The Race to Machu Picchu

 Machu Picchu is one of the top sites in not only Peru but all of South America meaning that tickets to enter the site sell out.  It is even on the latest list of the "New 7 Wonders of the World". Unfortunately for some of our friends on the road they were not able to acquire tickets to see the site but were nice enough to make sure we understood that the sooner we book tickets the better the chance we get the tickets we want for the day and time we want.  Ever since purchasing our Machu Picchu tickets our timeline has been set in stone meaning that we no longer had the flexibility that we wanted.  That being said we still tried to do everything we wanted to do which finally caught up to us in this blog post.  This blog post is all about us rushing to Machu Picchu and only stopping for a quick flight around the Nazca lines.  Although we tried our best to explore all the areas between Huacachina and Machu Picchu our tickets and timeline did not allow for much deviation.

September 28^th – Better out than in

Kendra’s day started very early as she woke up feeling all the symptoms of food poisoning.  Our nice dinner out on the town had consequences for Kendra.  Paul had gone for a vegetarian meal for some reason so he was completely fine but Kendra’s meat lasagna came back with a vengeance.

We had originally planned to leave Huacachina to head to the Nazca lines with some of the people we had met but Kendra was in no state to travel, other than between the van and the bathroom.

 

So, we said goodbye to our fellow overlanders, paid for another night at the campsite/hotel, and hoped Kendra would feel better sooner rather than later. 

Paul took the opportunity to relax by the pool and update the blog while Kendra focused on the food
poisoning mantra that everything is better out than in at this point.  He only left the pool area to check on Kendra after watching her make a mad dash to the toilets and he graciously went to the store to purchase electrolyte drinks and ginger ale.  Thankfully hour by hour Kendra started to feel slightly better and keep some liquids in her body but we knew that it was better to take it easy today rather than make Kendra feel potentially worse by driving south all while leaving here without constant access to a toilet and garbage can (because they were both needed at the same time, ugh).  Unfortunately due to road conditions and the date of our Machu Picchu tickets tomorrow would have to be a long driving day.

While Kendra deliriously rested in the van, Paul made one final hike up the sand dunes for sunset, which did not disappoint again.  We really enjoyed our time Huacachina and would have stayed longer if time would have permitted.

 

September 29- Nazca Lines

She's alive!

After Kendra awoke feeling well enough to stomach some Imodium and to travel we decided to make our way towards the Nazca lines.  Kendra was excited to see the Nazca lines while Paul was indifferent.  He had spoken to a few other travelers each of which found them underwhelming, with the exception of one, but more about him later.  After Kendra had a breakfast of leftover ginger ale mixed with electrolyte drink, Imodium and probiotics it was time to hit the road.  The Nazca lines were only 2 hours south of Huacachina and some were viewable from the road, so we figured we would see the ones by the road and make our way east towards Cusco.

Palpa Geoglyphs

Rupert even joined us.

We stopped first at the Palpa geoglyphs to see some neat designs and then continued south towards the Nazca lines and geoglyphs.  Kendra had marked on her map all the ones that looked interesting; however, we could only see the lizard, tree, toad/hands, and cat from the road. The Fear of Missing Out began to set in as we realized the humming bird, condor and astronaut were not visible from the road.  This is when Paul started thinking about the one traveler who had enjoyed the Nazca lines, a Swiss traveler who had taken a private flight to see all the famous Nazca lines and who let him know that the cheapest and easiest place to get a flight was at the Nazca airport, something we were only 5 kilometers away from. Previously, we convinced ourselves we could skip them and be happy with what we saw as Kendra had worked up a great sweat (maybe a fever- who knows?) while walking to the cat, but the FOMO really kicked in which solidified our decision; if we are only coming here once, we need to take a flight and see the lines we wanted to see.

