You Can Roadtrip Across Peru
I Mean, It’s Hard, But It’s Worth It
We just got back from Peru. We figured rather than hoard our pictures or just show a few on social media or just show them when we have people over, we’d put pictures and narrative together in one place.
At the end of the post, there’ll also be some summary stats (clearly Lyman’s doing…) for folks who may be curious about some of the trip logistics, such as anybody who might be trying to plan a similar trip themselves.
So with that, let’s begin our Peruvian Roadtrip!
Day 1: Flying to Lima
The best neighbors in the world drove us to to BWI airport, leaving the house at about 5 AM. Luckily, there’s a Chick-Fil-A close to the airport, so we at least managed to get a tasty breakfast, because as everyone knows the best part of traveling is eating.
All of our flights for this trip were American/Oneworld partners (so, LAN/LATAM). For those not aware, American/Oneworld is probably the best combo of selection/price for Latin American flying.
At the airport, we got through security fine and in plenty of time for our flight… to Charlotte. In Charlotte, we found that most treasured of all travel goodies: Auntie Annes. From Charlotte, we flew on to Orlando, where we got crappy Chinese food.
Guys, this is a trifecta of everything good in the world: Chick-Fil-A, Auntie Anne’s, and crappy Chinese? Yes please! Needless to say, we were pretty happy.
The flight to Lima went well and we arrived on time. Even more surprisingly, our 1 checked back arrived with us! Our bag was technically overweight, because we nested a smaller bag inside the bigger one, so we’d have 2 bags on hand when we returned, to pack souvenirs. But a nice bag check guy let the bag go through anyways.
Trip Tip 1: Nesting one bag inside another was a great choice. It forced us to pack very efficiently on the way out, while giving us tons of space for souvenirs, and the inevitable expansion of packed items, on the way back.
At the airport, a man was waiting for us with a sign with Lyman’s name on it, we got in the car with him, and drove to our first AirBnB. Along the way, we found out that this man wasn’t just our driver hired by our hosts, he actually was one of our hosts. He only spoke Spanish, and of the two of us Ruth was the only one with any Spanish skills at that point, and even those were a bit rusty, so communication was a bit difficult. But hey, when somebody’s got your name on a piece of paper at the airport, you don’t ask questions, you just get in the car.
Trip Tip 2: Probably don’t just get in the car with strangers. However, pre-arranging pickup from the airport is essential. Lima is a pretty intense city, and you will be tired on arrival. Don’t wing it.
This grainy picture is us looking excited to be IN PERU after our many hours of transit. From leaving our house at 5 AM, we arrived at our rooftop apartment courtesy of our hosts Juan and Raquel at about midnight. We attempted to salsa dance on the roof to the music drifting up from the streets of Callao below… but the beat seemed weird so maybe it wasn’t really real salsa music (although Lyman can’t count a beat anyways)?
We had wifi, (some) hot water (enough for Ruth at least…a recurring trend), a comfortable bed, a view of some of the city, and, all in all, we were happy to be in Peru after 19 hours of travel time.
Trip Tip 3: Your salsa lessons will be wasted. We took salsa lessons in advance. Even though Callao, where we stayed, is supposed to be the big salsa-center of Peru, everywhere we saw where dancing was advertised looked really suspicious. We did not go dancing at any other point in the trip. :(
And it was evening, and it was morning, the first day.
Day 2: Church to ‘china (Huacachina, that is)
We woke up on Day 2, a Sunday, and had a great breakfast provided to us by our hosts. We would come to learn that this breakfast was pretty standardized throughout Peru: a few rolls, butter, jam, juice of some kind, and tea. A slightly bigger spread would include a fried egg or, as was the case this time, maybe a sausage. We got what appeared to be a mixture of scrambled eggs and a ground up sausage of some sort called salchicha huachana. Definitely a new thing for both of us, but not half bad! After breakfast our host Juan drove us back to the airport to pick up our rental car.
Trip Tip 4: Eat everything. As long as it’s cooked. But seriously, the food in Peru did not disappoint. Sometimes it was simple, especially for breakfast, but we really never found anything bad to eat on the whole trip.
This might be a good time to explain why we decided to drive across Peru. It’s not the typical way people do Peru. Most people fly straight to Cusco, or take buses and taxis, or even the train from Juliaca and Puno across the high sierra. But, as you might guess, we aren’t quite your typical tourists. We enjoy doing our own thing, getting off the beaten path (or the paved road as it may be…), and making people say, “Are you sure you want to do that?” Yes. Yes we are sure. We want to do that. We want to see ALL the things, as fast as possible, and in our own way. With the help of our close friends Anastasios and Google, we really saw Peru. As in, 2,000 miles of driving across the entire southern half of the country.
We originally got a Kia Picanto (an attempt to satisfy Ruth’s desire to relive her glory days driving her lime-green Kanchil through Malaysia) when Lyman booked the rental car online, but on arrival we were informed they did not allow Kia Picantos to be taken out of the Lima area, so we had to rent a Kia Rio, which was a bit pricier. In hindsight, if we’d had a Picanto, we would have completely destroyed it. Even our Kia Rio, which we named Anastasios, was really stretched to its limits. This was a whole different ball-game than nicely-paved Malaysian roads.
Trip Tip 5: Rent the most robust car your budget allows. In hindsight, we might have even benefited from a bigger car with more clearance, even real offroad capabilities. Unfortunately, such a vehicle would have cost more for renting, and have worse gas mileage.
Car rented, we did the obvious thing to do on a Sunday morning: we went to church! We’d contacted the LCMS mission in Lima before arriving, gotten their location and service times, and put the directions in our phone while we had wifi.
Trip Tip 6: Even with data turned off, you can still track your location on a downloaded map. We got an international data roaming plan, and you have to be careful not to swipe away and lose your downloaded map, but you do not have to use data all the time to use maps.
Trip Tip 7: Get an international plan or local SIM card! Absolutely non-negotiable.
It was great to see the work being done by our denomination in Lima. Unfortunately, we couldn’t stay very long, as we had to drive from Lima to Huacachina before sundown, and it’s a 4–6 hour drive down the coast.
Huacachina is an oasis out in Peru’s dry coastal desert areas. On the way there, we stopped for a late lunch, and found another food we would find in many places around Peru: big ‘ole slabs of fried pork. Apparently, Chicharronerias line the road around every city and town in Peru. They just love to deep fry pork. That’s what that second picture shows.
But aside from that, truth is, the initial part of the drive to Huacachina wasn’t beautiful. We referred to it as “hut town” due to the gazillions of unoccupied huts and hovels along the road (exhibit A, at left). The third picture above shows the gray, hazy climate that peristed along the road. Although, I guess the hut picture shows that too. Thankfully, we didn’t have to drive through this blah-ness the whole way. Eventually, as we got further south, the haze faded away, and as we went inland, we even saw greenery!
Trip Tip 8: Plan to blaze through from Lima to Chincha Alta fast. It’s the only multi-lane section of the road, we saw few cops, and there’s basically nothing to see or do. This is not your scenic seaside drive section. That comes later.
First, we got blue skies and beaches formed by a dramatic slope of the land into the sea, as shown in the left picture. At the time, we thought this was a pretty remarkable dropoff into the ocean (not pictured, but about 50–100 meters to the right of the picture). As you’ll see in later pictures, that was nothing. Then, when we turned inland after Chincha Alta and Pisco, we started seeing crops! For an Ag person like Lyman, that was interesting… and we were glad just to see green. I mean, we like desert climates as much as anyone else, but the occasional greenery is nice.
Finally, as we were driving along, we spotted cotton! Brace yourself: there’s about to be some cotton nerdiness here. Now, look, Lyman had wondered if we might see cotton, since Peru is a cotton-producing country, both of medium-staple hirsutum varieties, and the distant ancestor of American Pima cotton, Peruvian Pima and Peruvian tanguis cotton. He’d been given to believe most cotton production was in northern Peru, but it turns out that’s just for Peruvian Pima cotton, the highest-quality cotton. But Tanguis cotton, longer-staple than standard hirsutum or Upland cotton but not so long as Pima, apparently grows in the central coastal valleys. And, as it happens, we were going to be driving through those valleys for two days straight… and Lyman may have freaked out with excitement when he saw cotton. Ruth of course stopped the car so he could play cotton, and Lyman got out, hand-ginned a bit, and got even more excited when he realized from the fiber length it HAD to be Tanguis cotton… and that explains that third picture.
Lyman’s excitement at textiles will be a recurring theme.
Trip Tip 9: Get excited about the little things. Especially textiles. Lots of the trip will be spent in the car, with sometimes monotonous scenery. So get used to getting psyched about, “Oh look, that rock is a weird shape!”
Finally, just before sunset, we arrived at Huacachina. We checked in at our hostel, La Casa de Bamboo, which was easy to find, cheap, had a good restaurant, organized our dune buggy tour for us, had a great English-speaking guy at the checkin desk, and had free parking out front. With just enough time to scamper up the dune before dark, we did so, and were well rewarded by the view.
