Blogs from Urubamba, Cusco, Peru, South America

We are in a lovely hotel in Urubamba, a small town in the Sacred Valley. The steep peaks of the Andes tower above us and make a sharp contrast with the Spanish-style style colourful gardens and mission architecture of Hotel Agustos. Today we left Cusco and entered the Sacred Valley, which is surrounded by rugged mountains. Parts of the foothills are striped with terraces, necessary for agriculture in this inhospitable terrain. It was interesting to see the same techniques used by the Inca and for contemporary farming which (apart from tourism) is the chief activity in the area. The focus of today was Pisac, a large archeological site which was a key Inca city and religious centre in the 14th Century before the construction of Machu Picchu. Surrounding massive terraces running down the mountain side, there ... read more

Today began a little on the rainy side. We are relatively high in the mountains so it was clod, foggy and a constant but light drizzle. Glad I brought my Walmart rain suit! I enjoyed a light breakfast of some fresh fruits, breads, coffee and, of course, cocoa tea. I learned to chew the leaves after you make the tea. They are much easier to make a proper mush and they taste far better when boiled, rather than stuffed dry in your mouth. Today we began with an optional tour of a local salt production collective that had been operating since the days of the Inca rulers. We drove high into the mountains and entered the salt mine area called Maras. We learned this was a collective with 400 families participating in the process. The process ... read more

Today was a long day to say the least. Wake up was at 4:30 AM, breakfast at 5 AM and departure at 5:30 AM! We were headed to the Lima airport for a short hop over to Cusco our next port of call. Breakfast was a few bites of roll with some strawberry preserves and a cup of hot java. Not much for the stomach but it was really too early to eat any more. Shortly after breakfast we had our bags in hand and we headed down to the first floor and boarded the bus. Apparently Lima is busy on a Sunday morning, even at this ungodly hour.We dodged the morning commuters and arrived at the airport in plenty of time for our flight. A quick and painless check in and a breeze through security, ... read more

Lima to Ayacucho We rolled out just after 8 this morning and made fairly short work of getting out of the huge metropolis that is Lima. The first part of the day was spent riding alongside of the coast with the Pacific Ocean on our right and sand dunes or desert on our left. There were lots of huts made of some type of woven thatching or brick dotted in the sand dunes. It seemed a strange place to put a home, miles from anything. Moving towards the mountains we came across several herds of goats and a herd of cows being mustered old school style along the highway. We rode from sea level to 4,746 masl by 2.50pm. I could certainly feel the effects of the altitude but didn't feel too bad really considering. Around ... read more

Monday, February 16, 2015 Today the fun starts. We are off to Cuzco to start our Machu Pichu trek. We woke up at 445 am, official wake up time was 500am, however we wanted to get up a little earlier. Our luggage needed to be outside our room by 530am. The bellman were picking up our luggage and delivering them to the lobby and keeping in one place until our departure. We ate breakfast, hot breakfast, one more time before departing our nice hotel, Novotel. Breakfast was at 530am sharp. As in the past couple of days, the breakfast was super good. Our tour group needed to meet in the lobby at 610am, departure to the airport is at 615am. We departed the hotel at 615am sharp and off to the airport. We left early enough ... read more