Faena Rose × West Zephyr · A Patron Expedition

From the high Andes to the flooded forest

Seven nights from eleven thousand feet down to three hundred: three in the Sacred Valley, one in a Cusco palace built on Inca walls, and three aboard a riverboat with no one else on it.

When8 to 15 May 2027

Group12 to 20 members, 2 hosts

Length7 nights

The riverThe whole boat, yours

The thread

Peru, from the peaks to the flood

Peru is stacked: the Andes on top, the Amazon at the bottom, and the people at each end have almost nothing in common except what they grow, and what ends up on the table. This journey goes from one end to the other in seven nights, through the people who farm it, weave it, cook it and keep it.

The mountain. The Sacred Valley, where the mountain is still woven into cloth and the old ceremonies are still kept. A Q'ero paqo opening the journey in offering to the peaks. Manuel Choqque, farming native potatoes in ruby, indigo and amethyst for the kitchens at Mil and Central, and fermenting wine from oca. Nilda Callañaupa's weavers, still dyeing with lichen and cochineal. Then one night in Cusco, in a colonial palace built on Inca walls, and a private dinner for the group.

The river. Sea level, in flood. Between December and May the forest goes under and the skiffs travel where there is no ground, into channels that are dry footpaths by September. The ribereño communities of Pacaya-Samiria live on a thirty-foot annual tide and have built an entire calendar around it. At Nueva Arica, a Kukama-Kukamiria village deep enough into the reserve that few boats reach it, forty species of stingless bee are kept against thousands of flowering plants, for a honey that does not leave the river. The approach is what people remember: as the skiff comes in, hundreds of birds lift off the water and fly alongside it.

Not a tour. A run of private tables: a friend's house in the valley, a lunch cooked in the ground on a farm, a private dinner in Cusco, and a boat with no other passengers.

Explora Valle Sagrado's long terracotta-roofed wings on a green hillside above a field of red amaranth, Andean peaks behind — The mountain · the Sacred Valley

Guests and a guide aboard a small skiff on a still Amazon river at sunset — The river · Pacaya-Samiria

The arc

An altitude curve that respects the body

Land in Cusco and go straight down to the Sacred Valley, which sits lower and does the acclimatizing for you. Up to Cusco for a single night once the body has adjusted, then one long day of flying, through Lima, into the Amazon at three hundred feet.

The route · 7 nights

Mountain, then flooded forest. One flying day, connecting through Lima, and the highest night of the trip is the fourth, not the first. Home from Lima.

Day by day

From the valley to the flooded forest

Saturday 8 to Saturday 15 May 2027, built around the Wednesday 12 May sailing, when the boat is yours alone.

Sat 8 May

The offeringArrive Cusco and transfer straight down to the Sacred Valley, which sits lower and does the acclimatizing for you. A picnic lunch on the way. In the afternoon, a despacho with a Q'ero paqo, an offering to the mountains from one of the last lineages to keep the old ceremony. Welcome dinner.

Explora Valle Sagrado

Dining room with a wall of wood-framed windows onto farm fields and the valley's mountains

Sun 9 May

Salt, terraces, and the research kitchenThe salt pans at Maras early, harvested by the same families since before the Inca, then the walk down through the village to the concentric terraces at Moray. Lunch at Mil, Virgilio Martínez's kitchen and research station above the terraces. Dinner in a friend's home in town, which we will leave as a surprise.

Explora Valle Sagrado

Mon 10 May

Choose your trackChoose in the morning: Ollantaytambo and the climb to Pumamarca, or the Seminario pottery studio and a curator-led hour in the Alqa museum, with a Peruvian wine tasting. Both end at the same table for a pachamanca lunch on a farm, cooked in the ground, with Nilda Callañaupa's weavers from Chinchero. A private dinner for the group at Explora.

Explora Valle Sagrado

Tue 11 May

From the farm to the loomA morning walk, then Manuel Choqque's farm: native potatoes in colors that do not look like food, his oca wines, and a four-course lunch paired with them. Afternoon at the weaving workshop in Chinchero, where the dye is still lichen and cochineal. Into Cusco by early evening with time to rest, then a private dinner for the group in Cusco.

Belmond Palacio Nazarenas

Wed 12 May

Down to the water worldAn early start: the 7:10 am flight out of Cusco lands in Lima at 8:45, and the 11:30 on to Iquitos, the largest city on earth you cannot drive to, lands at 1:20 pm. One booking the whole way, bags checked through to Iquitos, and our team at the Lima connection. An hour and forty-five minutes by road to Nauta, and aboard by early evening. Briefing in the Jungle Lounge, dinner as the boat settles.

