🇵🇪 Peru · The Amazon (Jungle)
Quillabamba is the capital of the province of La Convención, the most important city in the jungle of the department of Cusco. Set at about 1,000 meters of altitude, on the banks of the Vilcanota-Urubamba river, it has a warm, humid climate that makes it the 'city of eternal summer' for people from Cusco, who come down from the cold highlands for its sun, its rivers and its lush tropical vegetation. Its name, of Quechua origin, is usually translated as 'plain of the moon'.
It is the heart of a fertile, productive valley: land of coffee —famous across the country—, of cacao, traditional coca, achiote, citrus and no end of tropical fruit trees. Around it spread waterfalls, natural swimming spots on the rivers, viewpoints and coffee and adventure routes. Quillabamba is also the gateway to remote destinations in the Cusco jungle, such as the Apurímac-Ene valley and the route to Vilcabamba, the last refuge of the Incas.
This guide runs through the essentials of Quillabamba in a practical, warm way: what the city and its climate are like, which waterfalls, swimming spots and viewpoints to visit, how to get into the world of coffee and cacao, what nature and Inca-history trips the area offers, where to sleep and eat and how to get there from Cusco. It is an authentic destination, far from crowded, ideal for feeling the high jungle of Cusco.
Quillabamba grew as the center of the settlement of the Cusco high jungle: a region of estates given over to coffee, sugar cane and fruit trees, in valleys that already in Inca times connected Cusco with the Amazon. In the mid-twentieth century the province of La Convención was the stage for the great peasant struggles that came before Peru's land reform. Not far away lies Vilcabamba, the stronghold where the Incas resisted the Spanish after the fall of Cusco. For decades the legendary 'train to Quillabamba' linked it with the highlands, until a flash flood cut the line. The full story is on our history page.
Read the full history ↓The 'navel of the world': capital of the Inca empire and today the archaeological capital of the Americas, gateway to Machu Picchu, the Sacred Valley and the Vilcanota range.
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Origins, formation and what the sources say.
The area where Quillabamba stands today was, from pre-Hispanic times, a privileged point of contact between the Andean world and the Amazon. The high jungle of the Urubamba valley, with its warm, humid climate, produced goods highly prized by the societies of the highlands: coca leaf, tropical fruit, bird feathers, timber and medicinal plants. The Incas, whose capital, Cusco, lay a few days' journey away, knew and made use of these valleys, folding them into their exchange network and their territorial rule.
The name Quillabamba itself is of Quechua origin and is usually read as 'plain of the moon', which reflects the deep Andean root of the region despite its jungle character. Inca roads connected the Cusco highlands with this high jungle, letting products and people flow between very different ecosystems. That condition of frontier and bridge between two worlds is a constant in the history of the valley.
Being close to the heart of the Inca Empire would also have a far-reaching historical consequence: when Inca power collapsed in Cusco before the Spanish, it was precisely these neighboring jungle valleys —the region of Vilcabamba, in the same province of La Convención— that offered the last refuge to the Inca resistance, in an episode that would mark the memory of the area forever.
One of the most dramatic chapters in Peruvian history was written in the jungle valleys near Quillabamba. After the capture and death of the Inca Atahualpa and the Spanish occupation of Cusco, Manco Inca, who had at first been crowned as a puppet Inca by the conquistadors, rose in revolt and, after laying siege to Cusco without success, fell back to the inhospitable region of Vilcabamba, deep in the high jungle. There he founded an independent Inca state that would resist the Spanish for almost forty years.
In the depths of the jungle, the Incas of Vilcabamba —Manco Inca and, after his death, his sons Sayri Túpac, Titu Cusi Yupanqui and Túpac Amaru I— kept the imperial institution alive, built settlements and harried the Spanish from there. The region, hard to reach, mountainous and covered in vegetation, was a natural shield that prolonged the resistance. The center of this kingdom was the city of Vilcabamba la Grande, identified today with the archaeological site of Espíritu Pampa.
The resistance ended in 1572, when the troops of Viceroy Francisco de Toledo captured the last Inca, Túpac Amaru I, who was taken to Cusco and executed, bringing the Inca dynasty to an end. That is why the province of La Convención, with Quillabamba as its capital, holds a special place in Peru's historical memory: it is the land where the Inca Empire fought its last battle. The sites of Vilcabamba, hidden today in the jungle, still draw researchers and travelers fascinated by that saga.
During the colonial and republican eras, the La Convención valley was settled through large haciendas that used the tropical climate to grow sugar cane, coca, fruit and, above all as time went on, coffee, which would become the emblematic product of the region. Quillabamba grew as the commercial and administrative center of this farming valley, a collection point and a way station for the harvests that came down from the slopes and then went up towards Cusco.
The hacienda system imposed harsh conditions on the tenants and peasants who worked the land. In the mid-twentieth century, La Convención became one of the main focal points of peasant organizing in Peru: peasants unionized and fought for better conditions and for ownership of the land. These movements, which had a big national impact, were a direct precursor of the land reform that, from 1969, dismantled the haciendas and handed the land to the peasants.
After the reform, the valley reorganized around small and medium producers, many of them grouped in coffee cooperatives that, over the years, took La Convención coffee to the front rank of the country's best. Coffee, cacao and fruit trees became the livelihood and the identity of Quillabamba, a hardworking, warm jungle city proud of what it grows.
For much of the twentieth century, Quillabamba was linked to Cusco by a railway that came down from the highlands, passing beside Machu Picchu and following the course of the Urubamba river into the jungle. The 'train to Quillabamba' was a key piece of work for the region: travelers came down its rails to the city and coffee, fruit and the valley's other products went up towards Cusco. For several generations of people from Cusco, that train was part of everyday life and of the way they imagined the high jungle.
The railway turned Quillabamba into a busy, well-connected end of the line, and strengthened the tie between the high jungle and the Andean capital. But the same rivers and rains that give the valley life also bring dangers: the flash floods and huaicos, frequent in the Urubamba basin, damaged the track from time to time.
A major flash flood ended up cutting the stretch of railway that reached Quillabamba, and the train connection to the city was never fully restored, leaving rail service limited to the tourist stretch to Machu Picchu. Since then, Quillabamba has depended on road transport —crossing the abra Málaga— to connect with Cusco. The memory of the train, though, is still alive in the area as a symbol of a time when the Cusco jungle seemed a little closer to the highlands.