James & Clare, Coddiwomplers Inc: Cusco and the journey to Machu Picchu, Aug 2018

Main square Cusco

Flying into Cusco from Iquitos was a real buzz. The flight path is through a fairly narrow valley with the mountains quite close on both sides of the plane.

The photo makes the mountains
look a lot further away than they were

Upon arrival we found a giant bowl of coca leaves in the the Cusco airport! Cusco is at 3,399m and coming from nearly sea level so quickly leaves you with an on and off feeling of breathlessness which takes a few days to get used to. Chewing coca or drinking it as a tea is considered to dumb down the effects of altitude. Fortunately neither of us suffer from altitude sickness which really is debilitating.

Alighting from the airport itself, still with our friends Franco and Leo (everyone heading for Cusco is on the same mission - Machu Picchu!), we were offered a very inflated price to share a taxi to our respective hostels. Turning this down we decided to walk a bit toward town and happened upon a local eatery where we ordered the Almuerzo - a typical two course lunch of soup and rice/pasta, meat/chicken and salad & a refresco (cold drink - we had Chicha Morada). The food was really good food and come time to pay we couldn't believe how cheap it was! Having found a well priced taxi to our hostel and saying goodbye to the boys it was time to discover Cusco and plan our trip to Machu Picchu.

Our escort into town

Narrow cobbled streets

First stop was the booking office to buy our tickets for Machu Picchu. We decided on the afternoon session from 12noon to 6pm as the morning sessions were all sold out ten days ahead. We weren't sorry as the primary reason for people to go in the morning is to get up there for the sunrise. We've already had that discussion about not being morning people! We are also not really typical tourists and will usually pass up the 'tourist thing to do' in most places we go to as overcrowded and overpriced but this was one tourist destination it would be churlish to bypass. There are many ways to see Machu Picchu and for finances sake we did plan our route to save a bit of cash .... which, in turn, would take a bit more effort.

Having taken care of business, it didn't take us long to find the local market.

We shared a table with this cutie and her Mama

Vege sellers around the outside of the market

The potatoes in South America a SO good!

We bought some bread, cheese and tomatoes
to eat in the square on the way home

Plaza de Armas and the statue of Pachacuti

One night we walked down the hill and into a random bbq place for dinner. We discovered the local delicacy of Rocoto relleno ... stuffed peppers. So delicious!

Incan Architecture is evident around the city, whetting the appetite for what was to come ...

We got 'conned' by this girl's Mum into this picture. She tried to charge us an exhorbitant fee for this pic, in the middle of the city no less.

Clare found a wool shop! Selling actual wool. Most of the yarn shops in South America sell mostly acrylic. They seem to believe that wool is too warm unless you live at altitude. Hmmmm .....

After a couple of days relaxing and acclimatising to the altitude we were ready to leave for our adventure to Machu Picchu. We first needed to find a colectivo to Santa Maria first. A colectivo is a shared vehicle (car or van) which will leave for the advertised destination when all the seats are sold. There is no schedule and you can't ever tell how long you will wait to fill the vehicle, but it is a very cost effective way to travel in South America. Also a little more comfortable and usually a lot faster than a standard bus (although no buses actually take this route).

We didn't have to wait long for our colectivo to fill up and we were off. The road we travelled reached heights of 4,400m with (allegedly) 61 hare-pin turns on the way back down from the summit. The scenery was as expected ... very beautiful. This leg of the journey took around 5 hours.

Grazing llama

In these cooler climes one needs a cab on ones moto taxi

The vastness of the landscape is mind-boggling .......

There was even snow up at the summit

Arriving at the tiny town of Santa Maria the colectivo dropped us off, the driving pointing to the side road where we should catch another colectivo to Santa Teresa. Again we were the only foreign travellers, all other passengers being locals. NOTE: most tourists take the tourist van option from Cusco to Hidroelectrica, more expensive and more direct, but not nearly as much fun :-)

This 45min of road is nearly as spectacular as The Death Road of Bolivia. Watch this video .... need we say more!

From Santa Teresa we took a taxi to Hidroelectrica where we would begin our walk along the train tracks to Aguas Calientes. There are only two ways you can get to Aguas Calientes, which is the town at the foot of Machu Picchu .... by train or by foot.

The walk took us around three hours and was mostly flat. It had already been a fairly long, exciting and marginally stressful day so the walk seemed like it took longer. We say 'marginally stressful' as it was a bit of a leap of faith to take this route. Colectivos are certainly not the tourist option, no-one speaks English AT ALL and there is usually a moment or two of doubt that we are in/going to the right place. However, they are a much cheaper option and it was good to be able to pat ourselves on the back when we got there! We always prefer the local option for more than financial reasons. It just feels more authentic and there is always a surprise or two along the way.