For our actual visit to Machu Picchu I decided to turn the planning over to someone else and I booked a highly recommended two day Sacred Valley/Machu Picchu tour. I know booking with a tour group can limit some of the time that you have to do things, but I’m SO thankful we did it this way. We had the best two days!! It was so easy. They reserved entry, all tickets and transportation, and even reserved our hotel for the one night in Aguas Calientes.
Before the tour guide picked us up on December 31st, Matt went on his morning walk (even Matt can’t run that well at that high altitude) up to the Statue of Christ on a hill above Cusco. Here are some of the pictures he took while out. He had an amazing view of the city.
The tour company picked us up at 7:25AM. Unfortunately our hotel didn’t have much breakfast before then but we got some toast and headed on our way. There were eight other people, so12 in all. We were the last to be picked up so once we got in, we headed our way to the Sacred Valley.The first stop on our tour was at an alpaca reserve where they take care of all the different types of camels- Alpaca, lama, huanaco, and vicuña. We had so much fun here! We had totally forgotten this was part of the tour, so it felt like it was a fun bonus. It was great seeing and learning about all the different types of camels, what they are used for and how their fur is used, or not used, in textiles. We also got to feed them. That was pretty exciting.
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| Look at this character! |
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| The babies were SO cute and SO soft! |
They also had several other exhibits like demonstrations for dyeing the wool, a giant condor, and guinea pigs at this place. They, of course, are raising the cuy (guinea pigs) for their dinners.
Our next stop was an amazing overlook view of Sacred Valley. It was so beautiful!
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Their homes are just built along the hillsides with their Alpacas roaming free.
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I didn’t realize how large of an area that the Sacred Valley actually was, but it’s definitely miles and miles. We went to several different towns within the Sacred Valley. One of our first stops was a silver shop where we learned how they use real silver and make jewelry. It was just a store so we can buy some jewelry, but I took the bait and got a pretty pair of earrings. Driving on the roads through the valley was very bumpy. We were at the back of the van since we were the last to be picked up and we definitely had a wild ride all day long.
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| Dave and Ann-Marie outside the silver shop |
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| Cool wooden door we saw |
Next we stopped for a buffet lunch. We went to this really fancy buffet that had all of the traditional Peruvian foods, including roasted cuy-guinea pig and alpaca stew. I was not brave enough to try the alpaca stew, but I did try some of the guinea pig. It tasted OK- kind of a mix between pork and chicken although it was hard to eat because of all the small bones.
Our next stop was probably the coolest part, but also the most difficult. We stopped at the ancient Inca archaeological site at Pisac. There we climbed some of the terraces that the Inca people made years ago. They use the terraces for farming, but with these ruins there were also houses and a sun temple at the top. The whole mountain side was filled with them. It was a lot of steps and the high altitude made it difficult to climb, but by being slow and steady, we made it to the top and the view was very worth it. It was so nice to have Fabricio, our guide, there to tell us about everything we were seeing. He told us all the history and traditions. We for sure learned 10x more with him than we would have by just touring the place on our own.
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| Ancient Inca grain storage buildings on the mountainside |
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| Steps they used for the terraces |
After coming down from climbing the ruins, we walked to the train station, which was just a short walk away. After a short rest at the station we got on the trains to start the journey to Aguas Calientes. It was an hour and a half train ride. The ride was beautiful going through the mountains and jungle.
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| The Proctors with Jen and Ben from England |
Aguas Calientes was such a cool city! The train station is in the middle of a large market. The tour company had a person waiting to walk us to our hotel. All of us in the tour we’re staying in the same hotel so that was pretty cool. We quickly become friends with the other people on our tour. We had one couple that was from Australia, one couple that was from England, one couple that was from the Czech Republic and one couple that was from Albuquerque, New Mexico (so fun right?) and then the four of us.
Aguas Calientes is such a beautiful city. It is very small and just settled right in between very very large mountains. There are two rivers that go that intersect the city. Our hotel was right by one of them. In fact, our hotel had the train rails on one side and the river on the other side. Lucky for us, our hotel room overlooked the river. The Proctor’s hotel room was right next to the train rail.
This video shows the view from our hotel room. It was loud and beautiful made sleeping much easier. In fact at one point Matt turned to me and said “hey how do we turn off this fan? It’s a little loud” and I just laughed at him and I said it’s the river we can’t turn it off. Sadly the Proctors were woken up several times by fireworks and trains coming in. We couldn’t hear any of it over the sound of the river
After getting settled in at the hotel for a little bit, we set out to walk around the town and get some dinner. It was New Year’s Eve. It was so cool being able to spend New Year’s Eve in another country. The town was decorated and all prepared for the new year.
All the storekeepers were putting out yellow balloons and yellow streamers everywhere in preparation of the celebrations that night. Unfortunately, we had a pick up time at 5:40 in the morning so we were not going to be staying up until midnight. But lucky for us there were still celebrations going on even before we had to go to bed. We passed by one of the bridges in town and these little kids were lighting fireworks and just having the time of their lives. It was pretty hilarious. I think their parents were shop owners close by. Here’s the video
For our New Year’s Eve dinner, we didn’t do anything terribly fancy. We just wanted something easy on our stomachs so we got sandwiches at the shop. In Cusco and Aguas Calientes there are a lot of street dogs around. When we went into the restaurant to eat a cute dog followed us and sleet under our table. When the waiter came, she shooed the dog out. However as soon as the waiter left, the dog came right back in and right back under the table it was pretty cute.
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