After goofing around on the dune for a while and snapping some pictures of variable quality, we headed back into Huacachina for dinner. Honestly, Huacachina was more beautiful than we’d anticipated. Not just hostels around an oasis, there was a wonderful colonade and scenic walkway circling the whole oasis, with colorfully-painted and -lit restaurants on all sides. We ate outside right by the water, and enjoyed what we would come to learn is a Peruvian standard dish: lomo saltado, sort of a steak-and-soy stir fry with rice. Ruth had her first-ever Pisco Sour, Peru’s national cocktail. After that, we settled in for a restful night.
Sidenote: how many countries have a national cocktail?
Trip Tip 10: Huacachina is beautiful! But it has nothing going on after dark, and the dunes are the only activity. Unless you’re using Huacachina as a basecamp for Ica, a solid half-day is enough time to “do” Huacachina.
Day 3: Sand Everywhere
We woke up in Huacachina on Day 3 ready for our first big adventure. We knew from early in planning our trip that Huacachina was a must-visit as soon as we read that we could rent dune buggies. Sadly we couldn’t drive them ourselves, but we’d heard we could get pretty affordable rides out on the dunes, including some sandboarding. Our hostel included a dune buggy tour at 11 AM for an hour, but we were awake around 6:30 or 7:00, done with breakfast by 8:30, and quickly found there was nothing to do in Huacachina besides the dunes.
Luckily, there are always drivers willing to take you out.
It was foggy. Had our driver wanted to, he totally could have let us go down a dune, left us, and we never would have found our way back to Huacachina. We were out there. Also, the dune buggy broke down (multiple times).
That was an exciting moment (moments…). Get out in the fog-shrouded dunes with a guide with whome we really can’t communicate at all… oh and a piece of the engine pops off when we slam into the bottom of a big dune.
People, this is why you vacation in Peru, not, like, Spain or California. These adventures require a level of disregard for safety that isn’t really available in the developed world.
After that we came back in to Huacachina brushed ourselves off, found sand in unspeakable places…
And did it again!
Oh and that fog? It cleared up. Because, well, it wasn’t “fog.” It was a line of clouds moving inland from the Pacific. Here’s a picture from the afternoon:
There in the distance you can see the “fog” as clouds above the plain, and, above them, the front ranges of the Peruvian Sierra, and the Andes, our eventual goal.
Oh, and we took videos on our second trip out too!
Trip Tip 11: The morning tours are a diamond in the rough. Going out in the morning, you only get 1 hour or so per tour, so 2–4 dunes. The evening tours from 4 PM to 6 PM are 2 hours, and you get the sunset views. Most people recommend doing that. But we really felt the morning strategy worked well for us. We got both tours totally alone, nobody else in the buggy with us. Almost nobody else was out on the dunes either. The evening dune tours looked crowded on the other hand, which means even with 2 hours, you don’t get tons more dunes. Plus, we got the sunset view the night before by walking up the dunes, which wasn’t that hard (read: it was actually kind of hard).
By the end of the 2nd tour, we felt pretty victorious.
But ya know what? It was just noon! We did all that before lunch! And after checking out of La Casa de Bamboo and getting a (not great but not bad) lunch at their restaurant, we then headed in town to Ica to change some cash at the Plaza de Armas. From there, we got on the road to our hotel at Puerto Inka.
Trip Tip 12: You will need lots of cash, and the money-changers in Ica were good. There are guys standing in the major plazas of most cities changing money; guys in green coats change US dollars. They gave us the most competitive exchange rate of anywhere we went: zero commission, and he gave us almost exactly the market rate that day. Everywhere else, we either paid ATM fees or commissions on exchange, and often got less competitive rates. In hindsight, we should have brought more cash to Peru, and changed more of it in Ica.
We had another 4–6 hour day ahead of us. You’ll notice the Google directions are at the low-end time estimate. That’s intentional. We found that our actual drive times were about 20–40% longer than Google projected. This was partly because we would make stops, but also because Peru makes it hard to maintain a good speed. Slow-moving buses and trucks hog the lanes. Switchbacks force you to go far slower. Frequent speed bumps (yes, speed bumps on a major highway! sometimes with little warning! we bottomed out gazillions of times!) force you to slow down, and after Pisco, the Panamericana is no longer limited-access. It’s just a road, going straight through towns, complete with traffic, stoplights, plazas, etc.
Plus, we had some stops we wanted to make.
Trip Tip 13: Peruvian speedbumps be FIERCE. Let us reiterate the speedbump bit. Peru has an insane love affair with oversized speedbumps. Having a higher-clearance car would have been a major benefit to us, and hitting these bad-boys when you didn’t see them coming is actually terrifying. The speedbumps are not always painted, and sometimes seem actively hidden. Sometimes they have lower bits on the margins you can use, but on some roads we just repeatedly bottomed out time after time after time.
The initial part of the drive was pretty desolate, after we got out of the cotton farms and vineyards around Ica. We’d drive through miles and miles of desert, then descend into one of these green river valleys. It really drove home for us the importance of these river valleys running from the coast up to the mountains for ancient civilizations. Without these narrow ribbons of fertile land, there’s just no way to survive out here.
After we’d been driving for a while, we came to the main stop of the day. The Nazca lines, of course!
So, Ruth was really excited for these… because in her head, they were big, as in, deep ditches, or impressive stonework, or something like that. She soon learned they were…. just lines in the sand. And also basically impossible to see unless you’re up in a tower or in a plane. We tried to find some kind of Nazca line souvenir… but were sadly disappointed. We wanted maybe an 8-inch wood carving or something. But as it happens, we left without a major souvenir purchase. Later, on our way back to Lima, we’d stop in Nazca for a way more interesting second encounter with this ancient culture. Also, Ruth had to be restrained to prevent her from going out and “making our own Nazca line addition!” because, really, it would not be that hard.
Trip Tip 14: When you think Nazca lines, think “Ruth + Lyman = 4 Eva” written in the sand at the beach; that’s how impressive they are at first glance. But what’s way more impressive than their underwhelming visual aspect is the historical background, and their mere survival: but honestly, there are more impressive ways to learn about the remarkable Nazca culture, which we will get to when we return to Ica.
But it was getting late in the day, and we had to head on. The drive from Nazca to our hotel called Puerto Inka was still several hours. It got dark well before we got to the hotel, really just as we got back to the seaside. Finally, in the dark, we arrived at Hotel Puerto Inka, which, in the dark, looked kind of murder-y. We were the only guests at this large seaside resort, and we had a beachfront room. But driving down the mountainside gravel road at night into a fairly abandoned-looking hotel only made us fear we’d be murdered until we sat down for dinner and my goodness, we had one of the best dinners we ate anywhere in Peru. The food at this place was so amazing, we totally forgot to take pictures. If you go, get the appetizer of chicken wings with some kind of fruity hot sauce; it was to die for. After dinner we were exhausted, so we headed to bed.
Day 4: From Seaside to Mountaintop
We woke up at Puerto Inka, stepped outside, and realized we’d made the right choice staying here.
Which is partly because it was the only choice. Puerto Inka was basically the only hotel near the midpoint between Huacachina and our Day 4 destination, Arequipa. But guys, in this case, the only choice was the best choice. Here was the view from our door:
Remember — that cloudiness is a universal along the coast in the mornings, not a feature of Puerto Inka being poorly located or something. The fact is, this place had a stunning view and location. After breakfast, the hotel staff casually mentioned, oh yeah, there are some ruinas, just over the rise on the left. Like, INCA ruins you can explore unsupervised! Calling it Puerto Inka isn’t just a marketing gimmick; there’s actually a ruined Inca port city here, a harbor terminus for the Inca road that goes to Cusco. During the height of the Inca empire, the Inca courier system, of chaski runners, could deliver fish for the Sapa Inca from Puerto Inca to Cusco in less than 3 days. Pretty impressive. Anyways, we were so excited to have our first Inca ruins, and totally unexpectedly!
It’s a pretty large site, as you can see. We wandered around pretty extensively. The original harbor is no more, sadly, but the settlement is fairly well-preserved, and has also undergone some reconstruction. It was nice having our first Inca encounter completely unsupervised, 2 minutes from our hotel. Then, after checking out the ruins… we just kept walking out along the cove.
Trip Tip 15: Puerto Inka is awesome, we give it 6 out of 5 stars. Do note, however: it has no wifi, no cell service, no nothing. You are isolated. So don’t expect to be able to download a map for your next day’s travels here.
But soon enough, we had to be on the road… and a long day on the road it would be. Google says 6.5 hours. That means something more like 8.5 hours as we drove. You’ll also notice that much of the drive is beach-side. In our minds, this was going to be a long drive along the beach, and maybe we’d get out and swim or something. That impression was gravely mistaken. The actual drive was hundreds of miles of hairpin turns and switchbacks with a sheer rockface on our left and a several-hundred-foot drop into the sea on our right.
