To start, this trip was one that Kris and I took in 2009. I’d done this writeup but hadn’t ever posted it up here for some reason. I thought I’d share here now. On with the show…

I tried to post links to places internet sites where possible to help anybody who’s looking to do similar stuff. We also used a Moon Peru Guidebook which was helpful once we were there in finding restraunts and deciding which stuff we wanted to see. Here was our general itinerary:

Day 1 – Fly from Chicago to Atlanta to Lima, stay at Hostel
Day 2 – Fly from Lima to Cusco
Day 3-4 – in/around Cusco
Day 4 – Train to Aguas Calientes, hostel
Day 5 – Machu Picchu & Train to Cusco
Day 6/7 – Cusco
Day 8 – Fly to Lima, Lima, then Fly to Chicago via Atlanta

Here’s a thread on a photography forum where I did a lot of the planning:
Machu Pichu – Peru Planning – NSOP Forums

Day 1′s wrap-up will be pretty easy as it was mostly just travel in the US and arriving at the hostel in Lima late at night. Our flight out of Chicago was in the middle of the day, and I was able to get off to a great start by meeting David Cross in the airport. He’s a comedian and actor if you don’t know and was in one of my favorite shows on TV – Arrested Development. I was happy to get this picture with him-

From Chicago, we flew to Atlanta on Delta, then to Lima. The flight to Atl was fine, as was the flight to Lima. Atlanta to Lima is around 6.5 hours, so not really that bad. We ended up landing around 11-11:30pm and just immediately got picked up by our hostel’s taxi and went there. The airport was crazy with all of the companies meeting people and picking them up, but it was pretty easy. We got the first taste of having to say “No, Gracias” 300x a day as there were people offering everything.

The hostel we stayed at the first night was called Pay Purix Backpacker’s Hostel – it was one we found on hostels.com and was fairly decent for a quick, easy place that was about 5min from the airport, clean, and comfortable. It is run by a family and the breakfast was homemade food from the mom/dad. It was what would turn out to be typical Peruvian breakfast (for a hostel at least) of eggs, bread, and fruit salad. The hostel had free internet/computers, tv, lounge, bar, etc.

Here’s the room:

Roosters woke us up in the morning – I have no idea where the heck they were, but they woke us up. Then, we were off to the airport for our flight to Cusco.

All the pictures on my flickr from the trip are in the same set – Jay’s Peru 2009 Flickr Set

So, for day 2 we essentially flew in the morning from Lima to Cusco. A couple general things first. Kris and I were taking this trip just for fun, as a way to relax and enjoy each other. We’ve recently announced that she is pregnant, and she was around 14-15 weeks at the time of the trip. She’s been doing really well when it comes to the usual stuff like morning sickness and general tiredness. We had originally intended to do a 4 day trek on the Inca Trail which is an old trail the Incans used to travel from Cusco to Machu Picchu. Just to stay on the safe side we ended up cancelling the trek and doing more day trips based from a hostel/hotel so in case anything bad happened we’d be able to get help. Cusco is one of the highest cities in the world at 3400m, so we wanted to play it safe.

For gear, each of us carried a medium size pack around 45-50L with our stuff and that was all. We packed light on purpose to avoid having to deal with a bunch of bags, checking luggage, etc and it worked well. There were many, many laundry services around so I would do the same thing again and maybe even bring less clothes for a lighter load. We’re used to backpacking with heavier packs and a lot of gear, so this was very managable. I’d brought my camera which adds weight for me – I brought my 40d, 10-20mm, 17-55mm, and 70-200mm(which i never used once) but I’d guess I was still under 35# total.

So, anyway, the flight to Cusco was pretty short, only about 1.5hrs. Lima is a pretty dismal place most of the year apparently, covered by fog all day long and kind of grimy (more on this later). We were at the hostel about 5min from the airport and although we could’ve walked, the area around the airport seems very run down industrial type area and was not very fun to look at.

The flight flew over the Andes though, and there were some great views:

(more on my flickr – http://www.flickr.com/photos/jay1441/sets/72157622432506047/ )

Once we got to Cusco, we headed straight to our hostel to check in. We stayed at the Amaru I for the first night. It was pretty nice and our room was great with some great views of the city. We soaked it in, took a quick nap, and headed down to the Plaza de Armas to check stuff out. Since we knew it was such high altitude and we were tired we planned on taking it very easy the first day when we got there to see how stuff went.

