Follow the Pacific coast and you encounter desert landscapes, fishing villages, ancient civilisations and a food culture that has earned worldwide recognition. Travel inland and the Andes rise dramatically, revealing high-altitude valleys, snow-covered peaks and communities where traditions, languages and beliefs have been passed from one generation to the next. Continue east and the mountains give way to the Amazon, where rivers become roads and one of the richest ecosystems on earth unfolds around you. What makes Peru remarkable, however, is not simply the variety of its landscapes. It is the way past and present exist alongside one another.