Air travel to Cusco is via Lima ($495 per person round trip from Caracas to Cusco via Lima – Taca Airlines had a fleet of all new Airbus 310 jets: nice!). The flight from Lima to Cusco is a morning flight. The return from Cusco to Lima (about US$160 round trip) is scheduled for the morning also, but our flight was delayed by fog. In the rainy season, we think this is probably not uncommon. As a result of our delayed flight, we had an unplanned day in Lima and fortunately this led to our visiting the Museo de Oro and the Museo Armas del Mundo (combined ticket price Peruvian New Sols [s/] 30 or about US$9 per person; open 11:30 AM – 7:00 PM seven days). The gold museum is sensational – plan on a minimum of one hour to see the full exhibit - and the Museum of Arms is also probably worth at least an hour of your time. The gold museum has numerous gold and silver ceremonial items, jewelry, and other ornaments. There are many items of stonework, bronze tools for stonemasonry, feather cloaks from burial sites of southern Peru, many wooden items, and several mummies.  In the museum of arms there is every kind of weapon from blunderbusses, shogun armor and samurai swords, and conquistador equipment, up through the equipment of the first and second World Wars. There are hundreds of items. It is at least an hour by taxi from the airport.

Both nights in Lima we stayed at La Posada del Parque (monden@terra.com.pe ) – The taxi from the airport was US$12, arranged by the Posada each way (if they know your are coming, that is . . . ) and charged with the room cost. The room itself was US$24. This posada is located in a quiet and attractive neighborhood, but Lima in general was about the ugliest city we’ve seen – notwithstanding some beautiful building facades around the Plaza Mayor. On our unplanned day when we made our visit to the gold museum, we hired taxi driver David Barzola at the airport (excellent English) to drive us to the posada, and then tour us around. If you could get him to agree to a rate up front, for his minor shortcomings, he might be worth hiring instead of dealing with the mass of aggressive taxi and tour sellers waiting at the exit door of the Lima airport.

Cusco

Various guide sources including internet pages and Lonely Planet recommended to avoid packages, but they did not give good guidance on what specific tasks would be needed in the absence of guide packages, so here are some details:

Cusco is a nice city to explore for a few days as well as being the base for M.P. visits – it was the capital of the Inca empire, after all – there are plenty of hostels and restaurants. We stayed at Hostal Amaru www.cusco.net/amaru and found it an excellent value at US$25/night including breakfast. On arrival at Cusco we hired a taxi for our ride to the hostel (where we had a reservation). The taxi driver picked up a friend of his to join us on the ride. The friend was selling packages and followed us into the hostel. We heard him out, promised to call, and he left. Immediately a lady whom we thought was an employee of the hostel approached us to apologize for the persistence of the salesman and proceeded to begin her own package spiel. Katherine, of Marcela’s Travel, was very articulate and professional and we immediately fell into the package-buying mode. It was not a big error, but you CAN do better.

We wanted to visit M.P. for a couple of days and get a good look at Cusco and the surroundings. Our package included all the transportation to and from Machu Picchu, and lodging in Aguas Calientes. We also bought a one-day bus tour of the Sacred Valley. To compare: the M.P. package cost us $250 for two, and got us train tickets on the backpacker train ($26.78 per person each way – available at the PeruRail station “San Pedro”), one round trip bus ticket each ($9 round trip – available at bus-side on a one-way basis for $4.50 per person), one admission each to M.P. ($20 per person per day – non-negotiable despite insinuations we’d heard otherwise), and a night’s lodging with breakfast ($30 at La Cabana; no different than if we’d chosen this fine establishment from among the many available in Aguas Calientes) – total value $195; plus a large-group guide in M.P. (value unknown, but we cannot recommend this – there are plenty of private guides at the entrance if you have not researched what you will be seeing) and some taxi transfers (taxis in Cusco are 4 sols or about $1 to most locations). Katherine also took us to a store where many woolen goods were for sale – but we think the prices were a bit high. You could visit there on your own if curious: Perez Factory (phone 232186 in Lima – their brochure says they will pay for the transportation quite a few blocks southeast of the tourist area of Cusco). So, our package price included about $35 worth of local knowledge and peace of mind.

