Originally Posted by Darren

My personal opinion is to spend no days in Lima and all in Cusco. Not that there is anything inherently wrong with Lima, but it's a large, South American city. And not a terribly interesting one at that. There are a few museums, a nice beach area, a few casinos. If you were asking whether to to spend 6 days in Cusco and 2 in Lima or similar, my answer would be different. But there is enough to do in Cusco to kill five days with the travel time and with the trip to Macchu Picchu.

Keep in mind because a lot of people don't realize, (unless it changed in the past two years) it's going to take you a minimum of two days to do MP under any circumstance other than a pre organized tour or a pre-reserved ticket. Either you're hoofing it, which is going to take you more than two days, or you're taking the train. You must purchase your ticket for the train at least the day before. If it's sold out, it's sold out. You wait until the next day. But you cannot just show up and hop on board or go to the office the morning of departure. MP is minimum a full day trip since the train goes in the morning and returns in the evening. Obviously it is more than a day if you decide to overnight there or nearby.

As far as Cusco is concerned, there is a surprising lack of good guide books for the area. Lonely Planet is crap and horribly inaccurate. I picked up a good guide book, but I got it somewhere in South America. Quite possibly in Lima or Cusco itself. The only one worth anything is the Footprint guide, which is actually very acceptable. At least its generally accurate, which can't be said for any LP guide I have seen, especially the notoriously bad South American series. In any event, there are a number of things to do in and around Cusco that a good guidebook will mention. Good luck.