Book Aguas Calientes tours, attraction & transfer tickets

Few towns anywhere in the world carry quite the weight of expectation that Aguas Calientes does. Sitting at roughly 2,040 metres above sea level in a narrow gorge carved by the Urubamba River, this small Peruvian settlement in the Cusco region exists, in the minds of most visitors, as the final staging post before one of the most celebrated archaeological sites on earth. Machu Picchu looms above it, quite literally, and the town has shaped itself entirely around that proximity. Yet Aguas Calientes is not merely a corridor to somewhere else; it has its own particular atmosphere, compressed and intense, with cloud forest pressing in on all sides and the sound of the river constant beneath everything.

The town takes its name, meaning hot waters, from the thermal baths that have drawn travellers here long before the Inca citadel above became a global destination. Those baths remain, fed by natural springs, and after a long day of walking at altitude they serve a genuinely practical purpose. The central market area and the Plaza de Armas are compact enough to cover on foot in an afternoon, and the streets running up from the railway tracks hold a concentration of restaurants and small hotels that cater to the steady flow of visitors arriving by train from Ollantaytambo or, less commonly, on foot along the Inca Trail.