The last living Inca town — and the gateway to Machu Picchu

Cusco: Sacred Valley, Pisac, Ollantaytambo, Maras Salt Mines & Moray

The classic Sacred Valley circuit and by far the most-booked way to see Ollantaytambo. A guide walks you through the terraces and the Sun Temple, then links them to Pisac’s hilltop ruins, Moray’s concentric bowls and the Maras salt pans.

• Four headline sites in one day: Pisac, Moray, Maras and Ollantaytambo
• Hotel pickup in central Cusco and an English- or Spanish-speaking guide
• Over 2,000 reviews and one of the best-value day trips in the region

From Cusco: Ollantaytambo Fortress Half-Day Private Tour

Ollantaytambo on its own terms, without the four-site rush. A private guide unpacks how Pachacuti’s masons moved fifty-tonne blocks from a quarry across the valley — and why the temple was never finished.

• Private guide for your group only — go at your own pace
• The terraces of Pumatallis, the Sun Temple and the Wall of Six Monoliths
• Time in the Inca street grid below, still lived in after 550 years

From Ollantaytambo: Private Half-Day Tour to Maras & Moray

The best half-day if you are already staying in town. You skip the long Cusco transfer, reach Moray before the coach convoys and are back in Ollantaytambo in time for an afternoon train or a climb up Pinkuylluna.

• Starts and ends in Ollantaytambo — no 05:00 start from Cusco
• The 3,000 salt pans of Salineras de Maras, worked since before the Inca
• Moray’s concentric terraces and their 15 °C micro-climates

From Cusco: Pisaq & Ollantaytambo Tour with Lunch, Ending in Ollantaytambo

The smartest way to combine sightseeing with getting where you need to be. You see the Sacred Valley in a full day, then step off in Ollantaytambo with your luggage rather than backtracking 90 minutes to Cusco.

• Ends in Ollantaytambo instead of returning to Cusco
• Perfect if you sleep in town before an early Machu Picchu train
• Buffet lunch in Urubamba included

From Cusco: Full-Day Machu Picchu Sightseeing Tour

The full Machu Picchu day, bundled. Trains, buses, entrance circuit and guide are booked for you — which matters, because Machu Picchu tickets are capped daily and regularly sell out weeks ahead.

• Train from Ollantaytambo through the Urubamba gorge to Aguas Calientes
• Machu Picchu entrance ticket and official guide included
• Shuttle bus up the switchbacks to the citadel gate

Cusco: Private Car Transfer to Ollantaytambo

The stress-free way to make an early train. Collectivos from Pavitos street in Cusco are cheap but leave when full; a private car leaves when you do, which is what counts when the Machu Picchu train will not wait.

• Door-to-door from your Cusco hotel to your Ollantaytambo hotel or the station
• Private vehicle — no waiting for a colectivo to fill up
• Luggage space and flexible pickup time for early trains

Ollantaytambo Ruins

Pachacuti’s unfinished masterpiece

The great terraced temple hill above the town is one of the finest surviving Inca sites anywhere — seventeen tiers of stonework climbing to a Sun Temple whose fifty-tonne pink monoliths were dragged from a quarry across the valley and never quite set in place.

Pinkuylluna

Free views, Inca storehouses

On the mountain facing the ruins, a steep footpath climbs past Inca granaries built high in the cold, dry air to preserve grain. It costs nothing, takes about an hour, and gives you the single best photograph of Ollantaytambo.

The Inca Old Town

The last living Inca town

North of the plaza lies Qosqo Ayllu — a grid of walled Inca compounds, doorways and stone water channels laid out in the 15th century and lived in ever since. Nowhere else in Peru can you walk an Inca street that never stopped being a street.

Maras Salt Mines

Three thousand salt pans on a cliff

A warm, hyper-saline spring has poured out of this mountainside since long before the Inca. Local families still channel it into a honeycomb of shallow terraces and harvest the crystals by hand, exactly as their great-grandparents did.

Moray

The Inca agricultural laboratory

Three enormous concentric bowls sunk into the high plateau, each ring a few degrees warmer than the one above it. The temperature spread across the largest bowl reaches 15 °C, and the best explanation is that the Inca used it to trial crops at different altitudes.

Ñaupa Iglesia

A carved cave shrine few visitors find

Hidden in a cliff above the Pachar bridge, this small huaca holds an altar cut from the living rock and a false doorway of extraordinary precision. It has no ticket office, no crowd and no signage — just a steep path and one of the strangest pieces of Inca stonework in the valley.