South America May 2011 - Peru
We arrived in Lima early and a car met us and took us to the Hotel Antigua in Miraflores. The hotel was in the style of a colonial villa with the rooms arranged around enclosed courtyards. Not flashy but very nice and it was quiet. Miraflores looks very modern and there is a considerable amount of landscaping going on the seafront. The bits that were finished were excellent. We explore the sea front area for the rest of the day and retired to the hotel relatively early to prepare for our flight to Puno the next morning.
Unfortunately our tour rep called us at 10pm to tell us that a Canadian mining company had so incensed the local farmers that Puno had been blockaded and the trip to Puno, Lake Titicaca, and train journey had to be cancelled. A real disappointment. We chose to fly to Cusco a day early and arrived there after lunch. Cuzco is 3380 metres above sea level and we noticed the effects fairly quickly. We spent our next day looking around Cusco the Inca Museum was particularly interesting and put a lot into context. To fill in the gap in our itinerary a personal tour of the Inca sites in and around Cusco was arranged for us the next day. Our guide was excellent a great character and very knowledgeable. During our time in Cusco we used the Lonely Planet guide particularly to select where we eat and thought it pretty good, but then we don't know what we missed. Now but on our original schedule our guide took us on a tour of the Sacred Valley. Ollantaytambo was the highlight for me although the Inca brewery and the fantastic restaurant where we had a very late lunch were also pretty good. In late afternoon we were left at our overnight accommodation Villa Urumbamba a lovely country retreat. In the evening we went for a walk and bumped into a local religious festival and ended up drinking Inca beer and joining in with the dancing, great fun.
The train Journey from Ollantaytambo to Aguas Calientes is absolutely stunning. Agaus Calientes is a railway town the track right though the middle our hotel was sandwich between the track and the river. Below is a short piece of video of the of the religious festival and the view from our hotel.
Machu Picchu a very early start and a rather exciting bus ride and we were there Wellington our guide certainly new his stuff. Did it live up to our expectations yes what an amazing place and what a finale to our holiday.
I have put some photos in my gallery, click to go there GALLERY and we also kept a diary click to go to that DIARY.
You may notice not so many photos as the Galapagos unfortunately I left the charger and the spare battery for the camera in Lima hence I was rather more careful with my photography and even so it stopped working at Machu Picchu so the last pictures were taken on my phone.