Cusco

Ahhhh, Peru. Such an fascinating country, with so much history. In October 2015 I visited Peru for the first time with friends, and fell in love. All my expectations were surpassed; I was blown away by the friendliness of the locals, the beautiful nature and the ancient ruins we visited. There’s just something about being in front of ancient ruins and imagining what it must have looked and felt like hundreds of years ago – it definitely can’t be taught in a classroom.

After visiting Peru in October, I was dead set on coming back with Pablo. He needed to try the food in Lima! And we needed to go to Cusco. It had been on our travel list for too long, so as soon as we found cheap tickets to Lima, we decided to go for it. After all, our 5 year anniversary was coming up and what better way to celebrate than hanging out in Machu Picchu?

We went to Peru for a total of almost two weeks, about 1 week in Cusco and 1 week in Lima.

Below you’ll find the tips people gave us,

the tips we wish people gave us,

our favorite day trips,

and pictures from our week in Cusco.

If you’re going to Peru, chances are you’ll want to go to Machu Picchu. If this is the case, you’ll need to go to Cusco for a few days.

Here are some things you should know before going to Cusco:

WEATHER

There are two main seasons in Peru: rainy season (oct-april) and dry season (may-september). The best time to go to Peru is during its dry season, which is why it is the high season. If you want to avoid the crowds in Cusco (kind of hard but you can try), it’s best to go during April-May or during October. Make sure to take a windbreaker with you at all times, in case the weather suddenly changes! Also, don’t forget to take sunscreen with you at all times because of the…

ALTITUDE

At 3,399 m over sea level, the air in Cusco is a lot “thinner”, meaning every breath you take contains less oxygen than what you’re used to. This causes altitude sickness in most people, which is why it’s important to take it easy on your first day in Cusco – meaning no heavy foods, no drinking alcohol (if you can stay away from the pisco sours .. we couldn’t! oops) and no running around trying to see everything all at once. Drinking lots of water and taking it easy should help out, but Pabs was reeeeally affected by the altitude on the first few days. His nose bled 5 days in a row – I don’t know if that had something to do with the altitude or that he kept picking his nose scabs 😂😂😂

TOURISM

Cusco is a VERY touristic city. You’ll find a lot of people from all over the world, especially if you move in the area close to the main square (Plaza de Armas). Try to avoid eating at restaurants in that square; they’re really expensive! You might get lured in by the promise of free pisco sours with your meals, but chances are that pisco sour won’t be too great and the food will be waaay overpriced (lesson learned the hard way, damn you Pabs for being easily tempted haha). Look for restaurants on apps like tripadvisor or maybe even try eating at a local spot for a more authentic meal and experience.

If you want to know the city of Cusco a bit better, look for the guys in the Plaza de Armas offering a free walking tour. You only need to pay them about 15 soles but it’s a pretty complete tour that ends with pisco sours (yasss).

a lady with a baby lamb asked me if I wanted to hold it and take a picture, I said why not? 😊then she obviously charged me for it 😑

If you’re looking for day tours, don’t book with the first guy who offers you a “cheap deal”. Most of the tourism agencies have similar prices, but it’s always best to ask a few and find the best one for you! You might find one that has a cheap price, only to realise you’ll be stuck in a van with 40 people and the tour guide doesn’t even speak your language. The whole point of going on these tours is to learn and understand what you’re looking at, so try to find a agency that can provide that for you.

If you’re a traveler on a budget, look for hostels on hostelworld or booking.com – we looked for the cheapest hostel room we could find, so that we could spend more on food and pisco sours (because, duh). If you like to travel a bit fancier, there’s lots nicer hotels in Cusco (cuz people like Leonardo di Caprio and Bill Gates obviously didn’t stay at cheap hostels during their time in Cusco right?)

DAY TOURS

If you only have a few days in Cusco, make sure to spend most of the time exploring the surrounding areas of Cusco. Our favorite parts of this trip were the day trips we took.

If you have a few days in Cusco, I highly recommend getting out of the city and visiting as many ruins as possible. Don’t just stay in Cusco, seriously.

i meaaan, look at how happy Pabs was during one of our day trips to Ollantaytambo 😂

If you’re planning on doing day tours, think ahead. Most of the sites in Cusco and Sacred Valley require you get an entry ticket, called “Boleto Turístico”. There are different tickets depending on how many days (we only bought it for two days, it was cheaper) but if you’re planning on staying for a few days, it pays off to buy the 1o day ticket. Find more info about that here.

SAKSAYWAMAN

(Or “sexy woman” as the locals call it)

We didn’t get to see this because of the limited time we had in Cusco, but if you’re only in Cusco for a few days and want to see some ruins close to the city, check these out!

MARAS

We took a Day tour to Maras & Moray and it was one of my favorite days from the trip. Maras is only 40 kms north of Cusco and it’s a MUST SEE if you’re there.

