Cusco and Pisac

I loved Cusco, and am so happy we devoted a lot of time to staying here. The city is the perfect balance of traditional and modern, and local and touristic. There certainly are a lot of tourists in Cusco since it is the gateway to the Sacred Valley, but I never felt overwhelmed or like the city was only catering to tourists. There are plenty of local restaurants and shops, including a couple of  great markets.

 You can find some great deals on textiles here too, but definitely negotiate. I got a great alpaca sweater for only $25.

In another instance of good luck (just like the festival we happened upon), we accidentally found ourselves in the middle of a tourism promotion video that the city of Cusco was producing. There were a ton of dancers in traditional costumes, and a live band who was lip syncing to music. It was all being filmed by a crew of videographers and drones. We watched as they performed several takes. It was so fun. Sadly, we weren't in the final version of the song, but it was a fun experience.

We also ate in some really great restaurants including a cevicheria, a vegetarian place, and a steakhouse (the veggie kabobs were great!). Of course we also frequented the local bakery, La Valeriana. Sadly, I kept forgetting to take pictures at the bakery, but trust me. It's worth a stop.

We did more than just eat and shop, of course. We also took a day trip to Pisac, a local town with a big market and some nice ruins. At this point, we had already seen a fair amount of ruins, so we weren't sure whether it was worth it to visit Pisac. Thankfully, we got great advice that told us this couldn't be missed.

What we weren't told though, was that the ruins are at the top of a giant hill and it is a strenuous hike. We actually took a taxi up to the top of the mountain and wound our way down the mountain seeing the sites. It took us about two and a half hours to get down, and we were VERY thankfully we didn't do it in the reverse order. The people climbing up looked pretty rough. You can really feel how high up Cusco is on this hike.

Once we made our way down, we stopped at the local market to watch locals haggle for fresh produce and flowers. There were also a fair amount of tchotches for sale, which is where we picked up the gifts for Zahara's teachers.

With the horseback riding, the food, the Chabad, the views, the people...Cusco really has it all. I loved this town and highly recommend to everyone. Have you been? Let me know what you think!

See our other stops in Peru:
Itinerary
Lima in Two Days
Getting to the Sacred Valley
Machu Picchu
Maras and Moray
Horseback Riding in the Sacred Valley

Horseback Riding In The Sacred Valley

One of the things I was most excited about doing in Peru was going horseback riding through the Sacred Valley. Because this was a must-do for me, I made sure to arrange everything in advance. I assumed we would be part of  a larger group, but Dan and I actually had a private tour with Valencia Travel.

We did the half-day tour from Cusco that takes you to four Incan ruins: Qenko, Puca Pucara, Tambomachay, and Sacsayhuaman. The price of admission to the sites was not included in the tour. We purchased the tourist ticket for Cusco which allowed us entry into 16 sites, including Maras which we saw the day before. It's not cheap, but it is worth it. You can buy the ticket at any entry site.

The day started off on such a funny foot. The tour director asked me, in English, how comfortable with horses I am and how well I speak Spanish. I told him that I had been around horses before but only as a tourist or summer camper, and that my Spanish is OK, but not fluent. He immediately turns to our horse wrangler and says, in Spanish, "she's fluent and very comfortable around horses." Umm...not quite what I said! It led to hilarious interactions between us and our non-English-speaking wrangler who took us galloping through the fields! Thankfully it all worked out well and we had an amazing time.

The way the tour works is you ride from site to site, and at each site are met by your English-speaking guide who will show you around the ruins. Our guide happened to be 

Quechuan, or an indigenous person. Just like when we went to Egypt and had a Coptic Christian as a tour guide or in Jordan when we toured with a Bedouin, I always find it interesting to hear a minority view of the culture and society. We were especially lucky in this case because he could tell us more of the meaning behind the ruins and how the Incan culture and traditions continue to this day.