Pure Amazon

Thu 13 May

The village at the end of the waterOut before breakfast by skiff on a blackwater creek, where the red howler monkeys start up at dawn. In the afternoon, further into the reserve than most boats go, to Nueva Arica: forty species of stingless bee worked against thousands of flowering plants, a honey that never leaves the river, and an hour with people who will tell you how a year works when the water moves thirty feet. Coming in, the birds lift off the water ahead of the skiff and fly alongside it.

Pure Amazon

Fri 14 May

The reserve at first lightSunrise by skiff in the flooded forest, looking for macaws, toucans, howler monkeys and the occasional giant river otter. In May the water is high enough to take the skiffs right in among the giant lily pads. Swimming and kayaking in the blackwater after lunch, which is safe here in a way the brown water is not. After dark, a skiff with a spotlight: caiman eyes, night herons, bats, and the noise. Which channels you take is set on the day by the guides, because the water moves week to week.

Pure Amazon

Sat 15 May

Out through NautaDisembark after breakfast. The market at Nauta with your guide, then the Museum of Indigenous Amazonian Cultures. Transfer to Iquitos for the 2:00 pm flight, landing in Lima at 3:50, where the journey ends and our team meets you for the connection home.

Ends Lima

What it gives you

Mountain to river, in an order the body accepts. Down to the valley first, the one high night fourth, then the river.
Seven nights, nothing in between. No city stop in the middle. Members who want Lima add it before or after.
The whole boat is yours. Twelve rooms, twenty-two berths, chartered for the group alone. No strangers at dinner, and no other group on the skiffs.
Spring is the flood. The forest is underwater and the skiffs travel where, in September, people walk.

What it asks of you

The river leg runs to its own program. We shape what happens aboard, not where the boat goes.
One long travel day. Cusco to Lima to Iquitos on the 12th, starting with a 7:10 am flight, then the road to Nauta. There is no road into the Amazon from the mountains.
Cusco gets one night, on purpose. It is the highest point of the trip, so it comes after three nights in the valley rather than first. Enough for the palace and a long dinner, not for the city's museums.
This is the Amazon from the water. Skiffs, a shaded deck, air conditioning at night. Comfort and immersion pull against each other, and this journey chooses comfort.

In May the skiffs travel where, in September, people walk.

Pacaya-Samiria · the high-water months

The addresses

Every overnight is a destination in itself

Explora Valle Sagrado

The mountain · Sacred Valley · 9,500 ft · 3 nights

A lodge on a 32-hectare former corn estate near Urubamba, in long low wings by the Chilean architect José Cruz Ovalle. Standard rooms are 430 square feet, with a soaking tub and the corn and the mountains in the window. The spa is a seventeenth-century colonial house restored with Peru’s Archaeology Institute, with an outdoor pool and two hot tubs in its garden.

Three nights here rather than two is deliberate. Cusco sits higher again, and it is an easier arrival on the fourth night than on the first.

RoomsStandard

Altitude9,500 ft

The mountain · 3 nights

Explora Valle Sagrado

A former corn estate below Urubamba

Belmond Palacio Nazarenas

Cusco · 11,150 ft · 1 night

A colonial palace built on Inca foundations, a Jesuit college from 1644 and later a convent, restored by Belmond and reopened in 2012. Every one of its fifty-five suites is oxygen-enriched against the altitude. The group stays in Junior and Studio Suites; the Junior Suites sit in the oldest part of the house. Its courtyard holds the only heated outdoor pool in Cusco, and the restaurant, Mauka, is Pía León’s. In 2026 it ranked fifty-fourth on the World’s 50 Best Hotels extended list.

One night is deliberate. It is the highest night of the trip, and a private dinner takes the evening.

RoomsJunior and Studio Suites

Altitude11,150 ft

Cusco · 1 night

Palacio Nazarenas

A palace on Inca walls, in the old city

III

Pure Amazon

The river · Pacaya-Samiria · 3 nights afloat

A 157-foot riverboat launched in 2025. Ten suites on the upper deck at 269 square feet with panoramic windows, two smaller cabins below, twenty-two guests at capacity and one crew member for each of them. There is a spa, a pool, a gym and a map room with spotting scopes.

It works into Pacaya-Samiria, the largest protected flooded forest on earth, at eight thousand square miles. Excursions run twice a day in nine-seat skiffs, plus kayaks and swimming in the blackwater. Every meal and every drink aboard is included.

The boat is chartered whole for the group, all twelve rooms, at every group size the trip runs. No other passengers at any number.