The tour guide explained how the salt is extracted, how the locals work on these mines and how they live because of these mines and it is so interesting!! If you go without a tour guide or without any knowledge of where you’re going you’ll probably be like, cool, that’s a lot of salt, so…?? But it’s great to know a bit more about a place when you visit it.

There’s stalls where you can buy salt from the Salina and I had to stop myself from buying everything! If you’re there, definitely buy some salt, you’ll probably see salt from Maras all around Peru but it’ll be cheaper here than anywhere else.

You can walk along the salt ponds, and the view when you stand at the edge is breath taking. Also, a great photo opportunity 🙂

MORAY

After visiting Maras, you need to visit the archaelogical ruins of Moray. These are some of the most visually stunning ruins i’ve seen.

At first when we arrived, I was confused about what actually used to happen here. It kind of looked like a greek amphitheater and kind of like an alien parking lot but after talking to the tour guide he told us these were terraces used for agricultural Incan studies. It is still not 100% verified what these terraces were for, but many believe they used them as research to see the difference altitude can make on crops.

Definitely worth a visit.

PISAC

Our second day trip consisted of Pisac and Ollantaytambo.

Pisac gives you a (vague) idea of what Machu Picchu is like. Pisac has an even more impressive terrace system than Moray, and is a very important Inca site.

We made the mistake of going with a day tour, and had to rush up and down in order to explore as fast as possible.

Pisac is an enormous site and there is a lot to explore, so if you want to go, it might be best to go to the town of Pisac and do the hike up, explore the ruins, and come down.

If you’re planning on going to Machu Picchu and have limited days, I would skip Pisac. Both Pabs and I liked Pisac but we liked Ollantaytambo better.

OLLANTAYTAMBO

This was seriously one of our favorite parts of the trip. Thanks to my friend Elisa’s recommendation to stay at Ollantaytambo one night, we ended up doing something different from what most tour groups offered. We decided to take a day tour to Pisac and Ollantaytambo and stay in Ollantaytambo. This was really cool cuz as soon as we got to the ruins, the tour group only had about half an hour to explore the ruins and then they had to leave (BYEEEE crowds, hate yaaaa), but we stayed exploring for about 2 hours and watched the sun set from the top of the ruins while most of the tourists were gone #win

I don’t think we took any pictures of the actual ruins from the town, but here’s a picture of the town from the ruins

After the ruins, we walked to our hostel and then went out exploring. The town of Ollantaytambo was such a pleasant surprise. We didn’t know what to expect when we got there, but it was pretty spectacular. It was relatively quiet, not too many people in the streets, lots of restaurants with too many yummy options (seriously couldn’t decide on one). We ended up going to one called Quinua Restaurant and GODDAMN that was a good meal. Pablo ate alpaca and I broke my vegetarianism for a second and had to try it cuz when am I ever gonna eat alpaca again? It was actually really good and tasted like.. well.. meat.

you see that in the back? 2 pisco sours for 15 soles (aka around 4 dollars)!?!?!?! gimme 50 plz

And the PISCO SOURS maaaan those we seriously one of the best we’d had in Peru (ok maybe not cuz Lima’s pisco sours are goddamn fire). Do yourself a favor and drink at least one pisco sour everywhere you go. Thank you.

If you have the chance to stay in Ollantaytambo, PLEASE DO. If I could do this trip again, I’d stay for one or two nights in Cusco (or maybe no nights at all.. that would actually help with altitude sickness cuz it’s a lot higher up than Aguas Calientes, Ollantaytambo and even higher than Machu Picchu), then stay a few nights in Ollantaytambo, and do the day trips from there. If you’re going to Machu Picchu, Ollantaytambo is closer (there’s even a train stop that takes you there).

THE ROAD TO MACHU PICCHU

There are maaany ways to get to Machu Picchu. In an ideal world, we would have had more time and would have been able to do the Inca Trail, but we were short on time (cuz of our trip to Salta, Argentina the week before). We didn’t have enough money to spend, so we didn’t wanna go by train (cuz DAMN that shit is expensive, no thank you). So we went for the best route for our time and budget: Hidroeléctrica! Here’s a pretty complete list of alternative routes you can take to Machu Picchu.

AGUAS CALIENTES

We woke up early the next morning to have breakfast and head to Aguas Calientes. A van was picking us up and taking us to Hidroeléctrica where we’d be walking to Aguas Calientes (the town under Machu Picchu).

The ride to la hidroeléctrica was seriously 4 hours of HELL. The driver went SO FAST on the curves (one of my biggest fears) and we were driving on the edges of hills on the narrowest dirt roads and I legitimately thought we were gonna die.