But boy, the views we got! The map makes it look like you’re just a hundred yards or less from the ocean, which is true, in terms of horizontal distance; but you’re another hundred yards or so above the ocean. The central picture really gives a good impression. Along the drive, there’s also one Inca ruin and archaeological site, including a more-or-less in-tact Inca road visible from the highway which, out of respect for the don’t-destroy-Peru’s-cultural-patrimony rules, we sadly did not scramble up to and walk on.
As you can see, the water was incredibly colorful, the sky was blue, and the climate was pleasant. It was a perfect day for driving. However… there were also the switchbacks, and the trucks, as the video below shows.
Eventually, however, we did capture a video of the coastal Panamericana Sur (Lyman really struggled with that set of words). As you can see below, it was pretty exciting stuff.
Trip Tip 16: You need a capable, aggressive driver. For us, that driver was Ruth. Lyman had used Google Streetview to visually memorize landmarks and confusing intersections along the whole 2,000 mile route before the trip, and managed the physical map copy we bought, as well as the digital maps on our phone (which was pretty remarkable: he’d found every individual AirBnB down to knowing the house color, parking, and exactly which door to knock on, all using Streetview!). But Ruth did almost all of the driving, expertly managing incredibly tight traffic in Ica, insane speed bumps, aggressive passing on hairpin turns, dirt roads, and numerous other challenges along the way. If you don’t have good navigation prep and a really capable driver, your road trip will devolve into tears, yelling, and lethal car accidents.
At long last, we left the coastline area. It was a stunningly beautiful part of our drive and, although we never got to get out and swim, we definitely felt like we’d really experienced some of the Pacific Ocean. Plus, that water is the Humboldt Current from the South Pole in that part of Peru, so that water was coooooold.
But before we totally left the coastal area, we got lunch in one of the random valley-towns along the road. It was a coastal valley town, so, naturally, we were served fresh fish, eyeballs and all. In fact, in the first video above, you can see the ocean off in the distance where the valley meets the sea: that is the town where we had lunch. And no, we don’t know what its name was; from the map I think maybe it was Ocona?
This day was a long day of driving, and a day where we picked up a lot of useful information. So since there weren’t any more amazing stops the rest of the day I’ll just post some Trip Tips that we picked up on.
Trip Tip 17: Peruvian lunch is the same everywhere you go, and they don’t like it if you show up asking for lunch at 2:30. Peruvian roadside restaurants are small, family-run places. They start cooking lunch around 11, and it’s really ready around 11:45 or 12. From 12 to 1 or 2, they serve lunch: an appetizer of soup with potatoes, corn, maybe some rice or quinoa, and a small bit of meat and veggies, then a main course. The main course is generally rice, a meat (either chicken, or the local specialty, which could be fish, llama, beef, or guinea pig), and then maybe some lettuce or a potato. That is lunch — everywhere. Don’t try to order something else, they’ll just tell you they don’t have it. If they charge you less than 7 or 8 soles, make sure you order a beverage that is either in a sealed bottle, or boiled, because they’re probably using local tap water to water down juices (though we never actually knew what we were paying until after we ate).
Trip Tip 18: The roadside stands selling easy handheld foods are good: oranges, trigo (a kind of popcorn-like stuff), nuts, pastries, juices, generally it’s all good, safe, and incredibly cheap. We survived off this stuff in later days as we got bored of The Standard Peruvian Lunch.
Trip Tip 19: If you buy fresh juice from a roadside stand, it probably will not be to-go. They’ll probably give you a glass, pour some juice, and start asking you about where you’re from, why you don’t have kids yet, why you’re not taking care of your grandparents, and of course a story about their relative in America and questions about if you have met them. Spoiler: you have probably not met their relative in America. If, by this time, you’ve managed to figure out a small-but-dangerous amount of Spanish, these conversations are full of laughter at entertaining misunderstandings. If you remain essentially ignorant of Spanish, then you’re just going to come across as incredibly rude. So, work on your Spanish skills a little more, Lyman!
Trip Tip 20: Gas stations on the Panamericana and in Cusco take Visa; gas stations elsewhere are generally cash-only. To use your Visa, you must have your Passport on hand. You may get some complaints from the gas station worker. You may hear them complaining about Americans to their boss. That’s okay. Gotta hoard that hard currency. Also, name-brand service stations usually have free restrooms and snack-shops. If you’re not as comfortable using the bathroom on the roadside as we were, you’ll want to make use of these gas stations.
Trip Tip 21: Fill up your gas tank any time you get close to or below half a tank. There are routinely long stretches of road with few or no gas stations. Peru is an extremely sparsely populated country. Don’t get down to a quarter tank then start casually looking for gas stations. Fill up frequently.
Finally, after a long day, we began to crest the front ranges of the Andes on our way to Arequipa. Arequipa sits below a series of prominent volcanoes to its east, but also has a lower range of mountains in front of it. So we ascended from altitude of 0 feet above sea level at Puerto Inka to about 8,200 feet, in the span of seven hours. And at that elevation, we took the picture that’s at the top of this blog post, shown again below.
And that… is pretty much exactly what the drive into Arequipa really did look like.
Trip Tip 22: Altitude medicine does seem to help, but it will make you pee soooo much. We took acetazolamide for altitude adjustment for our first week at altitude. Ruth had never been above 7000 feet or so; Lyman grew up hiking out in Colorado in the summers so had done hikes up to 12–14,500 feet many times… but had never spent days on end at those elevations. And we have to say, the drugs did make us more comfy at altitude than we expected to be. We adjusted pretty easily, with few headaches or blackout issues. That said, this stuff makes you have to pee SO MUCH. And when Lyman accidentally took a double dose one day… that was interesting.
Finally, after a long day driving, we arrived in Arequipa, where we stayed in a wonderful little apartment downtown with our host Robert. He was also kind enough to take us to a parking garage, and help us negotiate the cost for the overnight parking. And, I have to say, that was just about the cheapest overnight parking we got in Peru (12 soles).
But by then we were zonked. We ate some snacks for dinner, and hit the sack.
Day 5: Further Up and Further In
We woke up and casually had tea on the rooftop.
We had a perfect view of El Misti, the prominent volcano right above Arequipa… but the pictures of it didn’t turn out, because the sun rises right by El Misti. That volcano behind Lyman, above, is Chachani. It rises to 19,872 feet. El Misti rises to 19,101 feet. Them is big mountains.
However, we had some issues. The dry desert air and fierce high-altitude sun were making our skin dry out, and our noses were so dry we had some blood-spotting too. Our wonderful host Robert guided us to a pharmacy, and translated our medical needs to the person there so we got everything we needed promptly. Plus, he let us use his tea in the morning. Altogether, Robert was an awesome host.
Before leaving Arequipa, we grabbed some empanadas from a little streetside vendor and my goodness, they were amazing, and amazingly cheap. We spent the entire rest of the trip craving more of those empanadas, to no avail. No idea what the bakery we went to was called; it was along the road from Arequipa to Chivay, before we were into Nuevo Arequipa… but beyond that, its location must remain a mystery.
Our time in Arequipia was short, but pleasant. However, Arequipa wasn’t our actual destination. It was just a stop on the road. We were headed to Colca Canyon. The drive there we knew would be scenic: it went through a national preserve! But we did not realize just how scenic it would be. The 3-hour Google route became about 5 hours as we drove it, and we don’t regret a minute of it. Now sadly, we couldn’t do the drive out through the middle of the preserve, because the road was a bit too rugged for Anastasios.
We said Ruth had never been above 7 or 8 thousand feet. Lyman had never been above about 14,400 feet. But on Day 5 of the Peru adventure, both of us would shatter our altitude records, reaching 15,900 feet.
Before that though, we have to talk about camelids.
Peru has many types of camelids: llama, alpaca, guanaco, vicuna, etc. They produce wools of various qualities. But the finest wool of all, the softest wool on earth, comes from vicunas. Vicunas are a small, wild relative of llamas and alpacas. They can only be sheered once every 5 years because their wool grows slowly and never gets as shaggy as llama or alpaca. By the mid 1900s, vicuna were nearly extinct, having been hunted for their wool. But in more recent years, preservation, breeding, and sound commercialization efforts have raised the vicuna population a bit. Lyman was hoping to see vicuna if we got lucky. What we did not know was that we would drive straight through vicuna preserves twice in our trip. The first time was on Day 5.
WE SAW VICUNAS! Also, to be clear, we soon learned the correct pronunciation is not “vi-soon-ya” but “vi-koon-ya”.
Now, why are vicunas so exciting?
Because a vicuna wool jacket can cost $21,000!!! We didn’t realize it was quite that expensive when we arrived in Peru. We kinda thought, “hey, wouldn’t it be cool to shell out a couple hundred bucks and get a nice vicuna thing?” Well, we only saw vicuna wool sold twice… and a scarf was $800. A sweater was $3,500. Now — watch that video again and realize that those cute little critters are basically diamonds with legs.
We carried on driving, and were rewarded with impressive scenery. Sweeping valleys, high altitude pampas, alpine lakes and swampland… and then we started going up.
