Cusco and Machu Picchu

We arrived in Cusco at around midday, after a 17 hour journey which, as usual, not much sleep was had, particularly due to the fact that the route wound up and down mountains, and at times the altitude made it harder to breathe. We checked in to our hostel, surprisingly run by a guy from East London, and had an hour to sleep before going to explore. Cusco is at 3,800 metres above sea level, and was definitely a lot colder and wetter than Ica- a lot more layers were needed! It is also the most tourists we have seen so far in South America as pretty much everyone who comes to see Machu Picchu stops here. 

The Incas welcome us to the city

We had booked onto a walking tour, which turned out to be a difficult affair as it was run by only one guy- some of us needed the tour in English but others could only speak Spanish. The guide spoke in English and a member of the group translated it to Spanish but sometimes louder than the guide so required a lot of concentration to focus on what he was saying.

The guide showed us a few important buildings, cathedrals and statues, and took us to a place where a woman kept 2 Alpacas and a llama for photos with tourists. The woman kept moving one Alpaca's face to look like it was kissing the person in the photo, the Alpaca was not impressed at all and was doing an Alpaca version of rolling it's eyes. The rest of the tour was basically about rocks. Interesting the first time, but somewhere after the 10th rock stop I got lost. Basically some of the walls in Cusco are originals built by the Incas, they used big rocks and chipped away at them to make them for together.

Apparently if you discard half the city and draw a vague puma shape on it, it looks like a puma...

Hairy beggars

Rocks- the main content of the tour

Before Cusco we had been debating whether we were going to go to Machu Picchu.

Reasons for:
- Wonder of the world
- ‎We are in the neighborhood
Reasons against (according to our research):
- Expensive, probably not worth the cost (Train there and back $200 each, passes $50 each)
- ‎Probably overcrowded and filled with tourist tat
- ‎Probably a disappointment
- ‎Difficult to arrange at short notice (Inca trail needs to be booked months in advance)
- ‎-Jonno said no to any 4 day hikes similar to the Inca trail to get there

We had decided that we would get to Cusco, enquire at some of the tour agencies, look at what the options were and if it was worth it.
We stopped at a tour agency with a sign stating MACHU PICCHU $88 USD. Apparently this included transport to within 11km of the town below Machu Picchu (we would have to walk the rest of the way, there is no public road to the town), a night in a hostel, the entrance fee, a guide and 2 breakfasts.
This seemed like a pretty good deal, so we booked it for a few days time.
We also booked a trip to a place called Rainbow Mountain (immediately sounds magical), and I had read good reviews on. Unfortunately it did require a 3am wake up to leave at 4am, a prospect that Jonno was not jumping for joy about. We were still tired from the lack of sleep on the bus, so gave ourselves one rest day before Rainbow Mountain and one rest day before Machu Picchu. We had a plan.

Looking out onto the main square

Doesn't really look very delicious, more like a weasel sausage

Yes you should look embarrassed, no fashion sense at all

Unfortunately, the evening before our Rainbow Mountain trip Jonno's stomach decided to kick off again (it might have been the thought of the early morning that freaked it out) and still hadn't improved by the morning. I had read it was a hard hike- 2-3 hours each way, reaching 5,100 metres above sea level- probably not a great idea for an ill person. So while Jonno went back to bed, I headed out on my own to walk to where the bus was going to pick me up. Waiting on a dark street on my own at 4am was a slightly unnerving experience, especially as the bus was 45 minutes late. Finally it arrived and I climbed on for the 3 hour drive to our breakfast stop. After a standard breakfast of bread rolls, jam and coca tea to prepare us for the altitude, we had another 35 minute drive to the starting point of the hike. The guide said he would meet us at the top and left us to it.

Views from the bus on the way

As Jonno will most certainly tell you, I don't do slow hiking, and with only a couple of stops for photos I reached the top in an hour and a half. The last part was definitely tough, the path was steep and the air was thin.
At the start of the hike it was grey and overcast, with the odd snowflake falling. At the top, the cloud cover meant initially I couldn't see much. After about 10 minutes, the clouds cleared and revealed a pretty amazing view- a whole mountain range in stripes of different colours. 

The start of the walk

Watching the fog clear

Finally I see the rainbow!

A view worth waiting for

However, the clear sky didn't last long and after another 20 minutes a snowstorm hit. This wasn't so pleasant, but I hadn't seen anyone from my group or the guide to see if I could head down. I waited at the top, getting colder and colder, until finally the guide appeared and I told him I was going back down. I started to run down to keep warm, and about half way down the storm suddenly cleared and made way for a beautiful blue sky and some stunning scenery. 

Mesmerising clouds

It took a while for everyone else to return to the bus, and after a quick lunch stop we were heading back to Cusco. The altitude hadn't affected me while I was walking, but on the bus I developed a pounding headache and had to make a run to get some coca sweets in Cusco which seemed to help. 

