Our car will pick you up from your hotel in the ancient Inca capital of Cusco (altitude 3.338 m / 10,952 ft) at 8:30 am. From here, it is a one-hour drive to our ranch in the Sacred Valley of the Incas. Our riding centre is perfectly located in the heart of the Sacred Valley, between Cusco and Machu Picchu, the famous lost city of the Incas.

Today you will have the opportunity to become familiar with our beautiful Peruvian Paso horses and the traditional Peruvian riding gear. To enjoy the journey you should be a competent and experienced rider and above all happy to ride a forward-going horse and try out a new way of riding, Peruvian style. Upon first arrival at the ranch you will be given a fantastic display of Peruvian Equitation by your host, Eduard (you will soon get to know him as Eddy), and also by his Peruvian chalan (horse trainer). After a short riding course in the Classic Peruvian Equitation we evaluate your riding ability (and according your horse-preference) we will match riders to their mounts. We also brief you in about our safety instructions on the trails.

Around 12:30 pm, we will enjoy a typical Peruvian barbecue at the ranch. A Pisco Sour (our national cocktail) is part of the Peruvian tradition and, of course, included. After lunch we will mount our horses and climb with the horses almost 800 m (2,600 ft.) to the reach the Andean high plateau. The climb takes about two hours, and will be at an easy pace. Once at 3600 m / 11,800 ft., the stunning scenery and the snow-capped mountains of Chicon, Veronica and Pumahuanca is impressive. On our way up we pass Salinas, the saltpans from Inca times, still being used by the locals to extract salt from the mountain spring water. The saltpans consist of a series of platforms where the salty water is channelled through an impressive irrigation system and left to evaporate in the sun. Take plenty of film to capture this unique sight. We will ride to Maras, a typical Andean village, where we will meet our back up car and staff. We will leave our horses with our grooms for the night at a safe place near Maras and our car will bring you back to the valley. You will spend the night at the Hotel Sonesta Posada del Inca in Yucay or a hotel of your choice. After some rest and a warm shower in your hotel we’ll have dinner at one of Urubamba’s local restaurant.

Today we depart at 9:00 am to return to our horses who have spend the night with our grooms. We ride along mountain paths that were once part of the old Inca road and reach the village of Racchi around midday. The scenery atop the mountain trails is spectacular, but as we climb higher and higher we keep a slow pace to safe our horses energy. We will meet our back up team with a wonderful picnic lunch at the village of Chinchero. If you want you can explore the Inca ruins at Chinchero and visit the beautiful old church that was built at the end of the XVI century using as foundations the finely carved stones that once belonged to a great Incan palace. After lunch we continue our ride and cross the plains of Chinchero to Lake Huaypo. Because of the flat terrain here we will have the opportunity to enjoy a faster pace of riding. You will be surprised how much ground can be covered in the Paso Llano gait, the smooth and natural gait of the Peruvian Paso horse that equals the speed of a canter. At lake Huaypo we climb again with the horses, pass some small mountain villages and see the lake from high above a mountaintop. We decent and ride along the lake side to get to our final destiny of today, a small farmers community where we will leave our horses in the caring hands of our grooms. Our car will bring you to your hotel where you can fresh up and relax a bit before we take you out for dinner.

After breakfast, we will transport you to the point of departure for our last riding day. Today we ride again along some beautiful trails high up in the mountains and pass agricultural lands and some very small farmers communities. You will see women with their children herding their sheep and have a glimpse of the real Andean country life. The locals here usually speak Quechua and although they have a hard life they are very friendly. We ride towards the agricultural terraces of Moray where we meet our back up team again with our picnic lunch and food and water for the horses. Moray is an enigmatic Inca site where hundreds of years ago, people in this region took four huge natural depressions in the landscape and sculpted them into levels of agricultural terraces that served as an experimental agricultural station for the development of different crop strains. This was possible due to a fascinating phenomenon: the climates of many different ecological zones were present at a single site. In the thirty or so meters of altitude between the bottom and top levels of Moray's main depression, scientist John Earls has recorded a full 15 degrees Celsius (59 deg. F) difference in temperature. That is equal to the difference between the mean annual temperatures of London and Bombay. It is likely that Moray played a key role in the original transformation of maize into a high-altitude crop. There are no great ruined structures in Moray to impress; it is more for the contemplative traveler with an affinity for such phenomena as the Nazca Lines, the stone rings of Avebury and the menhirs of Brittany.

From Moray we continue our ride and descent to the valley floor arriving at Puente Pachar, a bridge that cross the Urubamba River.

Here we will say good bye to our horses as they will be trucked back home. Our car will take you to our ranch to have a refreshing Pisco Sour or cold beer together.

A private car will bring you back to Cusco late in the afternoon.