Sacred Valley Tour

We got up early and started towards the airport around 5 AM. We were taking the flight to Cusco today around 7:30 AM. Marco was the guide accompanying us to the airport. The LAN domestic flight was on time, and reached cusco around 8:45 AM.

At Cusco, we were received by Raquel, and our guide Alvoro, and driver Hector. Raquel briefed us on the tour schedule for the next 3 days and left. It was a private tour service, and it served us well because we could tailor the schedule to our needs. First we were hungry, so we told Alvoro that we wanted some breakfast. Alvoro took us to a juice and sandwich shop at main square in cusco. The menu was in Spanish, and I ordered an item "pan con jam y queso". I asked confirmation from Alvoro if it was "Bread with Jam and Cheese", and he said yes. Unfortunately, the jam is ham in Spanish [j is silent], and we could not have the bread. We just had some fresh mango and orange juice and gave the breads to our guide and driver.

We then started in our jeep towards Pisac, one of the towns in the Sacred Valley. En route, we visited a local handicrafts market (which was very expensive). They had a small zoo of llamas, alpacas, vicunas etc which were native South American animals.

 

 

 

Then we see the locals making some handicrafts. They had kept exhibits of potatoes, corns [lots of them].

 

Varieties of corn

Varieties of potatoes

Locals making the wool dresses

 

After this we headed to Pisac. Pisac was a nice little town, and its streets were very narrow. First we visited the local market. Later we went to Prasada, a Hare Krishna restaurant for lunch. The restaurant owner was a humble guy from Miami who is now living here, because he thought it was a much better spiritual place. He has his name rechristened to some Das :) We were the only customers at that time, and we had an awesome potato soup, and curry rice. We only decided to take food as parcel for dinner and got a quesadilla and veg stir fry packed. After this we visited the tourist market.

 

 

Streets in Pisac

At the local market, we purchased few bananas here

At the touristy market, with Alvoro

Inside Prasada, heavenly!!

 

 

Then we started towards Ollaytantambo, one of the oldest Inca cities. Most tourists to Machu Picchu visits the sacred valley because the train to Machu Picchu starts at Ollaytantambo. Here it started becoming windier and cold. The ruins were decent [not as spectacular as some ruins we see back home in India like Mahabalipuram]. Still good to visit. We saw the terraces and the various temples here.

The ruins at Ollaytantambo



After this we went to the train station to change the next day's tickets from 6:30 pm to 1:30 Pm. Machu Picchu usually takes only 4-5 hours, and we did not want to come back late to cusco the next day. Luckily tickets were available and it was just 1$ change fee.

Our guides now left us and went their way back to cusco. We had around 1.5 hours left for the train, and we were just roaming around the shops near the train station. We got to taste some really good Peruvian corn near the station. The train was very touristy, clean and luxurious. But leg space was lacking in the expedition class, but it was fine for a 1.5 hour journey. After the train journey all in the dark, we checked-in into Inti Punku hotel, which was just a 2 min walk from the station.

The ticket counter

Some nice Peruvian corn near the station

Inside the expedition class train


When we were checkin in, our guide for the next day came to meet us to fix a time for the Machu Picchu tour. We decided to meet around 6:45 AM next day to visit when it was less crowded. Then we slept off.

Machu Picchu - lives upto the hype!!

On May 12th, We met our guide Patrick Walter at 6:45 AM. The Machu Picchu train station town is called "Aguas Calientes" which means "hot water springs". This town is famous for being a nasty touristy town and for being very expensive. Because of all this hype, it did not look that bad for us.

First we had to board a bus to reach the Machu Picchu ruins. The bus journey was around 30 mins. It was very cloudy and misty at this time. The bus tickets were around 18$ one way, which is ridiculously expensive.

The bus reached the Machu Picchu citadel around 7:30 AM. There was a lodge at t
his place [closest to Machu Picchu], and our guide mentioned that lodging rates were 700$ to 1000$ per night at this place, really crazy.

It was all very misty and beautiful. But not much views of the city. Few photos to describe the scenery below.

 

 

The clouds were playing hide and seek. The lush greenery, the ever changing clouds, the interesting mountain shapes and the ruins combined to form a spectacular scenery.

 

Around 9:30 AM or so, the clouds cleared up, and we got the famous view of Machu Picchu. Our guide was very passionate, and many times over explained certain things, that it was like a lecture sometimes. Still we enjoyed it and thought it was very informative. Our guide also took some good pictures often asking people to get out of the way for us to be in the frame :)

 

The famous shot of Machu Picchu

With our guide Patrick Walter

 

 

We also asked our guide about an Indian movie being shot here. He mentioned about "Robot" as a Bollywood movie and also mentioned about Aishwarya Rai. No word about superstar Rajni. He claimed that Aishwarya was a world beauty and all the local dancers wanted to take a solo picture with her. He also mentioned that she was very nice and patient and took pictures with all the dancers. The Peruvian government also cordoned off some area towards the top for the shooting for some days.

 

Our guide left us around 9:30 AM. We spent lot of time just soaking in the panoramic views. Around 11:00 PM, we decided to make our way down. We walked towards Govinda, another Hare Krishna restaurant for lunch. The owner spoke only Spanish, and we ordered some quinoa soup and curry rice. The food was mediocre, in line with the reviews about this place. Still this was the only veggie option we had. After the lunch, we went towards the hotel Inti Punku, picked up our luggage, and went towards the train station.