The first thing that happened was that many of the camelids vanished. Sad.
Then we started to see snow… then we, naturally, had to have a snowball fight. What else would you do when you find a patch of snow by the road?
Then we kept going up, and we started to notice, hey, those mountains are pretty much at eye-level with us. What’s going on here? I thought we just skirted the edge of the mountains before descending into the valley of the Colca River? Isn’t that the plan for today?
Turns out, Google doesn’t do a good job visualizing elevation gain.
We kept going up. It was cold by this point, probably low 50s, with a stiff breeze. This was not the plan for today, we wore light clothing.
Then we realized, holy cow, we are really high up here.
Finally, we came out on top to a high-altitude pampas or rocky plain.
Those mountains in the distance are all 19,000+ feet, some over 20,000.
Of course, we didn’t realize it at the time, but doing some Google maps research in hindsight, we were sitting pretty at about 15,900 feet where the above picture was taken. Quite entirely on accident, we blew our personal altitude records out of the water. Also, to reiterate: the altitude medicines work. We really didn’t feel bad despite two successive days of 7,000 foot elevation gains.
From there, we descended to Colca Canyon. We were staying at a small B&B in the town of Yanque. Most people, when they come to Colca Canyon, either stay in Chivay at the entrance to the valley, the largest town, or else in Cabanaconde, at the far end of the valley, where the canyon is deepest and most spectacular.
We stayed in Yanque, a small village a bit past Chivay. We stayed there because we wanted to use AirBnB, because the place was cheap and looked nice, and because the town looked well-placed for adventuring. Staying in Yanque was the right choice. Our host Oscar spoke wonderful English, knew all the local attractions, and took us out on a hike to the ruins of Uyo Uyo (an Inca settlement that’s been partially restored) for no charge whatsoever. He even managed to help us avoid some hidden fees and charges at Uyo Uyo, which was great.
It was an awesome hike. Colca Canyon is amazingly beautiful, and around Yanque it is a vibrant farming community, where thousand-year-old terraces are still being used for corn, potatoes, quinoa, and other crops. Uyo Uyo is a wonderful archaeological site, well-maintained, with a very nice walking trail through it. Some structures remain in their ruined state while others have been faithfully reconstructed, resulting in a site that feels like it could come back to life at any moment. The Spanish-language signage seemed historically informative as well, though our comprehension of it, and Oscar’s ability to translate the technical historical vocabulary, was insufficient to have a perfect understanding of the history here.
We got back from the hike after dark and were exhausted… but Oscar persuaded us to change into bathing suits, hop in the car, and drive a few minutes down the road to the banks of the Colca River. There, he’d arranged for one of the local hot spring owners to keep the baths open for us past closing time. We spent the evening lounging in steaming hot springs, listening to the soft music of the Colca River rushing over rocks, watching the unfamiliar southern hemisphere skies slowly swing by overhead, enlived by the sudden twinkling of shooting stars. We could not have asked for a lovelier evening.
Oh, and then we realized we had no idea how to get our car out of the narrow riverside road, so we had to basically roll boulders out of the way and widen the road, which was a nice mini-adventure to end the day. And of course it was about 40 degrees by this point and we were soaking wet. Never a dull moment in Peru.
Trip Tip 23: Go to Colca Canyon, stay at La Casa de Oscar. The Canyon is beautiful, Yanque is well-situated and exceedingly pleasant, and Oscar is an excellent host, guide, and facilitator. And wherever you stay in Colca, do try and make it to some hot springs, especially at night with a view of the sky if you can make it happen. It’s one of the most memorable experiences we had in Peru.
Day 6: Into the Inferno
We woke up on Day 6 excited to explore Colca Canyon. After a hearty breakfast courtesy of Oscar, we scraped the frost off our car, gave thanks for the four or five thick alpaca blankets we had on our bed to keep us warm, and then got on the road.
Trip Tip 24: Colca Canyon is COLD in the winter (that is, May-August). You need warm sleepwear, jackets, and plenty of layers. In the sun, in the afternoon, it gets pretty comfortable, but the evenings are NO JOKE.
The plan was simple. Get in the car. Drive west through Colca Canyon’s southern rimroad. Stop at the Mirador Cruz del Condor and watch some Andean Condors (impressive birds) fly, then head on to Cabanaconde, the hiker/backpacker epicenter of Colca Canyon, and find a trail to hike.
Nothing went as planned, and that was perfect.
Trip Tip 25: Peru is full of wonderful things off the tour-bus trail, and you’ll like the country better the more you get out of the car, away from the crowd, and explore the random stuff you run across.
To begin with, the road was not what we expected. Far from being well-paved along the way, the road was roughly surfaced, generally unpaved along most of the distance. This was… unexpected.
Then, we saw a sign labeled “Geyser del Infernillo.” Now, this whole area is volcanic, hence the hot springs. But geysers? We hadn’t heard about any geysers. Lyman’s been to Yellowstone, but Ruth had never seen a geyser.
At first, Lyman was hesitant, because this was not the scheduled plan! But Ruth’s excitement to “see her first geyser!” prevailed, so we turned down the dirt road, drove across a few streams, pushed some rocks off the road, and found the geyser.
The thing roars SO LOUD you can hear it way up and down the valley. And the smell of sulphur goes even further. The mist coming up from it makes the canyon sides moist, so they’re green and moss-covered, an unusual feature in generally dry Peru.
The best part is that, being Peru, there was no attempt to keep us at a safe distance from the geyser. The little splashes of boiling water we kept getting on us were proof enough of that.
So the geyser was cool. But what next? Do we just go on our regularly scheduled route?
Nope. The mountain above us was called Nevado Hualca Hualca, and it stands at 19,767 feet. The road we drove up from was at about 12,000 feet, and we probably ascended another 1,000 feet or so on the drive up to the geyser. So, we started hiking up.
And eventually, we got right about here. Down there you can see the road we drove up, and you can even faintly see the steam of the geyser. Hiking at that altitude, it takes quite a while to make any progress. You sort of have to just take 10 steps, then pause and breath. Take 10 more, pause. Criss-cross along the mountainside to save energy. For Ruth, who’d never hiked at altitude, the effort required to just, you know, walk up that little hill came as a very big surprise. While driving switchbacks was a plague, walking switchbacks became our friend.
So, we kept going up.
We kept going for a while… but not that long. Eventually, we found a good sitting spot, ate a picnic lunch, read a bit, and enjoyed the view. We were at least at 14,000 feet, maybe as high as 15,000. Still way below the summit of Nevado Hualca Hualca, but we had a good time, and definitely gave our lungs a workout. For the rest of the trip, we had no problem with altitude.
Trip Tip 26: Take a hike. Peru is beautiful. But more importantly, a good day-hike after you’ve slept at altitude will help you adjust to the altitude, and especially teach you key behaviors for activity in thin air: pacing, even breathing, staying well hydrated, etc.
Trip Tip 27: Pack sunscreen, and wear it. Unfortunately, we forgot that it’s very easy to get sunburn at altitude due to the thin air, and we forgot that the dry season in Peru means very little cloud cover. As a result, in pictures after this hike, Lyman has sunburn goggles. Even though it’s chilly, you’ll still get burned.
After lunch, we headed back down, got back in the car, and kept driving out towards Cabanaconde. The views of the canyon got more and more impressive as we got closer to Mirador Cruz del Condor. Finally, at the overlook, we got here:
It was pretty seriously deep. At the bottom of Colca Canyon, the climate is suitable for orchards, including for temperate fruits like apples. At the top where we were, it’s an arid climate really only fit for pastoral grazing. Many people do a 2–7 day trek down into the valley and across to the mountains (and Inca ruins!) on the far side. It’s a seriously strenuous hike, with hot springs at the valley floor… but we’d already done our hiking, seen some great views, had an amazing hot spring experience, so we were totally fine with just the roadside views.
From there, we drove on to Cabanaconde. We were ready to be impressed with this secluded mountain town, famed for its scenic vistas and its status as the hiking and tourist epicenter of Colca Canyon.
But as it turns out, Cabanaconde wasn’t very pretty, had no more restaurants than Yanque (and most were closed), and actually had fewer views than Yanque as well. All around, it just felt less… special, as Ruth put it. We ended up getting a quick lunch and then heading back down the road toward Yanque. We didn’t even take pictures of Cabanaconde because it just wasn’t very picture-worthy. It was about 4 or 5 PM by the time we got back, and, really, we were beat from hiking. So we just stayed in, put on all of our warm clothes to keep back the cold, read a book while waiting on dinner, and then enjoyed a great meal of llama steak prepared by Oscar, finally hiting the hay early.
Day 7: The Longest Drive
We woke up early on Day 7. We had a long day ahead of us. At about 6 AM, Lyman got the car out of the “parking garage,” pictured at left. As it turned out it was a pretty secure spot and Oscar was great about making sure we could get in and out whenever we needed, but we were nervous about it at first. In the end, it worked out fine. Before leaving La Casa de Oscar, we made sure to get some pictures of the place, and a picture with our host. Oscar was a bigger part of our trip than many of our other hosts, because we were really just living in his house for a few days, eating meals from his kitchen, etc.