We arrived at the Nazca airport which was the smallest airport we had ever been in.  Everyone rushed us in the parking lot as we prepared the van to ensure it stays cool for Rupert while we took to the skies.  Paul settled on the least pushy sales person who encouraged us to enter the airport and see the prices; spoiler alert: the prices are all the same starting at $60 usd to see 12 lines/geoglyphs and increasing in price up to $100 to see others lines and historical places in the area. We settled on the $60 tour and were weighed and copies of our passport were taken.  However, this was a group tour meaning we would have to wait for another 3-10 people to fill the plane which could be an hour or more.  Most flights and tours left in the morning as the air was less turbulent meaning it could be quite a while until a few other random people like us wander into the airport. Lucky for us after a short wait we were told we could have a private flight for two people for only $20 usd more and see more than just 12 lines and formations.  With the dog in the car, we decided to charter a private plane and in 10 minutes we were taking off.

While this experience blew our daily budget, in hindsight it was worth it! We saw so many formations, our pilots pointed out all the ones we could see and circled around to make sure we got the photos we wanted.  It was amazing how large these formations were and how they are practically impossible to see from the ground.  They were designed within a grid system with starting points originating from hills and mountains.  They were likely created for religious reasons and were created by removing the darker desert material allowing only the lighter material to show through.

Lizard, tree, toad/hands

Monkey

Astronaut

Whale

Condor or Hummingbird?

We have never flown in a Cessna and had read and heard that they are more prone to turbulence meaning that although we enjoyed every moment of our flight we, especially Paul, were happy to be back on solid ground as a few extra minutes may have resulted in some clean up.  There were no motion sickness puke bags on our plane, (Paul made sure to check when we were 75% done the flight).  Luckily, Kendra doesn’t usually get motion sickness so she was able to hold her own on this flight.

The people who made sure we didn't die!

We had originally planned to drive as far as possible today, but we were still 14 hours away from Cusco and had spent way more time than planned exploring the Nazca area so ended up camping close to a highway toll booth.  We had read it was a safe place to camp but Paul mistakenly drove into a farmers field rather than the toll booth parking lot where people previously had camped.  Luckily the farmer was very friendly, and although surprised we would want to camp in such a cold mountain pass they did welcome us to their land.  We settled in for the night where Kendra ate her first solid food- ramen.

 

September 30- On the Road Again

Today we drove all day.  We only stopped when we had to typically due to construction zones or for food.  At one such construction zone, where we were stopped for over two hours, we met a nice Peruvian man from Lima who leads mountain biking tours and was travelling with the owner of a giant blueberry farm (Jumboz Blueberries) a few hours north of Lima.  After getting us excited for our time around the Cusco area (specifically the Sacred Valley) he gave us two containers of massive blueberries and had us tell which one we liked better.  He sells them to the USA so he wanted to do “market research”. When we say jumbo blueberry farm, we are sure the land mass is large, but the blueberries are giant! If you ever see Jumboz in the grocery store you can have a taste of Peru.

A sweet quinoa road snack

The blueberries were delicious, we ate a couple from each container, told him which we prefer (we were not in agreement) then tried to return the two massive containers of blueberries but he refused to take them meaning we had tons of blueberries as road snacks for the rest of the day (and likely enough for tomorrow as well).

Just some photos from the day

We thought that we could drive 10 hours and make it to Cusco, but after 12 hours on the road and being 3.5 hours away from Cusco it was time to stop for the night.  Kendra debated between stopping at a hot spring or a canyon, but the canyon was closer and had amazing reviews so we spent the night with some beautiful views, sleeping only 40kms away from Machu Picchu as the crow flies.

Not a bad view to end a long day

October 1- Another day…

Today was Paul’s birthday and he didn’t want to do anything special for it.  We started driving around 8:30 am with the hope of making it…somewhere.  The goal was really to drive all day and get as far as possible.  We’ve realized that driving in Peru takes forever! Google and Waze are quite inaccurate with approximate arrival times and travelling 200 kms will take close to 5 hours.

After driving and driving some more we arrived in the town of Urubamba.  We have heard there is good coffee here, but we had other priorities.  We needed money from the bank (which like Peru driving took almost an hour to withdraw due to a machine that Paul swears was powered by Windows 95), and Paul wanted a Birthday Beer.  We stopped in at Yucay Brewing for beers and lunch and then it was time to head North towards Machu Picchu.