 

Inti Punku hotel

Aguas Calientes train station

The train started around 1:30 PM and was on time. This time we were travelling in VistaDome class, which was better than the previous expedition class. The leg space was better, and the train attendants do some local dance. The train journey was also more scenic because we were now travelling in day time and so could see outside the windows.

 

scenery en route the train

The train reached Ollantaytambo around 3:15 PM, and our driver Hector was waiting for us here. He drove us back to our hotel "Siete Ventanas" in cusco around 5 Pm. We then went out in search of food for dinner.

 

First we went to "Shaman Veg restaurant" - a Peruvian one. Unfortunately there was only one server/owner, and he had not talked to around 6 people for the last 45 minutes. They all left without eating because they were not even greeted by the owner for almost an hour. I asked them the reason, and we soon made our way out to avoid huge delays.

 

We then decided to walk to Maikhana Indian restaurant because it was sunday, and the other veggie options like "Prasada" were closed. Here a north Indian guy named Suresh made awesome phulkas in the flame. We had some good Phulkas and Parathas, and some decent dal for dinner. Then we returned to the hotel and slept off.

 

Siete Ventanas Hotel

 

 

 

 

Lima City tour

Our flight landed around 10 Pm at the Lima airport. We already had Peruvian visas stamped at the consulate in Seattle. However there were a few problems in the Lima immigration. First no one spoke English. They asked me a few questions in Spanish which I answered [like "cuatro dias" - 4 days stay etc]. However the passport was not being receptive to machine scanning, and they told something which I did not understand at all. They were not sure if the Peru Visa was Ok or not. Then some senior officer saw my passport, spoke some English and found the visa to be ok, and stamped and let us in.

Once we cleared the customs, our tour agent representative "Noy" was waiting with Divya's name tag. He introduced to our driver "Gilbert" and drove us towards hotel Britania in Miraflores.
It was night 11 Pm now, but we saw lots of police doing their rounds. Noy explained that MiraFlores is a tourist area, and the police take lots of efforts to keep it secure 24 hours a day. He told us it was safe to walk even at midnight in this area. We then slept off.

The next day (May 10th), we had a group city tour of Lima around 9:30 Am. After having some decent breakfast at the hotel, we were then taken in a bus. The tour was Ok, but for the most part, we were inside the bus around the city.

The first stop was some old ruins [Huaca Pucllana]. We were asked to see this from the bus itself as no visitors are allowed inside.


Huaca Pucllana ruins

Next the bus went around various parts of the city. The traffic was right side driving, cars were similar to USA, driving conditions was better than India, but not as good as USA/Europe. Lane discipline was followed in many cases. Pollution levels were also much lower than India.
Some photos of the city:

Then the bus stopped in a museum. Never a fan of museums, this was very much uneventful.
The guide was surrounded by too many people, and I had no idea what he was talking about.

After that, the bus took us to the main touristy spot in Lima. The famous San Francisco cathedral, and the "Plaza de Armas" was seen, and we took some pictures here.


Inside the museum

Photos from main touristy spot [Plaza de Armas]



San Francisco Cathedral

The Spanish used to build churches whenever they conquered some place. This was show the superiority of their god. Most churches were built for this reason. Under the San Francisco church, the basement was filled with lots of human body bones. The guide mentioned that it was done because the local people believed that they would go-to heaven if their body was buried close to God.

During this tour, we went an interesting old couple. They were living in a sail boat, and they were just travelling to different countries in that boat. They had plans to travel to Chile, Ecuador, Galapagos, Hawaii, Polynesia using that boat. When asked how long they plan to do this, they said "throughout their life". It is not easy doing this on sail boats, and I was awestruck. We took a photo with them towards the end of the tour.


The interesting couple living in sail boat

Around 1:45 pm, the bus dropped off at our hotel. Next was the interesting thing. We had to go for lunch looking for vegetarian food. I heard of "El Almazen" near our hotel from happycow.net.

We found that place by walking around and asking for directions. It was a cute little place in some quiet corner. The menu was all in Spanish. I asked the waitress about each dish, did not clearly understand, so ordered 2 dishes which were supposed to be Peruvian. The food was served 30 minutes later as it was freshly prepared. The dishes turned out to be really awesome. Never tasted such a unique flavor before, and we finished off both the dishes [one a potato based dish, and the other was a quinoa based dish]. We also ordered some queen fruit juice, which was thick and filling.

After this we went shopping around the Miraflores district. Did some bargaining in Spanish to buy a few soveneirs, needless to say it was fun. We also found a "Hare Krishna" restaurant named "Govinda". This was a veggie restaurant serving Peruvian dishes. It was closing at 5 Pm, so we were not to have dinner here.

quinoa based dish at El Almazen.

Awesome food at El Almazen

Govinda, Govindaaa!!

Then that night, we were trying to find some veggie food for dinner. We went to El Almazen again, but it was closed. Most restaurants close down for dinner. There was one veggie place called "Sabor y Vida". The only dishes they had were fried potatoes and some sweet corn. The dinner was a let down, but atleast we filled our stomachs with something. On the way back to the hotel from the restaurant, we got some icecreams from a posh place. But the ice creams were totally bad in taste. So it was not  a evening to remember, and we slept off in preparation for the early flight next morning.