By 7 AM, we were on the road, headed north to Cusco.
There are a few ways to get to Cusco. To explain them, let me show you the route we took:
Now, the usual way to get to Cusco from Yanque is to drive back south towards Arequipa, then turn east to Imata, then on to Juliaca, then up the 3-S to Sicuani, then to Cusco. Why is this the usual route? Simple! Because the whole route is a major, well-paved road with regular gas stations, designed to be traveled by any standard vehicle. That route is about 170 kilometers longer, but only about 1 hour longer, according to Google. Being paved the whole way, you make up a lot of time.
The route we took is a different story. Once you’re out of Colca Canyon about an hour north of Yanque, the pavement stops. That’s near the place on the map labeled “Distrito de Tuti.” The only gas stations in the region are around the town of Chivay, near Yanque.
This video shows us reaching the end of the pavement:
Also, you can hear us singing a camp song. Sometimes, when you’re driving for days on end, you sing songs to pass the time.
Trip Tip 28: Have redundancy in navigation methods. Cell service was spotty on this day, and we’d had no wifi at La Casa de Oscar to download maps. Google satellite imagery was a few years out of date. Google Streetview was incomplete in some parts of the route, and clearly out of date in other cases. Lyman had printed off maps, satellite images, street view images, and written out descriptions of key intersections with reference to major visually-identifying landmarks. You should do likewise, or else you WILL get lost. Even with our preparation, we still had to resort to just asking random people for directions on many occasions, especially on our way out of Chivay.
After we crossed the bridge at Sibayo, in the video, the pavement ended, and we followed the headwaters of the Colca River up the valley, shown at left. Then we crossed a few bridges, enjoyed a view of the weirdly-eroded Callalli Rocks (which we foolishly did not get in pictures), discussed that the U.S. State Department notes that this road has known issues with highway bandits at night, and soon found ourself once again doing the distinctive Peruvian thing: steep, mountainside switchbacks!
We thought these switchbacks were pretty intense. But honestly, these switchbacks weren’t that bad in hindsight. Lyman was driving for this day, one of Lyman’s only days of driving, largely because he gets car sick easily, and we thought this would be the day with lots of switchbacks. We were wrong. Oh, make no mistake, we did have some switchbacks… but it was nothing compared to what we would encounter later on.
Point is, at the time, we thought these switchbacks were pretty intense.
We drove over some mountains next. You know, just casually driving over a 15,800 foot ridge. There was snow. We didn’t take pictures because we were used to it by then, and because Ruth fell asleep in the car and Lyman figured, hey, great chance to make some good time!
Also, at this point, this road was dirt and gravel. We were topping out around 40 miles an hour at most. But all in all, that’s fine; we figured we could handle a hundred miles of dirt roads and gravel.
But then we came to the Fork In The Road, AKA, The Mysterious Route of Mystery And Chaos.
Notice that cross-road at the bottom. The road we were on was the left road, headed north. If you keep going on that road, you pass through the Xstrata Tintaya mine, and then reach Espinar, a large town. If you cross over that little jot in the road, you should miss Espinar entirely. You should carry on north. Google Streetview showed me in advance that the right side route was a bit more rugged, but probably also more scenic. We hadn’t decided in advance which road to take, and we were going to decide based on how our time looked along the way.
Well, when we got to the crossing point, it was a swampy mess of mud and rocks in the road. We figured, oh well, it’s not worth it. We could push some rocks out of the way, but mud? We might get stuck, and that would be BAD.
Except then, Lyman wandered over the ridge, and saw a mystical, magical land. He saw that the road on the other side was PAVED! Google Streetview was out of date! The right-side road on the map above wasn’t a bad road, no, it was paved! We could make wonderful time if we could just get over there!
So we did the necessary thing: we switched drivers. Ruth took the wheel while Lyman guided her through the swampy parts of the road, and shoved all the rocks out of the way. End result: we reached the paved road!!!
Okay, so. We can all agree on a few facts. First, the left side road in the above map goes to Espinar. Second, the right side road in the above map does not. Third, that we decisively crossed over from the left side road to the right side road.
This is where it gets mysterious. About a mile or two down the paved road… the pavement stopped, and it became a nice packed-dirt road. Then we saw trucks. Sooooo many trucks. Like, gazillions of trucks. This was stressful, because they were large, moving fast, and clearly not always happy to have us on the road. Then we started encountering speed bumps.
But not normal speed bumps. Semi-truck-sized speed bumps. Due to the sheer terror of encountering these things, we did not take pictures. But we bottomed out on every speed bump. On one bump, our front wheels didn’t quite touch the ground before we bottomed out, so we had to kind of lean forward and let the car tip down to the other side of the bump. All that to say, this was some kind of trucks-only road, and the rocks blocking the access road we used were probably there intentionally.
But we were not dissuaded. Eventually, we came to some construction, and the worker stopping us there, in between his broken English, indicated something suspicious to us. He said we were on the road to Espinar. Which is weird, because we had just gotten off the road to Espinar.
An hour later, we were driving through the Xstrata Tintaya mine (no pictures taken because Lyman was fuming mad about the navigational confusion and was not in a smiling-for-pictures mood). Soon after that, we came to the Yauri Stoneforest. This is a cool rock formation, so cool Lyman was convinced to put aside his confusion about what road we were on to take a picture. It is a Stone-forest after all.
But this was frustrating, because Lyman knew from his map research that the stoneforest was indeed on the road to Espinar.
Let’s be clear here. Reviewing satellite images in hindsight, our route was impossible. We were on the road to Espinar, except we definitly did cross over to the road headed more directly north, away from Espinar. We did not make any turn back; indeed there is no turn back according to satellite imagery. All that to say: either Anastasios has powers of teleportation, or else Google maps and Google satellite images and Google streetview are incredibly wrong.
Trip Tip 29: No matter how much preparation you do, you are going to get lost and confused. Chill out, enjoy the ride, have contingency plans, build in time for rerouting, and carry on. Peru’s roads are not going to cooperate with your plans. Get used to it.
In Espinar, every road we needed to take was closed for construction. Yay. We were incredibly thankful that we had an international data plan (you need an international data plan), as we were able to reroute around Espinar. If we hadn’t had maps available on our phone here, we would have just had to ask locals for directions in Spanish, which would have been tricky. By Day 7 our Spanish was rapidly improving, but it still would have been a challenge.
Finally making it through Espinar after several times driving the wrong way down one-way streets, we carried on north towards the town of Langui. A few miles north of Espinar, the road became paved, and stayed paved for the rest of the day. This was nice, since it was already 2 PM, and we needed to make up time from various delays along the road.
We had a pleasant enough drive north towards Langui and, finally, got a view of the lake there. Langui is a famous lake, as it is high-altitude, generally quite still, and, well, here, let me just show you.
The mountains reflect in the water on a pretty grand scale. It was nice to have some new scenery to see. Truth be told, by this point, we were a little tired of the empty pampas and the brown-and-yellow mountains of the sierra.
Luckily, we would soon be done with that territory. After Langui, we descended through a narrow canyon into the valley of the Urubamba River, the upper reaches of the Sacred Valley of the Incas. We began to see trees again, indeed whole forests, and green hills. The air got thicker (we were at about 13,000–16,000 feet all the way from Sibayo to Langui), and we even got a little bit of humidity!
Now, unfortunately, we hadn’t eaten the whole day, and just had a few snacks in the car. The lack of real towns along the road, as well as Espinar being a frustrating morass of routing problems, meant we just didn’t eat. So in the Urubamba valley we finally found a place where Ruth could cajole the owners to open up and sell us some food, and so we bought some snacks, including some MiniKraps! Not crappy at all, they were good knockoff Ritz! Having got a little sustenance, we were energized and ready to drive on. But even in this picture, you can see the shadows beginning to grow longer. The day was running out.
Trip Tip 30: Some parts of Peru make it hard to find food along the road. If you’re driving a long isolated stretch, stock up on snacks and water before you get on the road.
Because it was getting dark, we had to bypass some interesting Inca sites we might have enjoyed. But finally, just as the sun was setting, we came to our destination: Cusco!
Cusco is the cultural epicenter of the Peruvian Andes, and was the capital of the ancient Inca empire called Tahuantinsuyu, the Land of the Four Quarters. The city is full of Inca ruins, colonial-era cathedrals, interesting food and shopping, and, of course, a wide selection of AirBnBs. Our AirBnB was a really nice penthouse apartment just outside the historic center, with sweeping vistas of the whole historic center of the city. And, as a bonus, it had hot water!
Even though it had been a long day, we immediately set out into the city, first to find parking, then to find dinner. Even with guidance from the receptionist in our building, finding parking was a challenge. But we ended up finding a secure, well-managed lot located right at the bend on Tullumayo Street in the historic district. We were billed about 30 soles a day, but they were pretty generous in defining “days,” so we ended up paying 60 soles since we arrived late on day 1, left early on day 3.