Very interestingly, I kept trying to speak to him in Spanish, but he kept switching back to English. I finally asked him which language he prefers. He told me he preferred English because "Spanish is the language of my oppressors." Wow! That was a new one. I had no idea that in Peru, the Quechuan people along with other indigenous tribes were persecuted and not allowed to practice their customs and languages. It is only recently, he said, that the Peruvian government realized that a lot of tourists are interested in native cultures and are starting to use that as a selling point. It was an eye-opening conversation for sure.

We also visited an alpaca and llama farm. I mean, come on. Look at these cuties!

The ruins were great and the riding was exceptional. I was worried that the ruins would be a bit of  a let-down after Machu Picchu, but they are so different and gave me an even deeper appreciation of how sophisticated this society was.

See our other stops in Peru:
Itinerary
Lima in Two Days
Getting to the Sacred Valley
Machu Picchu
Maras and Moray
Cusco and Pisac

Maras and Moray in the Sacred Valley

When we were planning our trip to Peru, we did a lot of research about where to go and how long to stay in each place. There is so much to do in Peru, that unless you narrow it down, you can quickly get overwhelmed and miss a lot of great stuff. We decided to spend the majority of our time in Sacred Valley, and it was a fantastic decision. We had plenty of time to see the sites without feeling rushed. It was the perfect pace that allowed it to really feel like a vacation, with plenty of time for tea and pastries--just the way we like to travel.

We spent a day exploring two of the most famous Incan sites in the Sacred Valley--Maras and Moray. The easiest way for us to explore was by hiring a local guide in Ollantaytambo to take us around the sites and then drop us off in Cusco where we were staying that night. Our guide was very friendly and spoke English well.

Our first stop was Moray, which was where the Incan people would conduct agricultural experiments. I had seen pictures of this site before, but the pictures don't do it justice. It's really hard to tell the scale of this place without actually standing there, but the tiers are each several feet high, and in total it is almost 100 feet deep! There's also a temperature variance of as much as 27 degrees F from the surface-level to the deepest tier. What an amazing feat of science to build these perfect tiers and understand the concepts of experimentation. Because of the Incans, Peru today is known for their more than 2,000 varieties of potatoes among many other things!

The second stop was Maras, which is a salt flat that pre-dates the Incans, and is still used by locals. Here, our guide really shined. He told us the history of these salt flats, explained how they worked, and how each one is allocated to a Maras family. 

Each is pond owned by a family in Maras who harvests the salt and sells for income. The size of the pond depends on how big the family is.

After a fantastic day out, we headed to Cusco for our first of three nights in Cusco. It was a Friday night, and we heard that there was a vibrant Chabad House in Cusco. Chabads are found around the world and serve as a Jewish center for travelers. Dan and I have been to a few Chabads, including in England, Thailand, and throughout the United States, and we thought it would be nice to have a hot kosher meal. It was lovely!

It's one of the largest and most active Chabad Houses in the world, which makes sense given the number of Israelis who come to visit Machu Picchu each year. Unfortunately we couldn't take any pictures because it was the sabbath, but there were easily two hundred people there for a Friday night dinner. It was a great test of my Hebrew since the whole dinner was conducted in Hebrew. Thankfully we sat next to a few nice people who all had fascinating travel stories (and spoke English!). It was our first glimpse into the wonderful city of Cusco!

See our other stops in Peru:
Itinerary
Lima in Two Days
Getting to the Sacred Valley
Machu Picchu
Horseback Riding in the Sacred Valley
Cusco and Pisac

Machu Picchu!

One of the main highlights of Peru is Machu Picchu. This was actually the reason that we decided to come to the country at all. I know that this is something you can do with kids (check out this awesome blog!), but it wasn't something we were up for. This was the perfect opportunity to see Machu Pichu while we're still relatively young and healthy--and kid free!

Let me tell you, Machu Picchu lives up to all of the hype! I was worried that it wouldn't be that amazing in person, but pictures really don't do this site justice. You can't capture the breadth and depth of the ruins. Scale is so hard to comprehend until you're standing in the middle of them, or viewing them from the top of a mountain--like we did!