Another rest day followed- most of the day it rained heavily so blog writing and tea drinking were the main activities.

Apparently this is the land of crazy hats

The day after we had been instructed to meet at the main plaza at 7am- about a 15 minute walk from where we were staying. We arrived at 6.45 and it was only then that Jonno realised he had left his camera memory card in the room and had to make a dash to get it- nothing like a last minute panic.
We were met by a guy who was collecting people from various parts of the plaza and herding them into one place. We were then taken to a coach, and once we were all sat down started asking people if they wanted to get a different vehicle, they had overbooked the seats. 

The bus took 7 and a half hours to reach the point where we were dropped off, within that time the temperature had risen by about 20 degrees but they had still kept the heating on- it was a relief to be out of the bus. The guy on the bus said a few brief words in Spanish and then left, leaving the group looking bewildered. The only bit we caught was that we had to be back at the same place the following day by 3pm. It was only when we questioned someone working in the restaurant where we were dropped off that we found out that we had to go to the main plaza when we got to the town and would be met by our actual guide there.
We then had to walk the 11km along the railway tracks- the only way of reaching the town, Aguas Calientes. It took us about 2-2 and a half hours for us to walk it, every so often having to step to the side when the train passed (it was slow with a blaring horn and bright lights- impossible to miss).

Of course, the only way.. to walk along the train tracks. Generally not approved of in the UK

Views along the walk

What's that doing there?

When we arrived at the plaza, we found a chaotic mess of 10-15 guides shouting out names of people they were waiting for, and bunches of tourists without guides standing or sitting around. We approached each guide, showing them our reciept, but they all shook their heads.
We waited, and waited- every so often doing another round of the guides to check.
As we were waiting I made a friend, who had little to no eyesight and all he wanted to do was to climb on my lap to fall asleep. I wasn't going to say no to cuddles! 

Determined to be a lap dog

After 2 hours of waiting and still no guide, in desperation Jonno asked one of the other guides if we could use his phone to call the tour agency we booked with. After a few tries she answered and spoke with the guide whose phone it was. From what he explained, it seemed like she had messed up and actually not arranged a guide, and would sort something out last minute. It looked like we did have accommodation booked though, and we were taken to the hostel called 'Denny's House', although apparently there was more than one Denny's House- we were in a different one. We finally arrived at the right Denny's House- it was nicer than expected, a double room with a private bathroom- and the guy at the check in desk explained our guide would meet us at the hostel at 8pm. Just enough time to get some dinner.
The guide knocked on our door at 8.30, and said we needed to get to the plaza for 6.20am the following day. Because there wasn't time for him to get our passes we did not have the option of walking up as we had been originally told, we had to take the bus which was an extra $12 each one way. Even though I would have rather walked, it seemed like we didn't have much of an option.
Another early wake up, breakfast at 5.45am and we walked down to the plaza, half expecting to not find our guide.
He was there, and there was time for another quick cuddle with my doggy friend and to give him some breakfast snacks. We were given our tickets and shown where to buy the bus tickets.

Morning cuddles!

It had been raining heavily all night, and the rain still hadn't stopped by the time we got to Machu Picchu. We were directed to our English speaking guide, who congratulated the group on walking up 20 steps and told us the best places for selfies. Exactly as we had expected, most of the time we were in thick clouds, which gave Machu Picchu a mysterious feel but wasn't wonderful for the views. 

Perfect weather

Our first sights of Machu Picchu...somewhere...

As instructed, must take selfie here

The guide explained how Machu Picchu was discovered over 100 years ago, and originally looted until an archaeologist started its protection. He told us about how the Incas lived, making terraces to grow vegetables and accessing the spring water from the mountain. They believed in the Gods of nature- mainly the air (represented as a Condor bird), the land ( a Puma) and the underworld (a Snake). When disasters happened they would make sacrifices to the Gods- first animals then children. 

Here are some more misty pictures

If I were you, child, I would not sit on the human sacrifice table....

The tour took around 2 hours, and even though we could have spent another hour looking around Machu Picchu before walking back, we were wet and cold and decided a coffee stop in town was more preferable. And shortly after we left Machu Picchu, the rain stopped and it became a lovely sunny day.

A long walk back along the train tracks, another 7 hours in a bus and we were back in Cusco. (Even though I boarded the bus as 'Diana Fanacas'- assuming we didn't steal somebody else's seats!)

It wasn't the worst experience ever, and Machu Picchu itself was interesting, but the tour was so rushed and badly organised which meant we couldn't fully appreciate it. If we did it again, we wouldn't have booked a tour and just do it ourselves- we could have known where we were staying, taken more time in Machu Picchu and the town itself (it's actually a nice chilled town) and been able to go in better weather (apparently in this season it's pretty much always raining in the morning and sunny in the afternoon).
But we did it. We were pretty done with Cusco too, so even though we are sick of buses, onto another bus to Puno!

