Peter's Travel Blog: Cuzco

Thursday14th April

Our bus arrived into Cuzco early in the morning and we made our way to the Wild Rover Hostel where we met up with Liam (the manager) who we knew from back home in Dublin.

No problem checking in early thank God. We spent the day walking around Cuzco taking pictures and stopping into agencies to find out about treks to Macchu Pichu. Cuzco is an amazing city ...really historic and full of small cobblestone streets ... really nice place to hang out for a few days.

We had nothing booked for a trek to Macchu Pichu and we really wanted to leave tomorrow to do a trek so we could take it easy afterwards and enjoy a few days in Cuzco. After alot of looking around we eventually decided to do a 4 day Inca Jungle trek which seemed to the best 4 day option for the cheapest price ($170 USD). This included everything .. all transport, guides, accommodation (hostels), breakfast, lunch and dinner, mountain biking, entrance to Macchu Pichu etc. Very good value and it turned out to be a great 4 days. We opted to do additional zip lining and water rafting for another $50 ... well worth it.

We decided to take it easy on Thursday night as we had to be up so early for the trek the next day.

Friday 15th - Monday 18th : Inca Jungle Trek

Amazing 4 days spent on this trek. Would take me forever to detail everything so heres a link with a summary:

http://www.inkajungletrek.com/en-trail-inca-jungle/inca-jungle-trek4d.html

We were really lucky and got a great group for the 4 days ... Anna and Dermot from Dublin, Nathan from England, Tom, Annie, Christina and Katie from Minnesota, USA.

4 days were just fantastic ... mountain biking on Friday was excellent. We also done rafting on Saturday and zip lining on Sunday. My legs were just shattered after the 4 days ... especially the climb up to Macchu Pichu from the town of Aguas Calientes as we had to start off at 4am in the dark. We managed to be among the first 50 or so in the queue on Monday morning. Once you are up at Macchu Picchu, (if you are in the first 200) you have the option of climbing Huaynapichu mountain which overlooks Macchu Picchu .. or alternatively you can climb Macchu Picchu mountain. We ended up doing neither as the fog was so bad there was no way you could see anything. We spent Monday walking around the ruins of Macchu Picchu and got some great photos. Despite the poor visibility, seeing Macchu Picchu was a great end to a great 4 days.

Later that afternoon we returned to the town of Aguas Calientes and hung around before getting our train at 18:45 to Ollantaytambo and a connecting bus back to Cuzco. We arrived back that night about 23:00 .. shattered!!

Heres only a small selection of photos over the 4 days:

Edwin .. our tour guide for the 4 day trek:

Entrance ticket to Macchu Pichu:

A final picture of the trekking group:

Tuesday 19th April - Friday 22nd April

Me and Neil were still undecided on what to do over the next few days ... we could either stay in Cuzco until the weekend or altenatively head to another town called Ayacucho for the Easter celebrations there as we heard that town had a really good traditional Easter festival. Turned out that it was going to be a nightmare getting to Ayacucho (3 buses and a boat apparantly as roads were flooded everywhere) so we decided to hang out in Cuzco until the end of the week before heading to Lima.

Tuesday night was great craic in the Wild Rover bar. Met up with a few other backpackers I had met in Cordoba, Argentina and Santa Cruz, Bolivia. After we left the Wild Rover bar we headed out to a club on the main plaza. A crazy night out!

Linn and Anna .. our Swedish roommates:

A very chilled out day on Wednesday & Thursday walking around the lovely streets of Cuzco, sitting in the plaza enjoying the sunshine and watching the world go by. Lots of walking around town taking pictures and visiting the markets in Cuzco.