Casa Andina Catedral Cusco

After a miserable 5 hour flight in the wee hours and a hectic transfer in Lima, during which we learned that American had failed to rebook us appropriately on LAN, we felt like garbage. I had spent the previous day calling the hotel to maintain our reservations even though we were a day late. They mercifully did so, and our room was ready for us to crash. But first, we had to get the trek finalized. Of course, it's Sunday and the trekking office was closed (remember, we were to be picked up a...

Fortunately, on Monday, we are able to reserve seats on the train to Machu Picchu for tomorrow and arrange hotel accommodations in Aguas Calientes through SAS Travel. Could we have done it on our own? Sure, but at such a last minute, I was relieved to let an agency handle the details. By this afternoon, we felt well enough to stretch our legs. We took a cab up to Tambomachay (an ancient Inca water temple about 8 km north of town) and walked down through Pukapukara, Qenko, and Sacsayhuaman. We...

An old friend, Gaby, recently visited us in Cusco. Gaby works for the NGO Peru Support Group (PSG) and she has written our blog this week to tell you all about what she was up to whilst here in Peru.



I spent five years working for a British travel company as a tour leader. As most of my time was spent in South America, I became increasingly interested in regional politics. This spurred me to go back to Uni and get a Master's in Globalisation and Latin American Development.
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On Friday we had a lovely day - the four of us set out in the morning and visited the Qoricancha Museum, an Inca Museum where we saw lots of interesting artefacts. Qoricancha is an old temple complex which the Spanish basically built a Catholic Cathedral over the top of - so lots of the buildings inside are still intact. So the tour of the museum revealed actual mummies and lots of pottery and things and then we had a walk around in the garden and admired some of the wonderful Inca hydro-eng...

Left this morning with our duffle bags for our day tour of the Sacred Valley and overnight in Ollantaytambo. The drive was pleasant, but when we got to the first lookout to the Sacred Valley, I was overwhelmed to the point of tears. There is most definitely something special about this place. The "sacredness" was explained to us as the ability of this region to have 3 growing seasons. I was just speechless ... A large part of our visit included the region/city of Pisac. The markets were full ...

Important note about this day. You CANNOT see the sun rise over Machu Picchu because the checkpoint to the park range only opens at 5:30am, the sun rises at 6am, and the hike to the sun gate outside of the city is 1 hour away! Bribery is the only solution that I can think of to bypass this obstacle. Woke up at 3:30am, packed all remaining items, had breakfast, and hustled out of camp to beat the other trekkers to the check point. Climb was gentle with some more damning steps but I got to the ...

Spent the entire day (7 hr bus trip) driving from Puno to Cusco. The bus had an attendant to serve snacks and hot beverages and we saw a movie (Ocean's Eleven). Long ride, but quite comfortable. Did the usual stitching and sleeping. Upon arriving in Cusco, it was surprising to see how large a city it was until we found out that it was the capital of the Inca Empire ... suddenly not so surprising. Stayed in Casa Andina ... hotel chain in Peru ... quite comfortable with heaters in the rooms, ho...