Then we headed out for an evening of wandering the historic district, exploring the night markets, and hunting down a tasty restaurant. We met success on all accounts, then returned to our hotel for some hard-earned sleep.
Trip Tip 31: Not only do many gas stations in rural areas not take cards, they do not sell all grades of gasoline. We only found higher octane gas at one gas station between Chivay and Cusco, in Espinar, and they didn’t take card and we were low on cash. Luckily, around Cusco, there were many stations that had a wide variety of gasoline grades, and that took cards.
Day 8: The Children of the Sun
Day 8 had a very simple plan: do everything in Cusco. It turns out, this plan was overwhelmingly ambitious, because Cusco is awash in history, culture, and beauty. We could have spent the whole day just wandering around the city, enjoying the sights, doing nothing else.
But while we could have done that, we didn’t. No. We did activities.
We started out at the Centro de Textiles Tradicionales del Cusco. Yes, that’s right, our first stop was not to the ancient Inca temple of the sun, or the impressive fortress of Sacsayhuaman, or to the cathedrals around the Plaza de Armas… it was to a textile museum. No reward for guessing whose idea that was!
We had a few purposes here, but they basically all relate to one essential problem: we wanted to buy some genuine alpaca textiles, but didn’t know much about woolens. The Centro partners directly with weavers in outlying communities to preserve (and enhance) traditional patterns and techniques for spinning and weaving woolens, and scrupulously sources and labels its products. They sell top-of-the-line quality woolens if you want hand-made goods, and thus their products represent the absolute maximum in quality and fiber characteristics that can be achieved using genuine, all-hand-made techniques. And because they label their products based on fiber content, dyes, and technique used, and have a museum describing techniques and current trends, it’s basically a laboratory for teaching you how to spot fakes.
Trip Tip 32: If the price is low and it feels silky-smooth, then it is not llama, and it is not alpaca, and it is definitely not vicuna: you’re being sold a fraudulently labeled product. Many “todos alpaca” products are in fact 10% or less wool, and instead are mostly cotton, or even synthetic fibers. In other cases, sheep’s wool will be sold as alpaca or llama. Likewise, factory-made products will be cheaper than hand-made. If you want hand-made, and we ended up buying just one hand-made item and several factory-made, then you are going to pay, it is going to be somewhat more muted colors, and it will not be perfectly-even and flawless yarn with a silky-smooth texture.
Having seen what was possible at the Centro, we carried on to look for vendors who might not be quite as expensive. The best option we found was in the vendors in the artisan market right on the Plaza de Armas, immediately adjacent to the cathedral. Their products seemed pretty genuine, and their prices were more competitive than at the Centro, which commands a hefty markup thanks to its location right by the Qoricancha, its brand reputation, and its extremely stringent quality standards. However, note: we actually did not buy our high-quality alpaca textiles in Cusco. More details on that after we leave Cusco!
Speaking of the Qoricancha, that’s where we went next!
The Inca were polytheistic, worshipping many gods. They built temples to the gods of all their conquered peoples, and identified many objects and landforms as being huaca, or sacred, having apus, or spirits. But while there’s some debate on the matter of exactly how the Inca religious pantheon worked, they did hold the sun god, Inti, in special reverence. The Qoricancha was a temple primarily dedicated to Inti.
So let’s talk architecture. The picture at left shows pieces of several architectural styles and periods. Those black stones are the original Inca foundation walls of the Qoricancha. They’ve survived multiple earthquakes and 600 years of use, re-use, and construction. The amazing thing is they’re drystone: no mortar was used. They’re just very precisely cut. In the original Qoricancha at its height, the top layer of the wall was covered in a 6-inch tall, 18-inch-wide layer of polished golden bricks. Let’s repeat that. A layer of golden bricks. Just cuz, ya know, what else would you top off your sun-temple walls with?
The rougher walls below those black stone walls are a mixture of Inca, Spanish, and modern reproduction construction, but all more-or-less along the Inca plan. Being simple foundation walls and terraces, they are of rougher-cut stones.
Finally, the building on top is a Spanish-built monastery, built over the ruins of the actual temple complex. The Spanish built churches on top of almost every Inca religious site as a way of establishing their cultural dominance and stamping out Inca political control. Religious reform was essential to political control because Inca dominance was religiously rooted: after they conquered or annexed a people, they’d take their mummified ancestors, religious idols, whatever those people viewed as huaca, relocate them to Cusco, build a temple, and then politely hold that god, idol, or ancestor hostage. For the Spanish to obliterate every Inca religious site and replace them with churches effectively wiped out the entire physical apparatus of worship for the native religions of the central Andes. It also let people keep worshipping at the same places, and ultimately fed into the syncretistic form of Christianity that now predominates in the Andes, an example of which you’ll see on another day.
However, for all that the Inca architecture is impressive, it is not flawless. The Inca’s “holy of holies” so to speak was a menagerie of animal, plant, and human figures cast out of gold, life-size, centered around a solar disc image. That image was placed in the niche at left. Nifty. But here’s the issue: that niche is at the bend in the wall shown in the first Qoricancha picture. So this holy-of-holies is located right on the point where the drystone wall bends. This is an issue in a region with earthquakes that place stress on structures. All that stress gets passed along the walls, and dumped onto the structures at the corner.
So along the whole original Qoricancha structure, the only part that shows serious wear-and-tear from time and earthquakes is… the holy-of-holies. Because the Inca were not magical, and did not fully understand how the stress of an earthquake would be passed along their drystone structure. Had they realized that, they might have picked a different spot for the center of worship and reverence.
After the Qoricancha, we headed onwards to the next big Inca site: Sacsayhuaman!
Some people wimp out and take a taxi most of the way up. We walked from the Plaza de Armas, up, up, and up. And then up some more. No switchbacks this time, just straight up the hills above Cusco, to the Inca fortress.
I say fortress, but there’s actually great debate about what Sacsayhuaman was, and what it would be when it was completed. We don’t know what the final vision was, because it was still under construction when the conquistadors captured Cusco, and it’s believed the “blueprints” were in the form of a sand model somewhere that probably got destroyed during the Inca attempt to reconquer Cusco. Was it a fortress? A palace? A temple complex? A new city entirely? All of the above? Was there going to be a second, equally imposing fortress? Where did the rocks even come from?
So, from left: we accidentally broke the rules and walked up the actual imperial Inca road to Sacsayhuaman. That’s a no-no. That’s a 600-year-old archaeological site that we were just like, “Oh hey, this must be the way up!” Still, it was super impressive seeing the mixture of masonry paths laid versus roadway carved straight out of the mountain. The Inca were seriously clever.
When we got to the top, we felt disappointed nobody was selling “I did Sacsayhuaman” t-shirts with, like, a woman’s silhouette on it. Get the pun? Sacsayhuaman sounds like “Sexy Woman”? Yeah, nobody’s profiting off that right now. So we both did our best sexy poses.
Then, of course, Lyman took an obligatory picture showing off the size of …the Inca walls. “It was this big, I swear!”
Sacsayhuaman was impressive. The fortress itself is incredibly intricate, maze-like even, with numerous passageways, buildings, layers, and gates. The thought of assaulting this thing is downright intimidating… unless you have European technology. And that’s the trick, right? The Inca were building forts for a setting where even archery was fairly uncommon on the battlefield; thrown weapons and melee were most common, and armor was light to nonexistent. The whole fortress is structured around an attritional defense-in-deep: to get inside, you have to wind your way through layer on layer of defenses that expose you to missiles from above, and force you to push through chokepoints that could be blocked off.
The assumption here, of course, is that the Inca could hang on until a relief army arrived, and that their enemy would not be able to make an extremely rapid advance, and that their enemy would actually be vulnerable to their missile weapons. But when push came to shove and the Inca army defended Sacsayhuaman, there was no relief army coming, their enemy had cavalry and so was able to advance far faster than the defenders were ready for, and they had steel armor that rendered them all but invulnerable to Inca weapons.
In the end, the Inca defenders of Sacsayhuaman were driven back to the fortress’ two towers, and the last commander, despairing after the last defenses gave way, hurled himself from the top.
Trip Tip 33: Read up on the history in advance, or else hire guides everywhere. Peru is visually impressive, but without the history, you will go home disappointed. You need to know the stories so that when you reach the place, you have something to think about.
Trip Tip 34: We read a historical fiction novel simply called “Inca” by Geoff Micks that does a fantastic job bringing the late Inca empire to life in vivid color and detail. If history textbooks aren’t your thing, then reading this book will enliven your experience of Peru. Warning, the book is definitely PG-13 or R-rated.
Trip Tip 35: Allow yourself to marvel at the Inca drystone masonry. We haven’t shown a close-up picture here but, yes, like every tourist, we took a gazillion pictures that are basically just of cracks in the rock where two carved stones join together. The Inca, or rather their workers drafted from Bolivia, were incredible stonemasons and architects.
