Cuzco, Lares Valley and Machu Picchu
We are almost at the end of the Peruvian
leg of our journey. Currently we are
travelling in style on a very nice (and somewhat pricey train) from Cuzco to
Puno. It makes a nice change from the
bus.....and no motion sickness at all.
Our time in Cuzco was pretty relaxing, we
didn’t see many of the touristy sites.
We just took it easy wandered around the plaza, visited the markets and
got organised for our trek in the Lares Valley.
We had organised the trek with a local tour company by email. As with most of the local tour companies they
seem to be quite random and a bit disorganised. Emails from them didn’t quite
make sense and they didn’t take credit cards, so that meant we had to make many
trips to an ATM to get enough cash (the banks here only dispense a small amount
of cash at a time, very annoying). After
all that we weren’t quite sure what to expect, we had a meeting with them prior
to the trip, they gave us tshirts and said they would pick us up at 4.45 am on
the day of the trip.
Lares valley is near Cuzco, the trek is
advertised as being an alternative option to the Inca trail which is really
busy and books out months before. The
plan was to spend three days trekking through the valley, then catch the train
and spend a day at Machu Picchu. The first morning of the trip was pretty
relaxing , we spent a bit of time in the hot pools at Lares, had a little nap,
had some lunch, had another little nap (we had an early start) and then started
walking. Our group consisted of myself
and Chris, Edwar our guide, Cecil the cook, and a local man (aka “the
horseman”) and his younger brother (aka “the little boy”...we never learnt
their names) who looked after the horses that carried all the gear. There had been another couple booked for the
trip but they cancelled. Chris and I
found it all a bit weird, we are used to roughing it, putting up our on tent,
doing our on cooking etc, but here it was all done for us. Cecil made us two course meals every meal,
usually a soup followed by something else, pancakes or omelette for breakfast,
and even a cocktail the day we crossed the high pass, it was all a bit too much
food for me.
The first day of the trek was meant to be
pretty easy, 2-3 hours walking along the valley floor, but our guide suggested we take a scenic
detour. This scenic detour turned out to
be a fairly hard slog up a big mountain and back down into the valley. I think I would have found it tiring at sea
level but we were walking between 3,000 and 4,000 m above sea level. To top it all off we were a bit pushed for
time as we wanted to get to our campsite before dark. I found it really hard going, my chest was
heaving just trying to get enough air, I think Chris found it pretty
challenging too. We descended back down
into the valley to the town where we were meant to camp, but discovered that
the horseman had pushed ahead to the next village. The little boy was waiting to show us the
way, he told our guide that it was only a few minutes more walking. After another 45 mins of walking up a steep
hill we eventually reached our campsite.
I was completely exhausted, I struggled to eat dinner as I was so
tired.
It got a bit easier for the rest of the
trip. We had a high pass to cross (4,600
m) on the second day but had heaps of time so I could take it slowly and not
get so out of breath. The people in this
part of the Lares valley are still living pretty traditional lives. We visited a family living in typical one
room house. The whole family (parents
and four kids) live in this house, approximately 3 x 7 m with no windows. They
cook inside too just with a small fire so the house very smoky and dark. Peruvians are generally pretty short, I’m
about average for woman and Chris is just giant compared to everyone else. In the one room house he was almost bent over
double. The family also had guinea pigs
living under the shelves by the bed.
Guinea pigs are a traditional food in Peru, we have seen many
restaurants advertising “Coy” the Spanish word for guinea pigs.
Where ever we went in the Lares Valley we
never seem to be alone. There were
always people around in the hills minding their flocks of llamas, alpacas and
sheep. Often we would get little kids
running up to us out of nowhere wanting sweets, luckily we stocked up with
lollipops before leaving town.
On our last day of the trek we had a few
hours to spare in Ollaytantambo before catching the train to Machu Picchu. For some reason the tour company had booked
our guide on a different train to us so we were left with the cook Cecil and
the driver Pedro both of which didn’t speak English so we got to practise our
Spanish. Ollaytantambo has some
impressive inca ruins, however we did not get around to checking them out,
partly because we were being lazy and partly because we were being cheap (we
hadn’t bought the expensive tourist ticket which gets you into a lot of sites
in and around Cuzco). Instead we drank
beers and played Sapo in the garden of the restaurant where we had lunch. Sapo involves throwing coins at a box, trying
to get the coins through holes in the box.
You get different points depending on which hole it goes through. The box has a golden coloured frog (sapo is
Spanish for frog) on top, if you throw the coin into its mouth you get 5,000 points. After a relaxing afternoon we caught the
train to Agua Callientes (the town nearest Machu Picchu). After driving through Ollaytantambo we
weren’t worried at all about missing the ruins, the whole town was just one big
traffic jam with tour busses trying to get around on the narrow cobbled
streets, it was chaos.
Aguas Calientes is not a very attractive
town, very touristy and very expensive.
The main reason for staying there is to get a head start on everyone
coming from Cuzco to visit Machu Picchu.
At Machu Picchu there is a hill you can climb up, Wayna Picchu, where
you have a great view of the ruins.
However they only let 400 people per day climb this hill and it is on a
first come first served basis. As we
wanted to climb Wayna Picchu we ended up getting up very early (before 4) and
joined the line for the bus up to Machu Picchu.
The first bus didn’t leave till 5.30 am so it was a long wait. We weren’t even near the front of the line,
but we were still within the first 400 people.
It was all a bit crazy, so far on this trip we have been avoiding the
big crowds and doing the less touristy options.
Having to join a big queue just to see something is a bit foreign for
us, coming from New Zealand. The ruins themselves were pretty impressive, the
Peruvians have done a good job at restoring part of it, and do a good job at
managing the hoards of tourists.
As I said we are on our way to Puno beside
Lake Titicaca. We plan to spend a few
days there before heading over the border to Bolivia.
Dusk
