Peru lies at the heart of the Andes, the world's longest mountain range, and it is the great altitudinal range produced by these soaring peaks which makes Peru one of the most geographically diverse countries in the world, with 84 of the world's 104 life zones represented within its territory.

When the Incas built their imperial capital of Cusco they created what would be the culmination of 9,000 years of isolated human development in the Andes.

Just as the Romans in Europe created a monolithic state that incorporated elements from all the cultures that had gone before, the Incas not only conquered, but were also able to govern, an enormous empire with Cusco at its centre - and whereas in Europe all roads were said to lead to Rome, in the Inca empire of Tawantinsuyo, all roads emerged from the capital's main square. Cusco was the core of the greatest empire ever seen in the Andes, one that grew in less than a century from a fertile inter-Andean valley to cover present-day Peru, Ecuador, Chile, Bolivia and Argentina.

Today the Peruvian Andes offer us some of the world's most spectacular highland scenery, inhabited by remote Quechua-speaking communities who retain their ancient traditions of livestock herding, farming and weaving.

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The Andes also offer the traveller endless opportunities for adventure: from white water rafting and mountain biking, to the Inca Trail to Machu Picchu and many other trekking routes.

In the central Peruvian Andes, The Cordillera Blanca is the highest tropical mountain chain on the planet, with more than fifty peaks soaring to over 5,700 metres above sea level, including Huascarán, which at 6,768 metres is the highest mountain in Peru.

Below these permanent snows the possibilities for trekking are endless, through villages where life has gone on unchanged for centuries, across a landscape grazed by llamas and watered by frigid turquoise lakes and steaming thermal springs.

On the high plains bordering Bolivia, Lake Titicaca is the largest tropical lake in the world, covering an area of 8000 square kilometres. Along its seemingly endless shores and on its many green islands, its Quechua and Aymara inhabitants fish its bountiful waters or farm its fertile soils in the manner of their ancestors.

For geologists, Titicaca is a result of plate tectonics, and for the traveller it is an area of astonishing beauty, but for the people of the Andes the lake means much more. It is the site of their creation legend, the place where their history began.