Ica

We arrived in Ica just as the sun was beginning to set over the town. Soon into the journey, we had it confirmed we were headed to another fairly dry area (Almost everywhere so far had been either desert or a place with little to no rainfall). Whilst we had reserved a hotel in the area, when we arrived it seemed like they were only vaguely expecting us. The gate was locked, there was no obvious sign to know where the hotel even was, so we just shouted through the grills hoping for the best. Sure enough, a lady turned up, and after we explained that we did have a reservation started the process of making our room up. We’d reserved it several days before hand, not even the usual couple of hours we try and get away with, but either way we hung around in the reception for a good 15 minutes before we could go in.

Everything was absolutely fine until about 4am, when suddenly I was rudely awoken by Diana. In a confused and tired state, I heard her telling me something about an earthquake, which was when I noticed that the entire room was shaking. Strangely I think I could slept straight through it, as it was almost no different to sleeping on a bus. About a minute later it died down and everything was back to it’s normal, stationary self, and we realised that we’d forgotten all the free earthquake training we’d received whilst in Japan a year before hand. Confident everything had ceased being possessed, we headed back to sleep.

The following morning we had a chance to see our surroundings, which consisted mostly of mountains. At first I thought they were covered in snow, but looking closer it was clearly sand, which made a lot more sense in this environment. Heading down to breakfast, we were greeted by a lady who’s emotions were very hard to judge. On the one hand, she was answering all our questions (in the quickest, most complicated Spanish we’ve had to try and deduce) and bringing us breakfast, however, it seemed that where she was from, smiles were extortionately expensive. As such, anything we asked was responded to in a way that we felt helped, but we’d also insulted her family at the same time. Either way, she gave us information on where we could find tour agencies for nearby stuff (and advice on how we could do it cheaper), and half an hour later even brought us a card for a tour agency in town, so we couldn’t have upset her too much.

Sandy mountain, Charlieeee...

We headed to town to see what excursions we could book. The one we were interested in for the next day was backtracking a little, heading back towards Lima and the coast to see ‘Las Islas Ballestas’, a group of islands off the coast Peru from a town called Pisco (unsure if it’s a relation to the alcohol!). These apparently have a similar ecosystem to the island we saw in Ecuador, except this was just to see around them, there was no getting off the boat. Another option was to include the nearby national park in the area, so we figured we’d make a day of it. For the afternoon we planned to visit a little town from Ica called Huacachina, a place famous for it’s lagoon and sand dunes, and the more popular place for tourists to stay than Ica. There we’d try out the main activity for the area, sand boarding and sand buggies over the dunes.

Firstly we headed back to the hotel to drop of the bits we didn’t need, as we heard that sand got everywhere. When we arrived, we were greeted by the woman with no emotion, and we asked her if we could get breakfast for 6am the next morning as the excursion left around 7. She asked if we booked through the company who’s card she gave us, to which we responded no and she asked us for the receipt. She then proceeded to look disgusted at the receipt, told us it was too expensive, and a whole load of other Spanish we weren’t entirely sure of, although I’m suspicious it wasn’t Spanish at all but an ancient Incan curse. Hopefully our first born will still have the regular number of legs. Either way, we told her we would still be wanting breakfast at 6, and headed up to get our stuff ready.

Armed in the knowledge that we could arrange the sand related activities on the spot once we got to Huacachina, we jumped in a mototaxi to see what the area offered. It’s safe to say, it offered sand. Lots of sand. It also offered tourist tat and a number of expensive restaurants all focused around the lagoon, which we also found out was man made as we could even see the pipe where the water was being pumped in. We didn’t go in to find out if there was a huge pond liner at the bottom, but it all reeked of foul play.

Booking the sand trips was easy, as the whole area was surrounded in tour agencies. We opted for the two hour option, where you’re taken into the middle of a desert, plonked at the top of sand dunes, and given a board to so you can shoot to the bottom, either standing or laying down. After a significant traffic jam, something you don’t really expect in a desert of nothing but endless sand but the result of so many of these buggies going out all at the same time to try and catch sunset during the two hour stint, we were off.

The trip to the first dune was fairly calm, at least, as calm as offroading on sand in a cage on wheels can be. Once we arrived, we had a few moments to take in some of the views of the desert before we grabbed a board and walked along to the slope. One by one people were given the option of standing or laying on the board, the guide would use a candle on the bottom to make it waxy, showed us how to get into position and pushed us down. Once at the bottom, we walked over to another dune, however nobody really gave any instruction so we weren’t quite sure on what we were doing here. Diana and I just carried on, giving standing on the board a go and finding out that the wax definitely did seem to make a difference, as half the time we just stopped.

