Machu Picchu & Sacred Valley | Peru
- giulia
- Jul 3, 2018
- 3 min read
Peru's famous sights
From Cusco we took a car to Ollantaytambo as I was reluctant to do anther curvy bus journey. The landscape outside of Cusco was quite beautiful, after 3 cities in a row I think we were both missing a bit of nature. The small villages and towns on the way are surrounded by the Andes and the temperature gets much warmer towards the sacred valley. The car drive to Ollantaytambo takes about 2 hours or 1hour and 25min if you have a driver who wants to go home after the drop off. Ollantaytambo is a cute little town with a river running through and a few ruins on top, which became famous as it hosts the main train stop to Machu Picchu. As our train was leaving the day after at 12.45 we just had a relaxing day in Ollantaytambo and took a walk around the old alleys in the back of the town. We took a room which was very close to the train station and we slept with the sound of the river in the background.
The morning after we boarded our train and enjoyed the service which was offered for a 90$ (one way) train ride. The panorama was quite pretty, minus the electric cabling throughout the whole route, and as soon as we got to Aguas Calientes, we realised that there was an incredible amount of tourists and prices were around 2-3 times higher than in Puno & Arequipa. We had already decided we’d not do the salkantay trek or any other 400$ trek as it seemed a bit too much to us. We set our alarms for 4.30am and went to bed quite early trying to catch as much sleep as possible.
In the morning we literally walked to the lower entrance of the ticket check completely in the dark but not alone at all....as soon as we got to the entrance point I was so shocked to see the amount of people waiting in the dark so early in the morning to hike the steps which separated us to the macchu pichu ruins. To be honest it was not really a fun hike on the way up as it was dark and there was almost no space between people as it was just a massive group proceeding at more or less the same pace.....you could only overtake at certain sections and you always had 1 people in the front and one in the back to press you back in the ascending line.
The hike itself was not really difficult but we got to to the top quite sweaty and hungry for breakfast. We managed to admire the view just before sunset without too many people and as soon as the sun was up...hundreds of people magically appeared back in the pictures..The rest...is also hundreds of pictures :-)
The day after we headed back to Ollantaytambo and hiked up to a viewpoint and I thought the view of the valley and the hiking trail and the silence around were much more worth the prize of the Machu Picchu ticket...buuuut Machu Picchu was a must!
One more day in Ollantaytambo and we decided to explore the salinas nearby where pretty much every farmer/family living in the area owns a little spot where they patiently cure their salt until it is ready to be exported or sold locally to tourists. The salinas themselves looked quite impressive and well kept and after a nice stroll around and some sneaky tastings we came out with few kilos of salt to bring home!!!
(click to enlarge)
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