Sacred Valley Tour

Today we did a tour to the Sacred Valley – mainly through Pisac and Ollantaytambo.  Many of the tours start in Cusco and would return you there, but since we plan to get on the train at Ollantaytambo to bring us into Aguas Calientes we weren’t returning and had to bring all of our things.

This day was quite a nerve racking day for me.

We had no problems with visiting the ruins at Pisac and their main market.  We had a great time walking around the ruins and looking out over all of the terraces.  They actually used them for agriculture, which is sort of crazy to think of since this terrain is so mountainous and the altitude is so high – but it worked.  We even had time to do a little shopping in the Pisac market!

We had lunch on our way to Ollantaytambo – where we had our first taste of Inca Cola.  We decided to share a bottle and ended up giving it away to one of the kids on our trip because neither of us liked it. 

Now here is where it gets stressful – we had to take a different bus to bring us to town or our guide thought we would miss our train.  So she flagged down a different tour bus and we hopped aboard with all of our things.  There were no seats, so we sat on the steps of the bus right next to the driver.  They also only spoke Spanish.  When we were getting into town – traffic was crazy and the bus was never going to make it in time.  So one of the guys took us off the bus with our bags and ran us through traffic into town to get us to the train station.  Luckily we just made the train in time. 

Our seats were amazing, and the scenery was beautiful our whole way to Aguas Calientes.  We could even see some of the spots where the train tracks were washed away in the mudslides from the previous year. 

Aguas Calientes is a quaint little town, but it’s only busy because of the people going to Machu Picchu.  We made sure to get our bus tickets for tomorrow morning that would take us up to the Machu Picchu gate.  It’s going to be an early morning!

Hola desde Perú

Hola everyone!

Mesa & I have safely made it to Peru. We didn't send an update yesterday because we basically sat in airports and that's nothing interesting to write home about.

We are currently in the city of Cusco, and have had quite the day!

We took a quick nap and a cup of some Coca Leaf Tea we ventured out of the hostel to go out and conquer the day. 

We spent time in the Plaza de Armas and enjoyed the beautiful fountains and benches. You could sit there and 20 people will come up and offer to sell you things from hats, paintings, & seeds for the pigeons. This area is basically the heart of Cusco and seemed to be where all of the locals spent their day.

We also walked into the Cathedral. But there was a wedding going on! We actually saw about 6 different sets of wedding couples taking pictures throughout the Plaza de Armas!

After this we decided to hike all the way up to the ruins at Sacsayhuamon! These are ruins that tower over the city of Cusco and are probably Peru's 2nd most important Inca monument, after Machu Picchu of course. This was a difficult hike because of the altitude- but totally worth it. Cusco is at an elevation of about 3,300 m (10,800 ft for you people back home) and since we had only been in the city for a few hours, we were not accustomed to it and had to stop and catch our breath every few steps.

The ruins had huge stones (the largest is said to be around 361 tons).  But the view was just as spectacular! Also up near the ruins was this large White Jesus statue that overlooks the city which we also hiked to.

The morning and evening have been cool but the day was perfect. Food is good, hostel is amazing and so far we are having a fabulous time.

The pictures are us with our Coca Leaf tea, from our hike to the ruins (we were only about halfway there), and us with a llama that we met on our path! 

From beautiful South America, Xoxo!