Birthday Beer

We had been a bit worried about the drive towards Machu Picchu because we have heard horror stories of single lane roads, sharp turns and too many switchbacks to count, these seemed to be confirmed by our navigation maps which looked like they’re creating their own Nazca Lines. 

Thankfully the drive was uneventful other than some rain although there were too many switchbacks to count.  We were stopped at a police check point and Kendra had our papers all ready to show them, but the police didn’t care about the papers.  They only asked where we were from, where the van was from, and about Rupert. They didn’t care about our names or anything about us, they only wanted to know the dog’s name. We are pretty sure they were just bored. We have read stories of corrupt police in Peru but still haven’t had a corrupt encounter yet, but we are okay if we leave Peru without one.

Another part of this drive we were concerned about was the last 50 kms or so; from the town of Santa Maria through Santa Teresa and onto Hidroelectrica. This road is notoriously a rough mud and gravel road that narrows down to one lane at multiple points meaning Peruvians will start playing a game of chicken to determine which vehicle will allow the other to go (we refuse to play and just pull off the road or start reversing).  We have realized many Peruvians don’t know or at least minimally use their brake and reverse features of their cars, so had mentally prepared ourselves for a long drive.  This road is also currently under construction so it shuts down multiple times throughout the day and opens from 9-9:30am, 12-1pm, 3:00-3:30pm, and after 7 pm. We would have to time our arrival accordingly, but since it was a Sunday it was a free day and the road was open at all times! We can only imagine the chaos as two directions of traffic are open for a short amount of time; only in Peru!

Some bread we picked up for $3CAD.

We made it to Santa Teresa as the sun was setting and had a nice night in. Paul ate the last of our Besos (our favourite Peruvian chocolate snack, think caramel wafer with soft marshmallow covered by milk chocolate) and Kendra stomached some rice Paul had made.

 

October 2- Hidroelectrica

The road to Hidroelectrica
(the non-river portion was 
open for us on the way  back)

With our Machu Picchu ticket entry date quickly approaching we awoke happy to be only 30 kilometers from the archaeological site. With the road being closed Kendra decided to have a slow start to the morning and take the 12-1 opening to hopefully avoid traffic too.  We organized our bags and Rupert’s things for our 11km walk to Aguas Calientes (the town created for tourists visiting Machu Picchu) and headed into town to get some more water before lining up for when the road opened.

We had again heard horror
stories about the road from Santa Teresa to Hidroelectrica but we were pleasantly surprised, after 20 minutes of driving and only one deep water crossing on the official road we arrived Hidroelectrica. We found a camp spot for the evening, met a tattoo artist from Toronto who was surprised to see a BC plated vehicle, and got eaten alive by sand flies and small mosquitoes.

 

October 3^rd – The economical hike to Machu Picchu

The start of the hike

Anyone who has been to Machu Picchu may be acutely aware that it is not a cheap endeavor.  Technically there are four ways to reach the famous Incan city of Machu Picchu all with different price points and difficulties.  You can take the famous Inca trail, a four day hike that is supposed to be absolutely beautiful, but requires a guide that usually is booked months in advance.  You can also take the Salkantay trek, another 4 day hike which can be done without a guide and is a favourite of many who want to trek independently and cheaply.  Most people who visit the site will take the train but for both of us the return trip cost is minimum $340 CAD to leave from Cusco.  The biggest issue for us though is not the hikes or the cost, it is that none of these options are pet friendly meaning our only option is to enter Machu Picchu the same way locals typically enter it, as the train is prohibitively expensive for them.  We had to walk along the train tracks from the last station accessible by a vehicle on an access route called the Amazon Route (still not sure why it is called this as we are no where near the amazon).

Kendra questioning her life choices

Kendra was still a bit sick and Rupert was quite lazy meaning the 10 kilometer hike took us a little longer than planned.  Rupert hardly walked it as after a couple kilometers he decided he wasn’t interested in walking any more and quasi demanded to be placed into his backpack.  The hike wasn’t ugly by any stretch of the imagination, it even gave us a view of the site from the river below the mountain that it was built upon. 