Here’s the view from our room-

Here we are in front of the cathedral on the square:

In the afternoon some rain rolled in as we were having coffee/tea:

A bit after the rain started, we were walking around and there was a church processional. These guys were carrying St. Francis to the church for some reason and another group carried another saint from another corner of the square. Random, but interesting.

A shot of the fountain and the cathedral in the background:

We ate pizza for dinner at one of the restraunts on teh square, and headed back for bed/rest. I had a pretty bad headache and Kris was just plain tired. I’ll finish this off with a few shots of the room and the city at night out our windows:

The 3rd day of the trip was actually our 2nd day in Cusco. We’d gone to bed with me having a headache and Kris feeling fine. The beds in the room were just twin beds, but Kris wasn’t sleeping well and came over to visit me a couple times in the night. She woke up feeling flu-ish, could’ve been effects of the pregnancy, could’ve been ffects of the altitude, or a bit of both, but she puked once in the morning. She was a trooper though, and by 10am we’d been up, eaten the breakfast from the hostel, and were good to go.

We ended up heading to our other hostel which is a partner with the Amaru, called Hosteria de Anita. Our room there had a queen bed, separate room with a couch/chairs, a small kitchen, and a decent bathroom/shower.

What we ended up doing was heading out on what they call a “City Tour” which was a half day tour. We signed up for the tour about noon and it left about 2 and went until about 7pm. It took us to a few sites – Qorichana (Sun temple), Sachsayhuman, Q’enko, Punka Pukara, and Tambochay. Here’s a few pics and hilights:

Quorichana was a temple for the Incans that was later built over top with a spanish temple. It was really interesting to learn that when there was an earthquake in the 1950′s all of the spanish structures were knocked down and cracked while it uncovered a foundation of incan stonework that had been there for ever that they never knew about.

The next stop was sachsayhuman, which is pronounced “sexywoman” by the people there. I kept cracking up whenever they’d say it but that’s how they say it. Anyway, this place was a place of fortress or ceremonial purpose, they don’t really know for certain. It has some HUGE stones that are simply amazing how they do the work they did to get such great tolerances between the stones with no mortar.

The next stop on the tour was Q’enko I think – the translation is “labyrinth” and there were some cool caves where they buried people and stuff. There is also a cool huge altar type rock.

Pukapukara was the next stop, called “the red fort” or something like that. This was a smallish ruin but pretty neat.

After that we stopped at Tambonachay, which was a fountain that was supposed to give the water of life – eternal life, prosperity, fertility, etc. Some people who apparently don’t mind water-borne illness drank the water, but kris just touched it:

The last stop on the tour was a textile factory – we got to see some dudes making rings and learn a bit about the different types of wool used. Kris got a hat made of baby alpaca wool, I just took pics.

After that, we came back, went to a crappy restraunt for dinner (had some local peruvian food that just wasn’t very good), and went to bed as we were pretty tired from the tour and the altitude.

Here’s a couple of Kris for you that have been reading.

Day 4 of the trip was still based in Cusco for us, but we took a full day tour in the Sacred Valley, this included Pisac (ruins and market), ullayantambo, urambamba, and chinchero as well as a lot of other small sites to look at along the way. Fun stuff.

On the way from Cusco to Pisac, we stopped at a small market for the same stuff that’s at every market. Nothing too outstanding, just a bit of stuff, a few little kiddies around to talk to, and some native ladies weaving and stuff like that.

Pisac was pretty cool, the market was huge, and very great to see, especially on a sunday when the locals come to do their barter/trade with various vegetables, clothes, meat, food, etc. Lots to look at:

The ruins in pisac were pretty cool. This was the first ruin I’d seen with such an impressive terrace structure where they used the levels to farm and such. The irrigation trenches were amazing how they used a natural spring up top on the mountain and then had it go down the terraces to irrigate the crops all the way down. There were also amazing views there of the surrounding area and the mountains and valleys.

This was also the site of another temple, here’s a shot of the ruins:

We stopped for lunch at urambamba at a buffet place that was part of the tour. Nothing special but not bad. Next stop was Ollyantambo which was some sort of ‘lodge’ for the incans. The ruins here were pretty impressive, tall, and probably one of the most impressive was the size of the stones that were brought up to the top of the hill/mountain. Estimated weight was like 30 tons, and they were transported from across the valley as they type of stone was not native to the area. This shot is of a wall made of these stones.

