes to Puerto Maldonado, then took a 60 minute boat ride down the Madre de Dios River to our lodge. That boat ride is where it stops feeling like a holiday and starts feeling like something else entirely.
You pack a small duffel, around 8kg, for the two nights at the lodge, and your main luggage stays behind in town. It sounds stressful and it isn't, you just need repellent, long sleeves, a head torch and a change of clothes.
Where we stayed
The lodge is simple but makes an impression: large rooms with mosquito nets, en suite flush toilets, and luke-warm water showers only. There was wifi in the main lodge, but otherwise we were completely off grid for two days, which I actually loved. There's also a couple resident jungle cats, who my son adopted within about four minutes of arriving.
What about the bugs and mosquitoes?
This was by far the most common question I got, so let me answer it properly: it was nowhere near as bad as I expected, and they barely bothered us at all. Part of that is preparation. We brought strong mosquito repellent and used it consistently; we wore lightweight long sleeves and long pants, and we went to a travel clinic before the trip and came home with prescription malaria medication, which we took as directed. That's what we chose to do after talking to a travel doctor, and I'd book that appointment early rather than leaving it to the last few weeks, because some things need to be started before you travel and some clinics book out. Your own doctor is the right person to tell you what you need for the areas you're visiting.
Part of it is also just that the reality doesn't match the image in your head. There are insects everywhere, obviously, it's a rainforest, but they're mostly out in the forest doing their own thing rather than swarming you. The rooms have mosquito nets and neither of us came home covered in bites.
If mosquitoes are the thing making you hesitate about bringing kids to the Amazon, I'd let that one go.
The night tour
Pretty much as soon as we dropped our bags, we were back out again, and the night tour turned out to be the thing every kid and adult in our group remembers. We went out on foot after dinner with headlamps and flashlights and found tarantulas, scorpions that glow under UV light, frogs, insects, bats and eventually an armadillo. It is genuinely wild to be standing in the jungle in the dark listening to it, with only the beam of your flashlight to see.
The moment that got everyone was watching a tarantula grab a giant moth and drag it down into its burrow. Right after that, our guide pointed out pinktoe tarantulas all over the trees nearby, the bright-footed ones that live up in the branches rather than in the ground, and once you know what you're looking for you start seeing them everywhere.
Nothing about it ever felt unsafe. It was pure adrenaline and so cool to spot that many nocturnal creatures in one walk. A 10/10 experience!
The canopy walkway
Our biggest day ran from 5:20am to 9pm, and the reason for the alarm was the canopy walkway, a series of hanging bridges strung through the treetops that you cross at dawn while the rainforest is waking up. The guides told us they had never had a family group so eager to be up that early. Going at sunrise is the point though: the birds are active, the heat hasn't arrived, and the canopy feels quite magical.
The medicine garden
Our guide Victor walked us through the lodge’s botanical garden and explained the plants the local communities use for medicine and for food. This was quieter than the rest of the day and all three kids were more into it than expected, mostly because you get to touch and smell things, including a leaf that turns your hands purple and tree sap that numbs your tongue.
Lake Sandoval
After a 30 minute boat ride we arrived at the Tambopata National Reserve, around 680,000 acres of protected rainforest and considered one of the most biodiverse places in the world. From the river it's a 3km boardwalk through the jungle to the lake, where we got into canoes and paddled out looking for wildlife. We saw so many monkeys, howlers, squirrel monkeys and capuchins, along with macaws, toucans and hoatzins, and caiman floating with just their eyes above the surface.
By the time we got back to the boat it was fully dark, and this turned into one of the best hours of the whole trip. Our guides switched on the floodlights and swept the banks, which is how you find caiman at night, because their eyes glow red. In addition to the caiman we saw, we got lucky and also spotted a capybara on the bank, the world's largest rodent and roughly the size of a large dog. The whole boat lost it - it was the highlight for all of us!
The rest of it
In between there were tropical fruit juices, quiet play at the lodge, gorgeous spreads of food and local specialities for each meal, and howler monkeys as an alarm clock both mornings. If I did this again I'd love to stay an extra night or two. My son really wanted to stay longer and he’s already planning a trip back with his Dad.
Context worth knowing: the Amazon runs about 4,000 miles across South America and covers 8 countries, and Peru holds the second largest share of it after Brazil. Puerto Maldonado is the gateway for the Tambopata side, and it's an easy flight from Cusco or Lima.