Our first view of Machu Picchu from below

The train we didn't take

We made it!

To celebrate our arrival into Aguas Calientes (also known as Machu Picchu Pueblo) we headed straight to a brewery and Paul tried some Alpaca, it tasted very similar to beef (Kendra’s not sure she can stomach meat yet).

Our next tasks for the day were to purchase bus tickets from Aguas Calientes to the actual Machu Picchu site, an easy task just quite expensive.  Return tickets for the next day where over $30 CAD each for a 15 minute bus ride in each direction. At least we didn’t have to hike up hill to Machu Picchu. 

Our last task was to find our hotel which we later learned had rebranded from a hotel with a 1 star rating on Google, requiring the assistance of a local bartender to show us where it was.  As thanks we promised we would head to his bar for a drink after we explored the town a bit.  We ended up heading to his bar for dinner, the food was good but the Pisco Sours he made were out of this world.  If the quality of Pisco Sours in Peru were the same as we had at  Tony’s bar we would probably order them more often.

Aguas Calientes was a purpose built community made for those wanting to visit Machu Picchu.  It was unlike anywhere we had been in Peru thus far and showcased an idealized, yet false version of Peru to tourists.  Most communities in Peru are extremely poor, especially rural and/or indigenous ones.  Many communities under 10,000 people have no electricity in some houses, lack of potable water within the entire community, shared bathrooms located in small buildings between houses, and crumbling infrastructure mixed with garbage.  Even those who have some of these amenities struggle to pay for them meaning that they are shut off.  Obviously there are exceptions and not all communities face these issues, but a common issue amongst smaller communities was little to no cell phone reception.  Obviously there wouldn’t be cell service everywhere but Peru has been particularly bad with the only places with decent cell service being big cities.  That being said the entire rail line and community had great cell service…go figure.

That being said we were looking forward to acting like tourists, speaking a bit of English and socializing with other travelers.

 

October 4^th – To Machu Picchu

People lined up for the bus

Our hotel had a free breakfast which was disappointing.  It consisted of stale bread with close to frozen butter and instant coffee.  Although we thought about grabbing something more for our time in Machu Picchu we decided instead to load our bag with granola bars we had packed and head to the bus.  It was here where we said goodbye to Rupert as the actual archeological site is not dog friendly. While we were exploring he slept in the hotel bed awaiting our return.

The line up for the bus was long with many people trying to sell you things or their services as a guide.  We had been told that we should not get a guide for a few reasons. They are expensive at, on average ~$100 CAD, but we had also heard that due to the lack of information or history on the site that many guides will make up information.  On top of that some guides have their English sales pitch down to a science but their English skills quickly diminish as soon as they start the actual tour.  Other issues we had heard were that the guides want to return to the bus stop as soon as possible to sell their services again to another traveler that they will rush you through the site.  Finally we were told that because so many English people do hire guides it easy to freeload off of them by just hanging around an area for a bit, we were told it is very easy to eavesdrop.

Before we knew it we were on the bus and having our tickets validated for the site and the circuit we were doing.  There are 4 circuits but you can only do one, they go in different areas of the site, but all 4 give you that famous view of Machu Picchu.  It is wildly believed that circuit 1 or 2 are the best with circuit 3 being the least desirable as this is the circuit large tour groups are required to take meaning it is very busy and hard to get good pictures.  Because of when we purchased our ticket we could choose any circuit we wanted so we choose circuit 2.

We had chosen an early morning ticket with a 7 am start, which we are still slightly conflicted about as the site is often cloudy and when we first arrived the mountains around Machu Picchu were not viewable.  While you are only supposed to have 3-4 hours in the site, we decided we would walk very slowly until the clouds cleared a little. Thankfully within 30 minutes the clouds started to break giving us the mystical cloudy view we had secretly hoped for.

We were happy with the circuit we had chosen seeing all the major spots and picture points at the site.  We were also extremely happy that we could wait and stop and take in the site waiting for the right time to take the photo we wanted.  We did eavesdrop on many English tours and it was interesting the little differences they would talk about from tour to tour and how obvious some of the things were that were discussed (“this is a rock”, “they cut the rocks to build the wall/house”, “this is a two level house”, “this is a water channel”).  In general, it seemed to us that a lot that is talked about is based on information learned from other Incan sites and generally applied to Machu Picchu.  It was a lot of general information about the Incan (Quechua) people and their building techniques.

