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Published: April 10th 2012
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The Loki Hostel was rather far from the bus terminal atop a huge hill overlooking the city. The hostal was gigantic, with a max capacity of 280 people. And they only had 4 beds free, fortunately two in the same room. Our room was by far the biggest we had stayed in and had 13 people in it. There was a bit of chaos with which beds were available so we set out to grab some food and check out the main parts of town. Only a few steps out of the hostel, a tour company, Amazon Tours Peru, beckoned us in to their shop to talk about tours. We wanted information on all kinds of things so we sat down and talked about a number of tours. The biggest focus was a tour in the Manu Jungle, something we were both interested in but not quite sure if we wanted to go in to the jungle outside of Cusco or somewhere else in Peru or somewhere in Ecuador. We listened it was out of our price range.
Upon returning to the hostel, the bed situation was still a mess so we hung out in the common area for a
bit. The hostel is so huge that it has its own tour center so we talked to them a bit too. I did not have a great feeling about the place before and sitting in the common area confirmed it. The Loki hostel is more geared for the 18-21 year old crowd who want to drink and party away their travel experience. There was a toga party that night. To each his own I guess, but I am too old for that stuff and that is not the kind of trip we are on. And...we can let imaginations run on this one...lets just say first thing the next morning, Sunday, we set off to find a new place to stay. The absolute worst, by far, hostel experience of the whole trip.
We found a pretty good hostel just across the street, Hostel Andrea, (actually a little cheaper) and were heading to the town square when we ran across the jungle tour people from the night before. This time the guide was with the girl we had talked to and he spoke english. Their trip was leaving Monday and they only had 4 spaces filled (out of 8) so they
were recruiting pretty hard. Other than getting info in the Loki hostel, we had not shopped around so we just agreed to meet with them later and off we went to shop. Sunday is a tough day to do tour shopping. Many places are closed. We got enough information to realize the tour by Amazon Tours Peru was far superior to the others, although a bit more expensive.
After much discussion we could not make the jungle trip work. So, Plan B, figure out how to get to Machu Picchu. From the Loki Hostel, we had a tour price of $185 USD for a 3 day trip to Machu Picchu that included mountain biking, a trek on the Inca Trail, lodging, food and other activities. The activities did not interest us and given our horrible experience at Loki we did not want to go on that tour. We went to the tourist information office to see if we could figure out our own way. After crunching the numbers (train plus entrance plus buses plus lodging plus food) we determined that the Loki tour was actually cheaper than doing it ourselves. Ugh. Now what?
Back at our hostel, our
hostel host told us of a different way to get to Machu Picchu...the cheap way. Awesome! And kind of a fun adventure too. We had read about the way our hostel host told us, but getting detailed information is hard to come by.
Sunday evening we were wrapping up plans for Machu Picchu at our hostel. While Sarah organized a bit at the hostel I walked across the street to look for an ATM. And, coincidentally, I ran in to Marco, the guide for Amazon Tours Peru who we had been talking to for 2 days now. Marco still only had 4 people on his tour and really wanted to get us to go with him, and finally he convinced us to join him. We were booked to go to the Manu Jungle 5:00 Monday morning!
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