After a while,we were herded back into the vehicle and driven to a far bigger and steeper dune. We weren’t going to try and stand on this one. I have no idea what speed we did down there, but being under an inch from the ground made it feel insanely fast. It also curved to the left which made me convinced I’d be rolling down a good 50% of it, but no, we did survive it. Hoorah!

At this point, we realised that the buggy that had brought us here had vanished. This did mean we were in the middle of a desert with no transport, but at least our guide was here too so he would be able to sort it out. Except he walked off after a few minutes around a dune and we were just leftthere to sit and wait. I suspect this was the ‘sunset’ aspect of the trip, except there was far too much cloud for that to bean exciting experience, so it ended up just sitting around waiting for another buggy to arrive. I got bored so walked over to a smaller dune and carried on rolling down it and getting thoroughly coated in sand like an excitable puppy, and after a while the guide came back, still without a buggy though. Then one pulled up, and we all popped on our seatbelt harnesses, expecting a similar journey back to the one here.

Oooh no. Our buggy driver was none other than Peruvian Colin McRay, who proceeded to drive up and down each dune at full speed, literally taking off at points, taking 90 degree turns whilst going up dunes so as to throw us down the other side of them. I pushed the thought out of my mind that, should any tyre end up dug into the sand, we’d be rolling down the dunes, and just imagined it as a rollercoaster ride, which it basically was, but without any of the health and safety. Once everyone was sufficiently scrambled, we pulled up to see the view over Huacachina with the sun down, before we were taken back to where we started, only now running on adrenaline and coated in a thick layer of sand. We had a traditional Peruvian meal (thai red curry) and headed back to town.

The next morning we got up for breakfast with the lady who loved to hate us. We received the food with only the slight feeling of discontent, when we were asked again what time we’d be picked up. We told her and headed outside to be ready for when they arrived. At this point she popped outside to look with us, pointing at a random van asking if it was that one. I told her no, but she said I should ask anyway and went upstairs. I didn’t ask, they were loading vegetables in the back, it seemed highly unlikely that we’d been confused for two sacks of touristic potatoes. Moments later, she was poking her head out the window still keeping watch, ready to call them if they weren’t arriving. I still couldn’t work out if she liked us and was being a concerned mother figure making sure we got off safely, or just wanted to be sure we left her premises. Either way, eventually we were picked up by a tourist vehicle rather than a grocer and off we went to the harbour.

We merged with a couple of other groups and then found ourselves herded into a boat, and given life jackets to wear. After a brief explanation of what was going on, and a talk on safety, we headed towards the islands, where in the distance looked like a huge oil slick on the surface of the water. It was only when we got closer that we realised that this was actually tens of thousands of birds, apparently all meeting together at this time to eat. I’d suggest the fish should probably relocate.

Eventually we make it to the first island. Lots of birds I didn’t know, penguins and poo. Apparently the poo is valuable, which seems odd (and I don’t think anyone told the birds that because they weren’t being vary careful with it) and so one of the islands had some sort of factory on it to handle it. They weren’t doing a very good job, there was poo all over the place. After a bit, we saw some lines carved into the rock, which, as all good mysteries are, was possibly caused by aliens (but more likely earlier tribes). Nobody knew, so aliens are of course a likelihood. We carried on around the islands, where we saw sea lions, along with more penguins, birds and poo. I’m sure there were some other facts here, but it was mostly those.

After returning to shore, we took a bus to a nearby view point over the town, then off to the national park. Here was very dry and dusty, with a number of beaches, cliffs and views. There’s not a lot more I can really say about it, so have some pictures, and an assurance that the restaurants near the beach we went to were not the cheapest meal we’ve ever had, but we did get a free shotglass of pisco sour, a fairly tasty meal, and the fun game of trying to keep seagulls at bay as we ate it. Diana went to the toilet and came back with a guilty face, it turned out they charged her a fortune to enter, but whilst in the toilet she found some abandoned money, slightly more than she’d paid to get in. I’ve married a dirty criminal. That said, she spent the next hour looking shifty, so I don’t think she’ll make it to the status of great train robber or anything.

We’d booked an overnight bus to Cusco the next day, so we spent most of our day just relaxing in a coffee shop in the main square and working out plans going forward. We’d checked out of our room and asked the lady if we could store our bags somewhere, she gave us a small sonnets worth of Spanish which I equated to be we could leave them next to a wall. Hours later when we were ready to leave, we told her we were going (she had to unlock the door to let us out), and thanked us for staying and gave us a smile. We had no idea what was going on, but it appeared we hadn’t completely insulted her with our presence after all. Yippee!

Hasta luego, Ica!