View of Machu Picchu from the top of Huayna Picchu  

But let's start at the beginning where we waited in the pouring rain for more than an hour to get up to the top. We grabbed a poncho from the lady on the street, and thankfully it cleared up as soon as we drove up to the base of Machu Picchu.

View at Machu Picchu 

View a few minutes later

We hired a guide at the entrance gates. It's really simple to do and most of them speak English pretty well. We had tickets to climb Huayna Picchu starting at 10:00, so we had a few hours to explore. To be honest, it didn't hit me as immediately as it did Dan. He was wowed before the clouds even lifted. For me though, it was hearing about the city, how they excavated it from the jungle, and seeing the ritual rooms they built that made me grasp just how impressive the Incans were. I can't begin to describe what difficult terrain this is. But the Incans were able to build great cities and create arable land out of it--without many tools!

We left our guide to start our hike up Huayna Picchu around 10:45. We read online that climbing this mountain (the one you see in the background of that first picture) was a challenge. It is steep, with little-to-no safety railings, and can be slippery at times. I can, in fact, confirm those facts. It was strenuous! And, thankfully I'm not afraid of heights, but Dan is, and it got a little dicey at times.


Oh, also, did I mention at times you had to crawl through caves? That was extra special for my claustrophobic husband.

And then we had to do the same thing on the way down! But it really was a fun hike. It took us around 3.5 hours to do both ways. It was hard, but one of those things you feel really proud of yourself for doing afterward.

After the climb my legs felt like jello, but I knew we wanted to climb up to the Guard Tower to get the iconic view you see on all the post cards. It was hard, but so worth it! They had a bunch of llamas up top (strictly for tourism), including a baby llama. So cute!

It was a fantastic day that I won't soon forget. If you've got Machu Picchu on your bucket list--do it!

See our other stops in Peru:
Itinerary
Lima in Two Days
Getting to the Sacred Valley
Moray and Maras
Horseback Riding in the Sacred Valley
Cusco and Pisac

Getting to the Sacred Valley

After a beautiful day in Lima, we were off to explore the Sacred Valley. The easiest way to get there is by flying from Lima to Cusco on a quick hour and fifteen minute flight. There are some very early flights (starting at 6am), but we chose to leave just before ten, which still got us in around 11:15.

We were told that getting to the Lima airport is crazy and you need to allocate several hours for the traffic and security lines. It's true that the traffic is pretty bad, but the airport itself wasn't terrible. In fact, we got there pretty early and had enough time to book our Peru Rail tickets from Cusco to Aguas Calientes. Here's a tip: book your rail tickets early. We assumed we would just buy them when we got to Cusco because we weren't sure what time we wanted. We got lucky and had the last seats for the train we wanted. Tickets are expensive--we spent $380 for two round-trip tickets from Ollantaytambo to Aguas Calientes--but it's just what you have to do.

From Cusco, we hired a taxi to take us straight to Ollantaytambo. Cusco is at 11,000+ feet above sea level, whereas Ollantaytambo is only at 9,000. Going further into the valley was a great way to get our bodies acclimated to the elevation.

The taxi ride took a couple of hours and was absolutely stunning! I couldn't get over the gorgeous, lush, green mountains. Our driver was a Cusco local and we had a really great conversation about his culture, Peruvian politics and American politics--all in Spanish! That was a first! He was great at pointing out things as we were going by, and even stopped by some alpacas so we could take a picture.

He dropped us off right in the center of Ollantaytambo where we grabbed a quick lunch with a view before heading to our train.

We opted for Peru Rail over Inca Rail mostly based on some online reviews we read and train time availability. It was a great choice. The train was beautiful and comfortable (and they served tea and snacks!). Mostly though, I loved how in the 90+ minute ride we saw multiple climates from desert to rain forest. It was truly incredible.