But we made it alive! Only to have to walk for 2.5 hours to get to Aguas Calientes. But it was a beautiful walk along the train rails, and though it was really annoying to see the happy rich people pass by every now and then on the train, we were taking the adventurous route therefore we were happy.

We arrived in Aguas Calientes and went on the search for FOOOOOD and had a great night playing jenga and drinking beer and eating pizza and ceviche and all the yummy food (seriously Peru has the best food). Aguas Calientes is a very touristic town, so the prices are pretty high, but if you search well you can find some hidden gems with good promos!

That night we slept in the-cheapest-overpriced-hostel-bunkbed in-a-shared-room evaaah and woke up the next day to go to..

MACHU PICCHU

Since we’re the kind of people who like to spend their money on food and drinks (instead of trains and buses), we decided to not take the bus from Aguas Calientes to Machu Picchu (about $25 USD for tourists), and walked up there instead. We woke up at 4 am to get ready, and we were standing outside the gates at 5 am. About an hour and a shitload of steps later, we arrived at Machu Picchu. We got there SOAKED:

The doors opened and we got to be some of the first people to enter Machu Picchu for the day. We decided to head to La Puerta del Sol to see the sun rise over the city.

It was really nice to sit there and take it all in before the tourist rush began.

The day we went to Machu Picchu also happened to be our 5 year anniversary, so this was a pretty cool way to celebrate it ☺️

there are LOTS of places with no tourists around where you can chill and maybe even nap 🙂

Machu Picchu has LOTS to explore, but there’s also LOTS of people there and this gets kind of annoying. We made the mistake of going really early and not bringing snacks, so by the time it was 9am we were starving. If we had brought snacks, we could have just relaxed, found a place to chill and wait for the tourists to slowly start leaving. I wish I would have read this article before going to Machu Picchu so I could have planned our trip a bit better.

But we needed to be in Hidroeléctrica by 2:30 so at 10 we decided to start heading back down to eat some well deserved pizzas, and then walk back through the train tracks to Hidroeléctrica.

All in all, it was a wonderful experience. I had been dreaming of going to Machu Picchu for years, and it felt great to finally be there feeling how MAGIC this place is.

lots of people go up Wayna Picchu but we didn’t have enough time or money to do it

SOME FINAL THOUGHTS & ADVICE ON THIS TRIP:

CUSCO ISN’T THAT GREAT.

Personally, we didn’t like Cusco that much. It felt too touristy, expensive (in comparison to the rest of Peru) and dirty. And LOUD! Oh my god. You should have seen Pablo by the end of our trip in Cusco. If you’ve ever been to Peru you’ll know people have a tendency to HONK their car horns ALL DAY, for no reason at all. I thought it was bad in Lima but DAMN it’s TERRIBLE in Cusco. They fucking beep at you for EVERYTHING. So we’d be standing on the street waiting to cross it, and a taxi would pass by and beep at us as if saying “i’m available” or “want to hop on?”. This was weird at first but we tried to ignore it. After the 100th beep in a week, Pablo lost it and shouted “WHAT? WHAT DO YOU WANTTTT” at the taxi driver. It was actually really funny hahaha so you’ve been warned, the car honks are reeeally annoying but that’s just how people communicate there I guess.

PLAN YOUR TRIP IN ADVANCE

There are limited tickets to Machu Picchu, so make sure to buy yours online a few months before your trip (if possible). You can buy that ticket here. Also, book your hostels in advance – specially if you go in peak season. The last thing we would have wanted to do at the end of a day full of adventuring was start looking for hostels. At the end of the day, you just want a bed to pass out in, and even if sometimes the bathrooms have no curtains and the showers make the whole bathroom wet, it doesn’t matter as long as the bed gives you a good night’s sleep.

AVOID TOURIST TRAPS

I mentioned it already but try to not fall for the first offer you find. Keep looking, don’t be tempted, and do your research well.

TAKE CASH EVERYWHERE

In cusco there’s not too many places that accept card, and when they do, it’s usually only VISA. Forget about American Express. Maaaaybe you’ll find some places that take Mastercard. So be prepared and take cash fo sho!

DRINK LOTS OF PISCO SOURS

Do it for me, ok? And take pictures of them and send them my way. PLEASE AND THANK YOU!

Hope this has been helpful for those of you planning on traveling to Cusco in the near or far future! This trip was so much fun for Pabs and I. I’m so glad we made the impulsive decision to go, specially since we left for Australia a few months later and we couldn’t leave South America without visiting Machu Picchu, could we?

Peru in one sentence: “here’s a llama, there’s a llama, and another little llama, fuzzy llama, funny llama…

…llama llama BUTT.” (+100 points if you know that song).

TravelNati ValderramaOctober 17, 2016travel, travel blog, cusco, cuzco, peru, peru travel, south america, machu picchu, ollantaytambo, adventure happies, adventuresComment