Days 6 and 7: Cusco
Fly into Cusco with a window seat if you can. Coming in over the Andes is one of those approaches that makes the whole cabin go quiet.
Cusco was the Inca capital and it's now a city where colonial buildings sit directly on top of Inca stonework, often literally, with the older walls forming the foundations. It's beautiful, it's walkable, and it is high, at around 3,400 metres.
Take day one slowly. Our first evening in Cusco was deliberately unstructured, which was the right call. We spent it in the Plaza de Armas chasing pigeons around the fountain, which is exactly the right level of ambition for your first hours at altitude. Eat something light, go to bed early, and don't schedule anything demanding.
San Blas
San Blas is the artisan neighbourhood up the hill from the main square, and it's the most charming part of Cusco by a distance. Narrow cobbled lanes, white walls with blue doors, and flower pots absolutely everywhere, spilling off balconies and lining every staircase. Because that's the other thing: it is all stairs. A lot of stairs. At 3,400 metres those steps will find your lungs, so give yourself more time than the map suggests and stop for a coffee halfway up, which is the correct response anyway.
The music workshop
This was my son's favourite thing we did in Cusco and one of the best hours of the entire trip. We went up to a rooftop in San Blas where a local musician walked us through a dozen traditional Peruvian instruments and the history of music in Peru, including the pututu, the conch shell horn that Inca messengers used to send signals across the valleys. Then we made our own zampoña pan flutes, gave Happy Birthday our best attempt, and eventually agreed that we needed more practice at home and that they were, in the meantime, excellent souvenirs.
San Pedro Market
San Pedro is the main market in Cusco and one of the most interesting hours you can spend in the city. It's bustling, loud, and very local, which is exactly the point. This is where the city actually shops, not a tourist market dressed up as one.
You walk in past the bread section, where they sell giant wheels of bread the size of a steering wheel, then into the cheese vendors stacked high with wheels and rounds of the local stuff. There are whole aisles of juice stalls where women blend fruit to order, produce sections where the potato thing finally makes sense, with hundreds of varieties in piles that all look slightly different and all taste different too, and even a soup aisle, with enormous pots serving hot lunch for a few dollars a bowl. Locals eat here every day, and it’s the cheapest meal you'll have in Cusco.
Sacsayhuamán
The Inca fortress above Cusco, pronounced roughly like "sexy woman," which is the single fastest way to get a 7-year-old interested in archaeology.
The rock slides are what sell it, natural chutes worn smooth into the rock over centuries. They're genuinely insane, steeper and faster than anything you'd put a child on at home, with nothing to hold onto and nothing at the bottom to stop you. Quite dangerous, honestly. But of course we all did them anyway, parents included, and the kids thought they were super cool! And if you'd rather sit this one out, it's a great spot to just watch, because there's a steady stream of locals and tourists throwing themselves down.
The stonework is the other half of it. Absolutely enormous blocks fitted together so precisely you can't slide paper between them, no mortar anywhere, some of them the size of a small car. It honestly looks like aliens built it. There are also caves and tunnels to climb into, and the views back over the red rooftops of Cusco are the best in the city, along with alpaca to spot in the fields.
Day 8: The Sacred Valley
The drive from Cusco down into the Sacred Valley is a long day on paper, but one of my favourites in practice. The valley follows the Urubamba river at a lower, warmer altitude than Cusco, which is partly why the Incas built so much here, and the terraced hillsides are still farmed the same way.
The weaving cooperative in Chinchero
We spent time with a community of women weavers in Chinchero, and this was a very special and memorable stop. They showed us how they dye the wool using plants, how the weaving itself works, and how the cooperative supports their families. They played games with the kids, dressed us up in their local outfits, and cooked us an amazing homemade lunch.
The Maras salt ponds
How does a mountain make salt? A salty spring runs out of the inside of the mountain at 32°C and has been channelled into around 3,000 shallow terraced pools that the sun evaporates, leaving the salt behind. The ponds belong to local families and have been passed down for 500 years, which is the detail that makes the place land. It's also one of the most photogenic spots in Peru, a hillside of white and cream pools stacked on each other. It’s quite breathtaking in real life! Tip: Go late in the day. We arrived in the afternoon and had it almost to ourselves, and our guide told us the mornings are packed with tour buses.