The train dropped us off in Aguas Calientes, an adorable town in the Sacred Valley. We stayed here for the night before heading to Machu Pichu the next day. I can't believe our luck. We were exploring the town in the evening and kept seeing different marching bands and dancers dressed in costume parading down the streets. We followed one band and found ourselves at the town square in front of the church celebrating La Fiesta de las Cruces (Festival of the Cross):

It is a ceremony in which each community decorates the cross of its church and prepares it for its procession to churches in neighboring communities. This celebration held in gratitude to pre-Hispanic gods for bountiful harvests, also serves as a setting for folklore shows. (source)

This holiday was clearly not for the tourists. All the locals were out dancing, singing, and parading. I love getting glimpses into the local culture like this.

Next up: Machu Pichu!

See our other stops in Peru:
Itinerary
Lima in Two Days
Machu Picchu
Moray and Maras
Horseback Riding in the Sacred Valley
Cusco and Pisac

Lima in Two Days

When we were building our itinerary for Peru, we did a lot of research and asked a lot of friends how much time they recommended we spend in Lima. We got mixed answers, but the majority of folks said that if we had limited time, we should concentrate that time in the Sacred Valley. Lima, they said, is just a big city like most other big cities.

I think this advice was spot on; the Sacred Valley really was the highlight of our trip. However, there are some really great things to see and eat in Lima, and I'm glad we gave ourselves time to explore. Here are some of our highlights:

Eating:
Did you know that the number five restaurant in the world is in Lima? Me either before this trip. Central, a restaurant that focuses on local Peruvian flavors is just one of a handful of phenomenal restaurants in town. Dan and I were lucky enough to score seats at Central, and I'll have a separate post about our ten-course meal!

La Mar
I loved everything about the food in Peru, but especially the ceviche (spelled cebiche in Peru); it's their national dish! My friend Jill recommended we visit the restaurant La Mar to try their cebiche, and I'm not kidding, it was the best I've ever had. It was so fresh and flavorful!

La Mar serves an appetizer of fried plantains and other root veggie chips along with three incredible sauces, and canchita, which are un-popped corn kernels. The canchita tasted like corn nuts--nice and salty. We also ordered a chicha morada, which is a non-alcoholic drink made from purple corn. It was really tasty.

The restaurant is colorful, and fun, and they have big signs telling you what's fresh that day. They aren't open for dinner and they don't take reservations, so get there a little before noon and you'll get in.

Panchita
We liked this restaurant so much we went here twice! There can be a wait at times, so make a reservation if you can. Otherwise, you might be able wait in the bar while sipping a pisco sour.

What made this restaurant so great for us was two things: the bread and the veggies. Their trio of bread was perfection, especially paired with their sauces. And the veggie skewer was like magic. They imparted all the flavor of pollo a la brasa (rotisserie chicken) into these veggies. The spices were so intense and flavorful that Dan and I thought about it throughout our trip and made sure to get it one more time before heading to the airport.

Apparently Chinese food (called Chifa) is also really popular in Lima. We tried it. I'd recommend skipping it. It was just like American Chinese food but with a bit of a Peruvian flair. You're better off just sticking with Peruvian food.

Activities:
Circuito Magico del Agua
This was a fun evening activity. I had no idea what to expect, but I should have known it would be cool based on the fact this water park holds a Guinness World record for largest fountain complex in a public park. Shows are at 7:15pm, 8:15pm, and 9:30pm and entrance is only 4 soles ($1.20). We went for the 7:15 show and there was a pretty good-sized crowd. I was really impressed by the water laser show as it told the history of Peru. I, of course, also loved the rainbow fountains.

Walking
We did a ton of walking in Lima! It's a great city in which to stroll. Some of my favorite areas were along the water in Miraflores (leading to the Larcomar shopping mall); the Kennedy park, which is famous for housing tons of stray cats; and downtown Lima with the gorgeous Plaza del Armas.

See our other stops in Peru:
Itinerary
Getting to the Sacred Valley
Machu Picchu
Moray and Maras
Horseback Riding in the Sacred Valley
Cusco and Pisac