Data for Lima, Cusco, Machu Picchu and Lake Titicaca, installed before you fly. Peru is on the Americas plan, so the same eSIM crosses into Bolivia at the lake and carries on to Chile or Ecuador. Cusco’s thin air is not our department.
The Peru plan covers Peru only.
The same 10 GB in a package that keeps working past Peru.
16 other countries share the package with Peru. A few of them:
What's included, when it starts, and how to get connected.
Most international flights into Peru land in Lima, whose airport moved into a new terminal on 1 June 2025, and the onward flight to Cusco climbs to 3,399 metres. Two things catch people out: getting out of the terminal, and the altitude at the other end.
Install your onesim eSIM over Wi-Fi and leave the line switched off. Peru wants a passport valid for at least six months from the day you arrive. Book Machu Picchu on the official site, tuboleto.cultura.pe, choosing a circuit and time, then a train to match. Immigration registers you digitally at the airport, so there is no paper card to fill in.
Once the plane is on the ground, open Settings → Mobile Data, switch the onesim line on, pick it for mobile data and turn data roaming on for that line only. That first connection starts the package. Your home SIM stays in the phone with its own roaming off, so calls and texts to your usual number, bank codes included, still reach you.
The new terminal is still reached by temporary bridges, and there is no metro. Use the official taxi desks just outside the baggage hall, a ride-hailing app, or the Airport Express Lima bus, hourly to four stops in Miraflores; ignore offers of a taxi inside the hall. Only changing to another international flight? That has cost a US$11.86 connection fee since December 2025, payable online.
Cusco sits at 3,399 metres, and the first flight of stairs will tell you. Take day one slowly and drink plenty of water, or sleep lower first: Ollantaytambo in the Sacred Valley, a station for the Machu Picchu trains, is at 2,792 metres, and the citadel itself is at about 2,430, almost 1,000 metres below Cusco.
Michael Bond first had his bear arriving from ‘darkest Africa’, until his agent pointed out that there were no bears in Africa. So Paddington became a spectacled bear from ‘darkest Peru’, the only living bear species native to South America. The 2024 film Paddington in Peru finally took him home, with filming partly in Peru. The real ones live in the Andes.
Two Lima restaurants have topped the World’s 50 Best list in three years: Central, in Barranco, in 2023, and Maido, Micha Tsumura’s Nikkei kitchen in Miraflores, in 2025. The everyday version is just as good an argument. In December 2023 UNESCO added the making and eating of ceviche to its intangible heritage list, so give the city at least one lunch before flying on to Cusco.
Both countries call pisco their national drink. Peru has the old port of Pisco, which probably gave the brandy its name, and the pisco sour, invented in Lima in the early 1920s by an American bartender, Victor Morris. Chile makes more of it, and in 1936 renamed the village of La Unión ‘Pisco Elqui’. Order one of each; keep the verdict to yourself.
Since June 2024 every ticket is for one of three circuits and a set route, and straying from it is against the rules. The official list also bans bags over 40 × 35 × 20 cm, food, tripods, selfie sticks, umbrellas, drones, clapping, whistling and singing, and using phone apps in the narrow passages. Break one and you are expelled on the spot, without a refund.
Inca Kola was launched in Lima in 1935 by a British immigrant family, flavoured with lemon verbena and coloured gold; Americans say it tastes like bubblegum. By 1995 it had edged past Coca-Cola in Peru, 32.9% of the market to 32%. In 1999 Coca-Cola stopped fighting and bought into the brand. Try it with chifa, Lima’s Chinese-Peruvian cooking.
Answers about data, coverage and setup for Peru.
Treat it as a bonus, not a plan. Coverage follows the towns, so Cusco, Ollantaytambo and Aguas Calientes are your best bets; the gorge and the trail have long gaps on any network. Save your entry ticket, train tickets and map offline before you leave Cusco. The trail itself closed for maintenance through February 2026 and reopened on 1 March.
Yes. Bolivia is on the Americas plan with Peru, so the road from Puno over the border to Copacabana, and on to La Paz or Uyuni, keeps the same allowance; the phone switches to a Bolivian network after the border. Watch the stamps instead: coming back into Peru by land, make sure you get an entry stamp, because you cannot leave Peru without one.
Probably not, and the eSIM is not the reason. Yape, the payment app with more than 19 million users by its own count, only lets passport holders sign up with a debit card from BCP, a Peruvian bank. Visitors pay by card in hotels, restaurants and chains, and in soles cash at markets and in taxis. The eSIM keeps maps, ride apps and your own banking app working.