Here’s a typical sight – some old steps that were built into the walls every so often:

If you squint just right you can see the face of an incan in the mountain up at about 10:30 or so (if it was a clock)

Here’s the far side of the ruins there. Not as nicely restored but pretty impressive for the number of terraces and how much work it would’ve taken to build/maintain/grow on:

Last stop of the day was Chinchero, a small village on the way back. This was pretty cool as the main incan temple was turned into a cathedral. Everything was old style and pretty creepy inside with very puppet style statues and such.

The 5th day of the trip was mostly a travel day. We were in Cusco, got up early and took a taxi to the train station in Poroy to head to Aguas Calientes. We weren’t sure about what we’d do once we got there. We’d thought about heading to MP that day in the afternoon and then again the next morning, but found out the tickets weren’t discounted at all for the 2nd day (our guidebook said it was half price the second day). We ended up getting there, getting to the hostel, then took the advice of our host and hiked to the top of a mountain that was across a valley from machu picchu and had a great view. I’d highly recommend the hike, it was great, but hard due to the altitude up top.

The coolest part was the wooden ladders bolted to the cliff faces partway up. It was pretty neat to be out on the hike and have such great views. Heres some pics:

Here’s kris climbing the big set of ladders:

and another set:

Here’s the rewarding view at hte top – you can see MP across there:

This is the incan flag – it was at the top of this mountain.

This is the view down to the village where we’d started – Aguas Calientes:

Day 6 was our day to finally check out machu picchu. We woke up early at hour hostel and headed to the bus station to catch a bus about 5:30-5:45am. We wanted to get there right away in the morning and make the most of it. Our train out of town was at 4pm so we wanted to be able to be upt here for a good amount of time before we had to go.

So when we got there, our first task was to find a guide. Our theory was to go on a guided tour of the main stuff for a fairly reasonably cheap price, then we figured after the tour we’d head around and check out the sites that we wanted to see more or ones they didn’t show us. It worked perfectly. We found an english speaking guide for a group of about 10 people for $5 each. Great deal for a 3 hour tour.

There are so many different things to see at MP, its hard to do it justice by writing about each part. I’m just going to throw up a few pics, but check out the link above and really explore, there are a lot of things to see.

One note, on the train from Cusco, we took the “backpacker” train which is the cheapest option available to tourists. There is a “vistadome” version which looks OK and has some nice windows on the roof so you can see the sights. It was like twice the price so we went cheaper and I don’t think we really missed much. If you’re a baller there are like $500 tickets that have asian girls that give you massages w/happy endings, dinner, and stuff like that but that was way out of our league.

That’s a few from MP, but seriously check out the rest in the set on flickr.

We did two trips that I think most people that visit MP don’t do. We didn’t go to Huyana Picchu which is the big mountain you see in teh pics, after hiking Putucusi the day befor we didn’t think it was worth it. We first hiked to the Inca Bridge, which was a trail that they believed to be for hunting or something liek that. Its pretty cool to see how the trail was built into the side of the cliffs and stuff.

The other side trip was to the Sun Gate, which was about 45min uphill to get to it. It was frickin hot and we didn’t have much water, so the hike sucked. With Kris being on the nest she ended up getting pretty tired up top and i was a bit worried. I was tired too but that was just because I am a wuss.

Good view from up there though – the bus road is in the front but you see all the ruins in the back.

There are some llamas that live at MP too:

So after two days of getting up early with a lot of activity in trains, hikes, ruins, etc we were happy to get back to our hostel in Cusco and have a day or two to just relax and enjoy the city a bit. We’d gotten home about midnight from the train trip back from Aguas Calientes and pretty much went straight to bed. We woke up nice and late, had breakfast at our hostel and then headed out to the city.

With the ‘tourist ticket’ or Boleto Touristico you get entry to a whole bunch of places. We’d gone to the ruins and a few on the city and the sacred valley tour, but there were a few sights around the city that we were going to check out. Most were honestly boring art museums that had some not that exciting art, but some of it was cool stuff. Some were history, regional, etc.

We also spent a lot of time just chilling, drinking a $.25 coke, sitting on benches, and watching people. There are a lot of tourists to watch, but some of the most fun was watching the people that are shining shoes, selling ipaintings, etc. I also got to watch them hoist jesus onto the top of one of the churches on the square. Their work was painstakingly slow.

I think this lady was a hooker:

I gave this little boy some crayons:

We ate dinner at Granja Heidi, which was pretty awesome. My dinner was an approximately 16″ wide banana and chocolate crepe and I had some caramel milk/coffee hot drink which was insanely good.

There’s a bit more the the trip but this is as far as we went. The rest of the pics are on Flickr.