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Photo by Diego Delso, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons.
Machu Picchu in August
sweet spot · one of the best months to go
The year in Machu Picchu
Tap a month for its page
- JanJMachu Picchu in January: avoid
- FebFMachu Picchu in February: avoid
- MarMMachu Picchu in March: avoid
- AprAMachu Picchu in April: ok
- MayMMachu Picchu in May: good
- JunJMachu Picchu in June: sweet spot
- JulJMachu Picchu in July: good, busy
- AugAMachu Picchu in August: sweet spot
- SepSMachu Picchu in September: ok
- OctOMachu Picchu in October: avoid
- NovNMachu Picchu in November: avoid
- DecDMachu Picchu in December: avoid
- Sweet spot
- Good
- OK
- Avoid
- Busy
Plan this trip
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Flights from
Flights
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Where to stay
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Luxury
Things to do
Car hire
Travel insurance
Check whether your bank card or home insurance already covers this trip.
If the trip needs a visa, the travel agent or visa centre usually sells the cover it asks for.
Mobile data (eSIM)
Your own plan's EU roaming may already cover this.
Renting a pocket Wi-Fi is the other common way to stay connected.
These are sites people in book with. Each opens in a new tab, on the site's own pages.
The numbers
| Daily high | 22°C |
|---|---|
| Nightly low | 11°C |
| Feels like, afternoon | 23°C |
| Rainy days, 1 mm or more | 10 · 80 mm |
| Humidity | 74% |
| Sunshine | 10.6 h/day |
| Daylight | 11.7 h/day |
| Crowds | 100 / 100, higher is quieter |
Ten-year averages for this calendar month. A rainy day is one with at least 1 mm of rain, as a weather station counts it. The model these figures come from drizzles more than a rain gauge, the more so the warmer the month, so its days count from 2 mm, rising to 5 mm in the hottest.
Weather read at Aguas Calientes, below the ruins: ten years of ERA5 and ERA5-Land reanalysis, through Open-Meteo's open data.
How busy it gets
Public holidays in August
Holidays crowd a place out and push fares up around them; they count toward the crowd score above.
Machu Picchu in pictures
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Martin St-Amant (S23678), CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons
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Pierre André Leclercq, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons
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Diego Delso, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons
What to pack
- Warm layers for the evenings, which drop to about 11°C.
- A packable rain jacket for the 10 or so rainy days.
- Sun protection: about 11 hours of sunshine a day.
Each line is a threshold over the ten-year figures above, not advice from anywhere else.
Before you go
Type A and B and C plugs at 220 V. Drives on the right. The currency is the Nuevo sol. UK Foreign Office: avoid all but essential travel to parts. Global Affairs Canada: Exercise a high degree of caution (with regional advisories). US State Department: Level 2: Exercise Increased Caution. Everything for Peru: cost of living, languages, emergency numbers and health.
On arrival in Machu Picchu: the apps, paying, getting around, tipping and the emergency numbers.
August elsewhere
In August from
The other months at Machu Picchu
Links marked Ad pay us a commission if you book through one, at no extra cost to you. That does not affect the numbers on this page, which are computed before any link is built.