Ollantaytambo
We finished the day in the town of Ollantaytambo and stayed two nights, which I'd recommend over basing yourself anywhere else, because it puts you walking distance from the train station for the Machu Picchu morning. The town is a living Inca settlement with the original street grid and water channels still running down the sides of the streets, and the ruins climb up the hillside right above it. We saved those for our second morning.
Day 9: Machu Picchu
From Ollantaytambo it's about a 1.5 hour train ride to Aguas Calientes, the small town at the foot of the mountain, and the scenery shifts from dry Andean valley to dense green cloud forest as you drop down. From town, it's a 20 minute bus up the side of the mountain to the entrance, and those switchbacks are no joke, so take a Gravol beforehand if anyone in your family is prone to motion sickness.
Machu Picchu was built around 1440 as a royal retreat for Inca nobility, and the site holds roughly 200 houses and temples. There's evidence the land was sacred long before it was built on, but no written records of the complex exist, so its true purpose remains a mystery, and it stayed hidden from the outside world until just over 100 years ago. It's one of the New 7 Wonders of the World, and I can tell you it is 100% NOT overrated.
My son gave it 67 thumbs up (get it?!)
A note on the circuits, because this is new. My husband and I first visited Machu Picchu 15 years ago and at that time you could essentially wander wherever you liked. Since 2024, the site now operates on a one-way circuit system, and your ticket is tied to a specific circuit, a specific route within it, and a specific entry hour. You can't switch once you're inside, you can't double back, and there's no re-entry, so the ticket you buy really does decide what you see.
There are three circuits. Circuit 1 is the panoramic one, which stays up on the upper terraces for the classic postcard view and doesn't go down into the ruins. Circuit 2 is the classic route, which gives you that same viewpoint first and then takes you down through the temples and residential streets of the city itself. Circuit 3-A covers the lower sector and is the one that pairs with the Huayna Picchu climb.
We did Circuit 2, and with a 7-year-old it's the one I'd recommend. You get the photo everyone comes for while legs are fresh, and then the part that actually holds a kid's attention, which is walking through real doorways and rooms rather than looking at them from above. Circuit 1 would have been over too quickly and he'd have missed the best of it.
Book early. Daily numbers are capped and the good time slots go well in advance, which was one more argument for letting the tour handle it.
Why We Did Peru on a Family Tour
Peru has a lot of moving pieces. Internal flights, a boat upriver into the jungle, a train to Aguas Calientes, timed Machu Picchu entry, transfers between valleys, and altitude to manage on top of all of it. I normally plan every detail of our trips myself, and on this one I planned none of it, and that turned out to be the right call.
We did Intrepid's 9-day Peru Family Holiday, which runs from Lima to the Amazon to Cusco, the Sacred Valley and Machu Picchu. Every flight, train, bus, entry ticket and transfer was booked and handled, our guide tracked everyone's altitude symptoms twice a day, and the local guides at each stop were the reason so much of it landed for the kids rather than going over their heads.
There were 10 of us in total, three families from Canada and the US with three boys aged 7, 7 and 10. The kids clicked immediately over tarantulas and frogs, which meant the parents got real adult time while they were off playing together. My son had built-in friends for nine days, which changed the whole trip, and also gave me a break from the constant fighting he and his sister do on most of ours. Every logistical decision was made for me, and I got to spend nine days actually present with my son.
Would I Recommend Peru With a 7-Year-Old?
This is a bucket-list trip, and I mean that in the most literal sense. There are very few places where a kid gets to go from a jungle lodge to a 15th century Inca city to a market full of things they've never seen, all inside nine days, and Peru does it without ever feeling like you're dragging them through a history lesson.
The variety is what makes it and the Peruvian people are wonderful with children.
Intrepid's minimum age for this trip is 5. My honest read is that 6 or 7 up is the sweet spot. The days are long and there's a lot more walking than you'd think, and I'm not sure my 5-year-old daughter would have managed it. The altitude is a real factor at that age too.
A word on Intrepid, since I get asked. They run small groups, this one caps at 16, and they build trips around local guides and local businesses rather than shipping you around in a bubble. They're a certified B Corp, they publish the carbon footprint of every trip, and they run the Intrepid Foundation which puts money back into the places you visit. The difference showed up constantly for us: the music workshop was in someone's home, the weaving day was with the cooperative itself, and our guides at every stop were Peruvian. That's the reason so much of this trip landed with my son instead of going over his head.
