The Best Resorts in Peru

Each of the twenty casitas at this Belmond resort sits on its own acre in the Colca Valley, a canyon country that makes the Grand Canyon feel modest. It's a small-villa luxury experience in the high Andes, with plunge pools, soaking tubs, and underfloor heating keeping things comfortable after a day on horseback. The Michelin Guide awarded it 3 Keys. Getting here takes effort; Arequipa is a hundred miles away, which is rather the point.

The resort sits on an ancient Inca site that was only discovered mid-construction, which forced the architects to improvise and, by most accounts, produced something better than the original plan. Adobe and wood keep the minimalist rooms grounded while the Pumacahua Bath House spa and the restaurant pull in the opposite direction entirely. The Sacred Valley stretches out beyond it all, with Machu Picchu waiting at the far end. The Michelin Guide awarded it a Key.

Twenty-four casitas scattered across a hundred hillside acres in the Sacred Valley, with the Andes sitting right outside your private terrace. This is a luxury eco-resort grown around Incan landscape rather than imposed on it, and it holds two Michelin Keys. Oxen and hand tools work the farm that feeds the restaurant, heated floors warm the rooms at altitude, and the hikes from the property cover Inca Trail terrain without the traffic.

A private speedboat is how you arrive, cutting across the highest navigable lake on earth before the 18-suite boutique hotel comes into view on a grassy peninsula with nothing around it but water and sky. The Michelin Guide awarded Titilaka 2 Keys. Picture windows frame that deep blue expanse from every suite, and nearly every activity, kayaking, cocktail hour, trout dinners, pulls you back toward it.

Clay-walled bungalows sit on 25 acres outside Urubamba, built with native stone and locally made brick, giant hummingbirds included at no extra charge. This small resort in the Sacred Valley sits on the road between Cusco and Machu Picchu, so the guest mix skews explorers in various states of pre- or post-trek recovery. The casitas come with wood-burning fireplaces and outdoor Jacuzzis, and the sheets are Peruvian pima cotton, which the hotel will absolutely tell you about.

The pool villas here lean toward the lavish end of the spectrum, and with only 22 rooms the whole resort stays quietly to itself on Peru's northern coast. Arennas Máncora sits on a private stretch of beach near Las Pocitas, with a poolside bar and a modernist look in pale stone and natural wood that feels more like coastal Thailand than South America. The restaurant leans into the local seafood, as it should.

The only way in is by canoe, which sets the tone pretty clearly. This eco-lodge deep in the Peruvian Amazon sits about a 25-minute flight from Cusco, then a scenic paddle from Puerto Maldonado, and the jungle is not a backdrop here but the whole point. Local guides run excursions from the door, the dining room leans on organic and farm-sourced ingredients, and the cabanas offer more privacy than the main lodge rooms.

Forty-five minutes upriver from the port, this eco-lodge sits deep in the Peruvian Amazon, accessible by boat and not much else. The thirty-five cabañas lean rustic-luxe, and the Canopy Tree House puts you ninety feet above the jungle floor, which either sounds thrilling or explains why there's a ground-level bedroom attached. The excursions along Madre de Dios and the trail systems are the real reason people make the trip; the comfort is a bonus.

Canvas tents with open-air soaking tubs, adobe cottages with clawfoot baths, and alpacas wandering past your terrace: Puqio brought safari-style tented camp lodging to Peru for the first time, and it landed in the Colca Valley, gateway to one of the planet's deepest canyons. Meals are cooked over open fires and served family-style in a wood-warmed lodge. Condors circle overhead often enough to feel possible, not promised.