Peru Motorcycle Tour: Colca Canyon & Titicaca Lake

Your Peru motorcycle tour begins with landing in Lima and a short connecting flight to Arequipa. Your tour guide picks you up at the airport and takes you to the hotel outside the city center. After the trip briefing there's time for a stroll through the colonial old town with its cathedral and the Santa Catalina monastery.

The first riding day of this Andes motorcycle tour follows a well-developed pass road up to 4,910 meters, past eight volcanoes at the Mirador de los Andes viewpoint. A short gravel track brings you to the Colca Canyon, the second-deepest canyon in the world, and you spend the night in quiet Cabanaconde.

After a possible stop at the Cruz del Condor viewpoint, you continue on paved road to Huambo, where a 50-kilometer gravel track down into the Majes Valley begins. This winding stage of the Inca culture motorcycle tour takes you past early Inca villages up to over 4,800 meters and back down again.

Today you return to sea level: the route follows the Pan-American Highway north along the coast. On your rental motorcycle in Peru you ride relaxed past scenic bays, until the small coastal town of Chala becomes your stage destination for the night.

A short but impressive ride through the extremely dry desert brings you to Nasca. On this guided Peru motorcycle tour you learn a lot along the way about the mysterious Nasca Lines, which have puzzled visitors for centuries, and you can optionally take a scenic flight over the geoglyphs.

From the desert, this combined Peru motorcycle tour climbs steeply into the Andes: after just 80 kilometers you reach 4,000 meters and feel the marked change in climate. Endless curves lead through green valleys to the dusty village of Puquio and on to Chalhuanca.

Via Abancay, this South America motorcycle tour climbs steeply once more, with hundreds of hairpin bends on the way over the pass. At midday you reach Cusco, the former capital of the Incas, and check into a hotel in the historic center near the Plaza de Armas for two nights.

A whole day is yours to spend freely: stroll through the markets and alleys of the old town, where well-preserved Inca walls are still visible. Just outside town lies the Sacsayhuaman fortress, or you can join a short city tour with your tour guide.

This stage of the Arequipa motorcycle tour – our name for the wide loop back to the starting point – first takes you through the Sacred Valley of the Incas with the Maras salt pans. After a pass at 4,750 meters, you descend to the Inca town of Ollantaytambo with its impressive fortress complex.

The train takes you in about two hours along deep mountain gorges to Aguas Calientes, from where a bus climbs the switchbacks up to the ruined city. This Machu Picchu motorcycle tour reaches its cultural high point here: the lost Inca city that the Spanish never found.

Over one of the most spectacular routes of this Amazon jungle motorcycle tour, you descend from the cool Andes into the warm Amazon rainforest. Quince Mil welcomes you with a tropical atmosphere and a family-run hotel right in the jungle.

The longest riding day of this combined Peru motorcycle tour takes you via Macusani back up into the heights of the Andes, before continuing to Puno on Lake Titicaca. Along the way you pass the lively town of Juliaca with its dense traffic and colorful markets.

Early in the morning a boat trip is on the program: this Lake Titicaca motorcycle tour crosses the highest lake in the world, which reaches all the way to Bolivia. Afterwards you ride across the flat Altiplano and the low Andes back to the White City of Arequipa.

The last day of this Arequipa motorcycle tour belongs to farewells: the return flight goes via Lima back to Germany, where you arrive the following day – with many memories of the Andes, Inca culture, and Lake Titicaca in your luggage.