Trip Tip 36: The day-pass to Sacsayhuaman is 70 soles, in cash. We did not buy the 10-day Boleto Touristico. In hindsight, buying the Boleto would have cost more money than just the sites we toured, but we did abstain from touring a few sites along the way due to not having the Boleto, and not wanting to pay. So if you want really unfettered access to the sites and less money-constrained decision-making, the 10-day pass is probably worth it.
After Sacsayhuaman, the sun was going down. We headed down off the hilltop, and along the way met a nice Chilean couple who we chatted with for the half-hour walk back into Cusco. We would see them again, as it happened.
Then we wandered a bit more, enjoying historic Cusco, got dinner, and hit the sack. We’d been walking all day and were ready for bed!
Day 9: The Day We Bought Things
We’d already made a few small purchases in Colca Canyon, but no serious shopping. But on day 9, we would start buying souvenirs in earnest.
We slept in on day 9, enjoying our posh spot, but finally got up and moving. By 10 AM, we were on the road again. The original plan was to drive to Pisac and explore the Urubamba valley. But the night before, on Day 8, I read some reviews that said, actually Pisac has gotten really overcrowded and crazy, and Chinchero is where you go for a much better market experience. So, we swapped out our schedule, and did on Day 9 some activities we had originally planned for day 11.
The drive out of Cusco was pretty adventurous. Our navigator may have struggled just a bit at finding a good route, while our driver maybe accidentally ran a red light in a confusing intersection. The result is that a police officer pulled us over and took down our information for a ticket.
But then he started telling us that, to pay, we had to visit two different government offices, fill out several different forms, and, of course, he spoke no English. He started explaining what sounded like a comically labyrinthine process to address the ticket but then, in the end, he indicated to us a preference for *ahem* a less formal solution. Not really seeing other options (and not quite realizing in the moment that we weren’t actually paying a ticket, since he did write a ticket), we ponied up.
This was crazy. Look, had we been able to figure out how to legitimately pay a ticket in a timely fashion, we would have paid, whatever the price was. But, from how it was described to us, it sounded like either the system was designed to be so complex that bribery is necessary to keep it working, or the officer was lying to us. In the end, the “fee” was 50 soles, and we carried on, aghast at the blatant corruption on display, but also suddenly much more aware that the corruption was probably a way more effective administrative system than the actual laws, if they were being accurately described to us.
Note: For anyone whose mind is racing ahead to US anti-bribery law and Lyman’s job as a Federal worker, we would argue that the appropriate description of what happened is not “we paid a bribe” but rather “we were extorted,” as the officer in question pulled us over on a dubious offense, then threatened us with multiple citations that would have injuriously impacted our entire trip. We did not at any point seek out an opportunity to evade ticketing, and, had we been offered a formal citation to be paid, we would happily have paid it. Instead, the officer just leaned in close to the car, stuck his hand through the window, and gestured for money. It was that blatant.
Finally, we got out of Cusco, and enjoyed some seriously scenic vistas on the way to Chinchero. Sadly, the day was a bit hazy, so the pictures didn’t turn out very well, but the one at left gives a general sense of the views. It was nice seeing the majestic, snow-capped Andean peaks all around us in the distance. And eventually, we came to Chinchero.
Trip Tip 37: The Chinchero market is incredibly friendly, accessible, and non-intimidating. We did not drive through Pisac at a market time so we can’t say for sure Chinchero was better, but everything we’ve heard suggests Pisac gets pretty crazy. The Chinchero market had at most 1 or 2 big tourist buses visiting it, and is contained within one organized market area. Parking was FREE, and there was even a *clean* restroom available in a store right near the market entrance. To reach the market, you just turn right off the main road through Chinchero when you reach what clearly looks like the main road into town, and then, after you’ve gone a few blocks, you’ll see a road going downhill to your left, with two parking lots, then the market area. It’s not hard to find. We went on Sunday, a market day, so can’t speak to how it is on off-days.
We made enemies in the Chinchero market. We perused literally every single stall, handling items, asking prices, debating colors, and generally putting on a good show for the sellers, keeping them on their toes. The truth is, we knew exactly what we wanted coming into Chinchero. We wanted (1) a blanket to complement our charcoal-gray couch and its mustard accents, (2) a hand-made alpaca-wool table-runner featuring prominent blues and/or reds, (3) red and blue scarves, towels, or table runners to match/complement the aforementioned table runner, and (4) a hat for a small child.
Know what you want before you enter the market. Know your budget. Know what the items you want cost in Cusco. Be prepared to ask for a better price. Bury your feelings deep down, Buyer. They do you credit, but they could be made to serve the Seller.
In the end, we got what we wanted, and for way under the asking prices. Here are the results:
Anyways, after we had claimed victory in the market and used our textile-grading and price-negotiating skills very effectively, we bought the absolute cheapest meal we had in Peru. 2.5 soles for that heaping plate of… well… we don’t know what it was. But it was not The Standard Peruvian Lunch. All the same, it was good, and we did not get food poisoning.
Back on the road, we headed to Maras. This area is known for two major tourist sites: Maras, and Moray. Moray is a series of agricultural terraces in concentric circles, that also happens to be in the shape of male genitalia in the very moment of greatest excitement. Sadly, we had to cut Moray out of our plan, due to time constraints, and a nagging fear that we were being too rough on Anastasios, and the road to Moray looked rough.
We did, however, go to Maras. What is Maras? Pictures should do the trick:
We went to a salt mine! But not just any salt mine, this salt mine goes back to before Inca times. These pools, and the channels that feed salty water into them, have been continuously operational for centuries. When the Sapa Inca sat down at his table, maybe with some fish brought up from Puerto Inca, he salted it with this salt.
That’s pretty cool. So, ya know, we bought a pound or two of salt. Because who doesn’t need a few pounds of salt?
After Maras, we headed down into the Urubamba Valley, and specifically to the city of Urubamba. We were really short on cash after buying souvenirs in Chinchero and Maras, and paying entrance to Maras, and we luckily, and pretty much randomly, found a name-brand ATM and bank to pull out money in Urubamba.
We then drove down the scenic sacred valley to Ollantaytambo. Ollantaytambo is sort of the end-of-the-line in the valley. Past Ollantaytambo, you have to take the train to go further up the Urubamba River valley. And why would you take that train?
To get to Machu Picchu of course! But that’s the next day.
For now, we were headed to Ollantaytambo, where we stayed at a hostel called Casa de Wow!! It’s run by a married couple, the wife is American, the husband a Quechua-speaking Peruvian. It was a really interesting place, built on the foundations of an Inca building, and our hosts were incredibly nice. They gave us great dinner recommendations, parking advice (there’s a garage halfway down the road to the train station, on the left), and generally just made us feel really welcome. Plus, the husband, whose name is Wow, brought us and a few other guests up on their roof, and pointed out to us the sacred mountains nearby, anthropomorphic shapes in them, and described the various apus, or spirits, that inhabit them.
He spoke only Spanish and Quechua, while all of the guests were English- or Chinese-speakers. So understanding what Wow was saying was tricky. But aside from an interesting mutated form of the Inca pantheon, one which greatly elevated the importance of Machu Picchu relative to its likely historical status, he then pointed to one rock formation and said, “Oh, and that rock is Jesus Christ. He’s an apu too!” Or, at least, we think that’s what he said.
Certainly, he did explain that there’s no crucifix in their house, and they meditate, and receive spiritual energies, and Jesus Christ is one of those energies, and he’s in the mountain right beside the ancient divine Father of the Inca. Now, I know this is a mixture of Christian, Andean, and New Age spiritualities, but still, it speaks to the syncretic blend that prevails throughout much of Peru. It was definitely interesting to get so unique a perspective from a native Peruvian.
After that, we just wandered Ollantaytambo a bit.
Ollantaytambo was awesome. It is, put simply, what we wanted Cabanaconde to be. It was packed with good restaurants for one thing, and they clearly knew their market: lots of places advertising pizza, italian, and burgers. We were ready for some non-Peruvian food by this point.
Then there’s the town itself. The core of the town is closed to cars because the streets are too narrow… because they are the old Inca streets and houses. The city has some of the oldest continuously-occupied structures in Peru. Plus, everywhere takes visa, there are plenty of ATMs, prices weren’t too bad, and the surrounding mountains (and ruins) are beautiful. Watching the rays of the setting sun slash down into the valley, it’s easy to see why the Inca emperor Pachacuti selected this site for a royal estate and ceremonial site.
Trip Tip 38: Ollantaytambo is not disappointing. We did not visit the ruins due to time constraints, and because our ruins-visiting budget was dedicated to the highlights like Machu Picchu and Sacsayhuaman. They looked impressive, and we definitely could have spent some more time there, especially if we’d had the Boleto Touristico that includes Ollantaytambo admission. There were plenty of restaurants for variety of eating, and the town was just easy and nice in a way that many places in Peru aren’t: credit cards, ATMs, etc.
That night, we went to bed early because, (1) we went to bed early basically every night because, VACATION, and (2) we had to wake up really early the next morning, for the MAIN EVENT: Machu Picchu!