Rooms12

Capacity22 guests

Launched2025

The river · 3 nights afloat

Pure Amazon

Twelve rooms, and all of them yours

What it costs

Net wholesale, everything on the ground

The rate Faena Rose pays West Zephyr, per person in US dollars, from arrival in Cusco on 8 May to the airport in Lima on 15 May: every hotel, the riverboat, the internal flights and every private experience in the program. International flights are arranged by each member's own travel office.

Members bookedShared roomSolo room

13 or more members7 nights, three of them afloat, with the whole boat chartered for the group

$15,011net, per person sharing

$17,941net, per person, room alone

12 membersThe same journey and the same boat

$16,161net, per person sharing

$19,091net, per person, room alone

The price holds whatever the mix of shared and solo rooms. Below twelve members the trip does not run. Pablo travels as our guest. Soraya pays for the land only, $5,570 to $5,960 depending on the final group size; her place on the boat is included. The boat takes up to twenty members with Pablo and Soraya, and its twelve rooms set the number of solo rooms: up to two at twenty members, four at eighteen, six at sixteen, seven at fifteen, eight at fourteen.

Lima, before or after: $3,950 per person sharing, $4,550 in a room alone. Two nights at the InterContinental Real Lima Miraflores in an ocean-view room on the upper floors, with private airport transfers. A walk through Barranco and dinner at Central; a market visit with a chef, then a cooking lunch at their oceanfront apartment; a private visit to the Larco Museum with one of its collection experts, and dinner at Café del Museo. Members add it in pairs or small groups, either 6 to 8 May or 15 to 17 May. Restaurants are subject to availability.

Fine print, plainly

What the number does and does not cover

Included

All accommodation as listed, shared or solo as booked
All flights within Peru: Cusco to Iquitos through Lima on the 12th, and Iquitos to Lima on the 15th
All ground transfers, in private vehicles
Two private guides and two vehicles in the Andes, so the group can split where a place is small; the boat's own naturalists on the river
All meals as described, including lunch at Mil, the private dinners at Explora and in Cusco, and all drinks aboard the riverboat
Every experience named in the itinerary, privately arranged
Reserve and site entrance fees
Emergency medical evacuation from the riverboat

Not included

International flights to and from Peru
Travel insurance, which we require
Gratuities
Spa treatments, and anything from the boutique aboard
Meals not described in the itinerary, and drinks off the boat beyond those described
Early check-in, late check-out, and a hotel room on the final afternoon
Nights in Lima before or after the trip (the optional extension above)

Getting there

Members fly themselves into Cusco and home out of Lima. Open jaw, so nobody backtracks. Most flights from the United States reach Lima late at night, so the easy pattern is to arrive in Lima on 7 May and take the morning flight up to Cusco on the 8th, or to come a few days early and see Lima first.

The Iquitos flight lands back in Lima at 3:50 pm on the 15th, and most flights north leave late in the evening. Lima hotels charge a full night for an afternoon room; for members who want one, we will arrange it. We send a routing note with the recommended flights once the dates are confirmed.

The flights inside the trip, Cusco to Iquitos through Lima on the 12th and Iquitos to Lima on the 15th, are included, booked for the group as one reservation. Airlines adjust timetables, and we confirm times when the tickets are issued.

The Patron format

A new tier of partnership

Patron is West Zephyr's format for community-led brands with audiences that deserve founders-grade execution. We operate. You host. The seams disappear.

What West Zephyr does

Full operational responsibility. Working directly with our partners on the ground in Peru, contracting every hotel, the vessel and every flight, leading the guide team, programming every cultural experience, managing pre-trip logistics and responding to anything that comes up in country. We disappear into the operation.

What Faena Rose does

Audience access. Brand presence. Your community lead travels as the trip's host, the audience-facing principal who carries the room, the one who knows the members, the human face of the journey. Marketing and member communications. Pricing decisions for the retail side.

What members receive

An expedition designed and operated to the standard West Zephyr applies to its own private founder-led trips, hosted by the Faena Rose voice they already trust. Patron-tier access throughout, in places that do not take groups.

Three decisions, and we hold the space

The dates. 8 to 15 May 2027, built on the 12 May sailing. Your yes on the dates lets us contract the boat and the hotels for the group.

How many. Twelve to twenty members. The price holds from thirteen up and steps up at twelve; below twelve the trip does not run. The boat is the group's alone at every size.

Then we hold it. With the dates and a target number, we contract the boat and the hotels and send Faena Rose the agreement with its payment schedule.

Talk it through