Peru Culture and Etiquette Guide

Language

Spanish is what you will hear in the cities. Quechua, the language of the Inca state, is spoken by millions of people, particularly in the southern highlands around Cusco, and Aymara around Lake Titicaca. Peru has dozens of indigenous languages in total, mostly in the Amazon.

Almost nobody expects a visitor to speak Quechua, and a few words are received warmly precisely because so few visitors try. Allillanchu as a greeting and sulpayki for thank you will be understood around Cusco. Spanish beyond hello and thank you goes a long way outside the tourist centers, where English is much less common than in Lima.

Greetings and forms of address

A handshake on first meeting. Between women, or between a man and a woman who know each other, a single kiss on the right cheek. Senor and senora with a surname are normal with anyone older or in any official setting, and using them is a small effort that is noticed.

Peruvian conversation is generally warmer and less direct than North American conversation. Business and practical matters are usually approached after some conversation rather than immediately, and abruptness reads as rudeness rather than efficiency.

Photography

This is where most visitors go wrong, and it matters more in Peru than in many places because so much of what people photograph is people.

• Ask before photographing anybody, especially in markets and in highland villages. A woman in traditional dress with a llama in the Plaza de Armas is working, and expects a small payment. That is a transaction, not an imposition, and it is entirely reasonable.
• Never photograph anything military. It is illegal and carries a prison sentence of two to five years. That includes installations, vehicles and personnel.
• Ask before photographing inside a church, and expect the answer to be no in many of them.
• Do not photograph protests. Foreign nationals are prohibited from taking part in political activity, and being visible with a camera at one is a poor position to be in.

Dress

Peruvians in cities dress neatly, and dressing scruffily reads as a lack of respect rather than as informality. For churches and religious sites, cover shoulders and knees. In the highlands the practical and the polite align: it is cold, and a warm layer is both.

Cuzco is a living city, not a site

Cuzco was inscribed on the World Heritage List in 1983. It sits at 3,400 meters, and under Pachacuteq in the fifteenth century it was rebuilt as the capital of the Tawantinsuyu, the Inca state. The pre Hispanic street pattern and the Inca stonework, including the Qoricancha, are still visible in the modern city.

What follows from that is simple: the walls along the streets are the monument. Do not climb on Inca stonework, do not lean gear against it, and treat the narrow lanes of San Blas as somewhere people live, because they are.

Buying things

Bargaining is expected in markets and not in shops, and it should be good humored and brief. In the Sacred Valley markets you are frequently buying directly from the person who made the textile, and hard bargaining over a small sum with a weaver is not a good look.

Buying from cooperatives and from the makers themselves keeps the money where the skill is. Handwoven textiles take a very long time to make, and the price of the machine made version in the next stall is not a comparison.

A short list of things to get right

• Carry identification at all times. The police may ask for it.
• Ask before you photograph a person, and pay if it is someone's living.
• Learn por favor, gracias and disculpe, and use them constantly.
• Do not call the country's indigenous people by the name of an empire. Quechua and Aymara are peoples and languages; Inca was a state, and a title.
• Accept mate de coca when it is offered; it is hospitality.
• Do not bargain in a restaurant or over a fixed price.
• Tip a trekking crew properly. See our Peru currency and money guide.

Verify before you travel

Local expectations vary by region, and a guide from the community you are visiting is a better source than any page. Ask.

Sources

• UK Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office: Peru safety and security: protests and strikes and their effect on the southern railways, street crime in Lima, Cusco and Arequipa, robbery by criminals posing as taxi drivers at Jorge Chavez airport and the bus terminals, express kidnapping, counterfeit notes and the withdrawn intis passed by street changers in Cusco, methanol in spirit drinks, the requirement to carry identification, the prohibition on photographing military sites, the illegality of carrying coca leaf out of the country, driving and overnight bus standards, the rainy season from November to May, and the earthquake and volcanic risk. Accessed 16 September 2026.
• UNESCO World Heritage Centre: the inscription of the City of Cuzco in 1983, recording the city at 3,400 meters, its remodelling under Pachacuteq in the fifteenth century as the capital of the Tawantinsuyu, and the Inca stone construction of the Qoricancha and the surviving pre-Hispanic street pattern. Accessed 16 September 2026.
• UNESCO World Heritage Centre: Peru's State Party record: thirteen properties inscribed on the World Heritage List, nine cultural, two natural and two mixed, and the ratification of the Convention on 24 February 1982. Accessed 16 September 2026.