We took a bus tour of the Sacred Valley for $76 for two people, on our last day in Cusco. The package included our Boleto Turistico ($10 each and this also gained us admission to several Cusco sites – we would have bought it regardless of whether we took the bus tour) The tour visited some local markets and Inca ruins at Pisac, Ollantaytambo, and Chinchero. It included a great lunch priced around $3 or 4 per person, and a very informative and animated guide. Katherine had offered a private guide (taxi) tour of the Sacred Valley for a few dollars more and that might have been more enjoyable in some respects (smaller crowds, more time in one market and less in another), but it was also enjoyable to talk with some other tourists as we traveled – and we had a very enjoyable tour. The Inca ruins in the Sacred Valley bear many similarities to those at M.P, of course. Most of these ruins were right along the route of the trainride to M.P.

What we saw and what we missed

The cathedral reportedly has a very important portion of an Inca temple within, but it was near Christmas and we never were able to gain access to the church. When it was open, it was for services only. We saw the unavoidable 12-faceted stone and the jaguar image in the wall – do not accept any offers to be shown these things. We said no thank you to well over 100 postcard vendors, we visited several museums full of baroque art which is not very interesting to us and the Inca Museum on Almirante one block up hill from the Cathedral which is not included on the Boleto Turistico but which is a very good museum and well worth the small admission fee.

We visited portions of the local market a few blocks to the southwest of the Plaza de Armas along Calle Nueve. It is full of sights, sounds and smells and seemed safe during the mid-morning hours. Do not be afraid to explore it thoroughly. The day we visited the market, we had a great non-touristy lunch at Super Pollo on Calle Marquez.

We missed the vast ruin, Sacsayhuaman, which is located just NW of Cusco – within 1 km and accessible by walking up hill from the Plaza de Armas on Suecia or Procuradores to the road out of town, and then following it around the hill to the right past the Church of San Cristobal. Admission is with a tourist ticket (boleto turistico) which costs $10. Our bus tour was to visit this site, but the bus just drove through the area and our Boleto Turistico was not stamped for just passing through.

We ate the local corn with gigantic kernels, we took pictures of ladies in native costume with llamas, we ate a cuy while in Aguas Calientes – pass up your chance at this Inca delicacy! We bought a CD of flute music from the young band at the Inca Grill, we bought several “luck gourds”, visited the ice-cream shop on calle Ruinas; and admired many alpaca, baby alpaca (finer fiber and reportedly not itchy), and plain old wool sweaters and hats – good thing we live on a boat in the tropics or the visit to Cusco could have been much more expensive!

What We’d Recommend

M.P. is more interesting in the context of the region, and we think it would be more interesting to visit after some of the other sites. We suggest that a good approach would be to start with a day or two of acclimatization in Cusco (elevation about 3500m) followed by a bus or taxi tour of the upper sacred valley. If the tour misses Sacsayhuaman, then walk there later. Having seen the context, then take the backpacker train to M.P. and choose lodgings – don’t rush up the hill in the mob. It might be worthwhile to investigate leaving a bus tour late in the day and riding the train onward from Ollantaytambo to Aguas Calientes, even if one spent a night in one of the few posadas at Ollantaytambo. Take an afternoon to relax in Aguas Caliente and go up the next morning to M.P. in the cool of the day. It can easily take two full days to see the ruins at M.P. including a hike up to Huayna Picchu, a hike down to Templo de la Luna, and a walk over to the Inca Bridge. If all that walking is not enough, then you can always take the hike down from M.P to Aguas Caliente one day.

The M.P. site entrance has a sign forbidding backpacks and there is a luggage check before you enter (small fee per bag). However, most people entering the park did have on small day-packs and carried water and perhaps some snacks. There are no bathroom facilities and no concessions inside the site; so the explorer occasionally finds a remote corner of the ruins that unfortunately reeks of urine or encounters a pile of manure not deposited by a llama.

M.P is deservedly famous – the vistas are breathtaking and the stonework in the temples is amazing – but no better than in some of the Sacred Valley sites. We took about 100 digital photos and were fortunately able to get these saved onto a CD in Cusco for about US$5 to free up our inadequate camera memory for more pictures later in the trip.

Our train to M.P. was fairly empty, but the return train (leaving Aguas Caliente at 4:00 PM) was packed and there was not much leg room (alternate rows face the opposite direction, so every seat is in a group of four passengers face-to-face). Near the end of the train ride back, many people chose to switch to a bus which was only $2 per person and cut out the last 30 minutes of the train ride down the switch-backs to town – a close call which option is better. The view of Cusco at night was pretty and we had fun throwing some candy to kids running along beside the train, but after 3+ hours of riding, we were past ready to get off the train and find a good restaurant.