 Overall, it seemed like the tour guides did discuss what archaeologists assumed each area was used for and if any bodies or interesting items were discovered in that area.  We arrived at the entrance for the Temple of the Condor 25 minutes before the rope would drop to allow us in so we got to hear a lot about the two story houses and roads and how the windows are in perfect alignment as 10+ tour guides escorted their groups past a portion of the ruins we were willing to wait for. I think if we were to have done it again we probably would have got a guide if only to ask questions as very few groups seemed to ask any specific questions of their guides.

All in all, we really enjoyed our time in Machu Picchu, we explored every inch we could and took so many pictures.  The landscape and greenery complemented the site perfectly making it aesthetically striking and although a lot is still unknown about the site it was an important Incan settlement for at least one emperor/king.

The best advice we can give to anyone planning to visit Machu Picchu is to go slow, take your time and wait to get that perfect photo. Also, with the circuit system you can only travel in one direction on the circuit.  If you want to go back for another photo you cannot go back.  We heard so many people being whistled at trying to go the wrong direction to get “the photo”, but we were lucky that we could stand and wait as long as we needed to get the photos we wanted.

All good things have to come to an end so eventually we made our way back to Aguas Calientes.  After walking the dog we decided to check out the hot springs that the community is named for which we can confidently not recommend.  As the only other main thing to do in the area it is extremely busy and due to the pool side bar (which we have never seen at a hot springs before) the water was disgusting and smelled horribly like urine.  We did soak for a bit and even ordered a celebratory cocktail but left pretty quick to have a hot soapy shower back in our hotel room.

After doing some souvenir shopping at the artisanal market we met up with some friends who had just arrived into the community. We spent the night swapping stories and laughing until enough wine and beer was consumed that it was time to head to bed. 

 

October 5^th – Doing what we want, when we want

Our checkout time of our hotel was 9am so after another disappointing breakfast (it was free breakfast so we can’t really complain) we started our walk back to the van.  For some reason we were all hiking like rockstars, even Rupert happily did 7 kilometers before letting us know he was ready to be carried.  We happily walked down the train line talking about the last couple days before reaching an organic coffee plantation that we had passed a couple days ago.  Knowing we had a couple hours to kill before the road leaving Hidroelectrica would open we decided to stop in.

This was definitely the right decision as we not only received the best cup of coffee we have had in Peru but were given a tour of the very small plantation and garden by an extremely friendly family.  We also ended up sharing our coffee with a couple of backpackers who arrived just as we were being served.  Although we didn’t know each other we ended up chatting like we were old friends resulting in us losing track of time and needing to rush the remainder of our walk back to the van to time out the road opening correctly. 

This coffee is definitely organic!

The drive was thankfully uneventful from Hidroelectrica to Santa Teresa, this time we didn’t even need to fjord a river.  We had slightly missed our window from Santa Teresa to Santa Maria (where we would return to the Sacred Valley and an actual highway) so we decided to check out the hot springs nearby. 

The Cocalmayo hot springs just outside of Santa Teresa were amazing and are now our favourite south American hot springs.  Although established and developed pools, it felt more natural than most with some walls being mountain side and a rock/pebble bottom.  On top of that the pools were clean and smelled like nothing (as we would expect).  The temperatures of each pool corresponded perfectly we the temperature of the area both in the heat of the day and in the middle of the night.  There seemed to be a pool for every temperature.    Hours melted away and our chances of leaving Santa Teresa disappeared.  It's amazing that taking a photo of a hot spring that we actually enjoyed never crossed our mind. Since we were no longer in a rush to be anywhere this self imposed “choice” seemed to be the perfect reminder that we are entering a new chapter of the trip.  We have no one visiting us, we have no wedding to attend nor vehicle shipping deadline or tickets to far away sites.  We can do what we want when we want.