The Lares Valley and Machu Picchu

 Where to start with our tour of the Lares valley in Peru and our visit to Machu Picchu.

We landed in Cusco, the tourist mecca for trekking and visiting the Sacred Valley and Machu Picchu.  Cusco is a very old city that pre-dates even the Inca empire.  Its high elevation (3,300 metres) makes it an excellent place to acclimatize for high altitude hiking.

Cusco

The city is full of wonderful old Inca buildings, Spanish cathedrals, and narrow cobbled streets.  This is overlaid with a massive tourist population, hordes of hawkers and touts, blocks of souvenir and travel shops, and a mad amount of cars, cabs and motorcycles fighting with pedestrians for street space.  I think the city  is on the cusp of becoming too touristy, as this is now one of the major industries for Cusco and Peru.

The tourist plague, however, does mean that the food is more cosmopolitan and it is possible to get good vegetarian food and decent coffee in many places.  The local lemonade is also freshly made and excellent.  Cusquena is a local beer that is available in dark (Negre) and Bill found it tasty.

We spent two and a half days recovering from our Ecuadorian digestive disorder and walking all over the city.  My favourite site was the Qorikancha, a Dominican mission built on and around an Inca temple of the sun.

Qorikancha Inca temple inside the Dominican Monastery

 You can still see parts of the old temple inside the Dominican structure.  We also did a "free" walking tour of the city, led by Elvis, who showed us some of the odder sights of the city with great enthusiasm.  Inca wall restorers, cleaning rock walls with toothbrushes to remove lichen and algae that erode the stones, were a sight worthy of a Monty Python sketch.

Our tour with Mountain Lodges of Peru was a beautiful way to see some of the mountains and villages in the Sacred Valley on the way to Machu Picchu.

Lake in the Andes

 We stayed two nights at their lodge at Lamay and two nights at another Mountain Lodge at Huacahuasi.  Both of the lodges were in smaller (Peruvian) Indian villages that do not get so many tourists.

Archaeological site of An Samaria (food storage ruins) 

 They work with the locals to provide high level  accommodation and food, as well as job opportunities and training for the locals.  Both of the lodges were beautiful, clean and comfortable with very good food, including tasty vegetarian options.  They also offered wonderful extras for tired hikers including spa baths and massage.

Each day we had a choice of cultural activities such as visiting archaeological sites or local markets,  or hikes of varying degrees of difficulty through the mountain passes.  Mountain biking along the river was also an option.
On hikes we  were always accompanied by guides, as well as Indian helpers who brought horses or donkeys with emergency equipment and emergency rides if a hiker could not continue.

Archaeological site

The first couple of hikes were very painful and every breath was laboured on the uphill climbs. It was good to know that the horse named "911" was with us carrying oxygen and first aid supplies.  Although, as one of the other hikers said, he was ashamed to see the one Indian helper was a young woman with a 15 month old baby that she carried and nursed as she herded the donkeys along, and spun wool with a drop spindle as she had so much free time while the hikers were gasping for air.

Support Crew in Peru 

Ollantaytambo

The archaeological sites were numerous and often staffed by locals who demonstrated crafts or sold hand made items on site.  The markets sold many varieties of fruit and vegetables, as well as fresh baking in huge wood-fired ovens,

Village Bread Oven

live guinea pigs to purchase for lunch or dinner, and fresh and dried meat.  There are over 90 (or maybe it was 900) varieties of potato available, and most markets had dozens of different kinds to chose from.  Peru is a massive exporter of fruit, vegetables and flowers to the world;  agriculture and tourism are both major industries.

Guinea pigs for food. 

Potatoes varieties at the market 

Our last two nights were spent in Ollantaytambo, the oldest continuously inhabited settlement in South America and Aguas Calientes, the jumping off point for Machu Picchu.  After all of our hikes through very lightly populated areas and mountain passes up to 4,500 metres, Machu Picchu was a bit of a let down.  The site is reached by a treacherous, gravel mountain road, single lane at places and full of switchbacks.

 You have to travel  from Ollantaytambo by train to Aguas Calientes and then to Machu Picchu  by bus.  The buses are stuffed full of tourists and shuttle every 5-10 minutes up  and down the mountain, often having  to back up at narrow spots in the road.

You guessed it! 

Machu Picchu itself is very large and well preserved, and swarming with tourists.  They discourage long visits by having no toilets inside the site and no eating allowed in the main park area.  After our lung-busting week of climbing in the Sacred Valley, the hike up Huayna Picchu (the mountain overlooking Machu Picchu) was a dawdle.  We had 3 women over 60 in our group and we were passing much younger people going up the trail.

The view from Huayna Picchu was beautiful, and we had excellent hot and clear weather for our visit.

View of Machu Picchu and access road from Huayna Picchu 

The stay at Machu Picchu was relatively short, however, from about 8:00 til 13:00, then we had to catch our train to Ollantaytambo and bus back to Cusco, bringing our trip to a quick end.  Our next stop is Los Angeles and the southern USA for the last two weeks of our trip.  Looking forward to Mexican food and margaritas.  Ole!