Day 10: Machu Picchu (and Waynapicchu!)
Day 10 is The Big Day. The day we go to Machu Picchu. Lyman had read up on how this worked, and thought that he really had everything planned out. And, ultimately, he did, but there were some stressful and confusing moments. So aside from talking about the awesome experience of Machu Picchu, we’ll also have plenty of Trip Tip specifics for Machu Picchu.
To begin with, we woke up at 5 AM to get dressed and pack a backpack. What did we pack?
Trip Tip 39: Pack bugspray, sunscreen, several individual-size water bottles, and plenty of snacks. All of this should be packed into a small backpack, or a personal satchel or large purse. We saw people getting in with large backpacks, but the rules state you can’t do that, and, well, better safe than sorry. Machu Picchu is the only place we saw mosquitoes and heard about others getting bites from “No-See-Ums,” so bug spray is a must, and it is more-or-less shadeless, ergo, sunscreen. Finally, eating on-premises is forbidden, but it didn’t seem like that rule was widely obeyed. We certainly didn’t obey it.
We bought the cheapest ticket we could find, on IncaRail. Most people take PeruRail. IncaRail was cheaper. To board the train, they say show up 30 minutes early, but we showed up 10 minutes early. As long as you get to the ticket office in time to have your tickets printed, you should be fine.
Trip Tip 40: You need to have your passport with you, as well as the credit card with which you paid for the tickets. Also, pre-print multiple copies of your Machu Picchu tickets.
Sidenote: the Peruvian government website where you buy Machu Picchu tickets is awful. You must have your passport info to buy tickets: this matters, because Ruth had to get a new passport to reflect her new married name. The website crashes frequently, and we had to try several times to get tickets. Because we bought tickets about 5 months in advance, we had no trouble getting tickets for Machu Picchu and the hike up Waynapicchu. But they only let 500 people hike Waynapicchu each day, so buying early is important if you want to do the bonus-hikes. We heard from others who bought about 2 months out that they were not able to get Waynapicchu tickets.
Eventually, we got our train tickets printed, showed our tickets and passports to the ticket-checkers, were directed to our train car, and got to the train. It was probably 6:30 by then.
Our AirBnB hosts had, incredibly kindly, packed us breakfasts-to-go with snacks, juices, and a hard-boiled egg, which we ate right away. Then, on the train, we were given more tea, juice, or coffee, as well as some tasty snacks. So we were energized and awake as the train got well underway.
Eventually, after a scenic train ride, we got to Aguas Calientes, the town at the foot of Machu Picchu mountain. Now, we knew that the next step was to buy bus tickets, and get on buses. We were worried we were running late, so we rushed through the train station, and got to the road where the buses were. And there, we found a forever-long line. Worse, we didn’t know if it was a line to board the bus or to buy a ticket. So we team-played it: Lyman got in one line, Ruth in the other. Ruth ended up buying tickets, while Lyman held the spot in line to board. You buy a general bus ticket, it’s not for a specific time or bus, and you need to show the passport for each person’s ticket. The line for boarding is on the right side of the road, line for buying tickets is at a kiosk on the left side of the road. Ultimately, we got on the buses in good time. Even though the line was long, the buses ran really efficiently. And after 25 minutes of switchbacks, we arrived at Machu Picchu.
Where… we waited in another line. For the next half-hour, we waited for the line of people to wind down so we could finally enter.
Note: there is NO BATHROOM in Machu Picchu! The only bathroom is outside the gates right by where you get off the bus, and it costs 1 sole to use it. You should use it. They ask if you want to buy toilet paper, but the bathrooms appeared to already be stocked.
Trip Tip 41: The lines are demoralizing, but they move faster than you might think. You do need to make sure whoever is buying tickets at the bus line has passports for each person and cash.
All of this mattered because our time slot to hike Waynapicchu was from 10AM to 11AM. Lyman thought this meant you had to enter at 10 AM, hence his rush.
Trip Tip 42: If you buy tickets with a hike included, you can start the hike any time during the time slot. We arrived at the Waynapicchu gate breathless from running through Machu Picchu… then sat and waited for 20 minutes to be let in.
Finally, we were let into Waynapicchu.
Okay, so, What is Waynapicchu? Well, here’s a classic picture of Machu Picchu:
Machu Picchu is the settlement you see. That rocky, narrow mountain right on the other side of Machu Picchu, that, is Waynapicchu. That’s what we hiked up. And it was GREAT. Instead of just wandering the ruins in the sun, we got a shady jungle hike up to amazing vistas.
On the one side of Waynapicchu, we got views like this. That’s Machu Picchu down there on the left, and that zig-zaggy line is the road up to Machu Picchu. You can also see on the far right, Waynapicchu has its own set of ruins.
And then on the other side of Waynapicchu, we’ve got this: jungle-clad mountains with their peaks in the clouds. Even aside from the strenuous hiking, it was breathtaking.
Plus, the hike itself was fun. It was wonderful climbing all over this amazingly steep rainforest-shrouded mountain, rounding each corner and not knowing if we’d see a cliff, or a new strange tree, or perhaps Inca ruins. The trail was mostly modern, but we frequently saw the remains of various Inca trails off to either side of the route. Imagining Inca astronomers or nobles walking up this path centuries before us, when this place was alive, was exciting. It helped that we stopped at various points and read more from Inca, which gave us characters and stories and colors with which to paint the gray stones.
Eventually, we came down off the mountain, meeting our first honest-to-goodness American tourists on the hike down. We saw lots of Germans, Italians, French, Chileans, Chinese, etc over the trip, but actually very few Americans. Then, having done Waynapicchu (and eaten our lunch on the mountain), we were ready to explore Machu Picchu.
So we did! We wandered for hours. We sat and read our book in the sun. We got yelled at by security guards. We walked the wrong way on the paths and messed up tour groups. We did Machu Picchu. In hindsight we didn’t actually take that many pictures, but it was awesome just walking around, seeing so well-preserved a site, feeling like we were really seeing what the Inca thought was excellent.
But the day had a timer on it. We had a train to catch back in Aguas Calientes. Now, the bus ride down is about 25 minutes. And we figured there’d be some line, like, maybe 30 minutes. But no. The line was FOREVER long. Or, at least, it looked forever long. It ended up being about 45 minutes. We arrived at the train station in Aguas Calientes about 5 minutes early. Which was fine, since our train was about 5 minutes late.
Trip Tip 43: Don’t miss your train! Allow 1.5–2 hours to get from Machu Picchu back to your train by boarding time.
Trip Tip 44: IncaRail’s platform is on the far right of the train station; they have an electronic board with arrival and departure times. They don’t hold up big signs the way the PeruRail people do.
And then we enjoyed a wonderful scenic train ride back to Ollantaytambo.
Back in Ollantaytambo, we went to an Italian place. It was pretty nice, and they managed to keep the service going even when the power briefly went out. And then, in quite the coincidence, we saw the Chilean couple from Sacsayhuaman again. They were heading to Machu Picchu the next day.
Machu Picchu was worth all the time, effort, and money it took to get there. It was a long day with bugs, sun, heat, hunger, lines, thirst, and tiredness. But it was fun, and we came away just looking at each other, occasionally repeating, “Hey! We just did Machu Picchu!” We just explored a wonder of the world! We just did it.
Day 11: Back to Cusco
Day 11 had a really simple plan: return to Cusco. We were going to go back along a different route than we’d come to Ollantaytambo, driving up the Urubamba Valley to Pisac, then heading south to Cusco. This drive was only supposed to take maybe 2–3 hours.
So to begin with, we slept in, then took our time getting packed up and out the door. We had the whole day to drive a few hours, so why rush?
Then we walked out to get our car… and found that the only road out of town was swarming with children. We didn’t take any pictures of this, but it was just a horde of hundreds of kids. And in the main square there were hundreds more people, a big podium with people giving speeches, soldiers in uniform with flags… this was some kind of big parade.
It turns out that July 28th is Peru’s Independence Day, but many towns celebrate it on other nearby dates; in our case for Ollantaytambo, they celebrated it on the 26th. The one road out of town was shut down.
Trip Tip 45: Peru’s roads will not cooperate with you! We’ve said this before, but really, have a backup plan, and be ready to just chill out and enjoy the wait.
We found a little niche in an old Inca house in a quiet part of town and read our book for an hour or two. Then we got lunch. Finally, the parades ended, the crowds dispersed, traffic got moving again, and we were able to depart.
And we’ll be frank: most of the drive down the Sacred Valley was a bit underwhelming. When you call something “the Sacred Valley of the Incas” it really creates an expectation that it’s gonna be spectacular. Maybe we’d just kind of been inundated with scenery by this point, but the valley itself wasn’t amazing.
What was amazing was the Museo Inkariy.
There we were, driving along, headed to Cusco, not having made any major stops for the day, and Ruth sees this big statue beside the road and the word “museo” and says, “Hey, let’s stop here!” Lyman, after some protest, begrudgingly gives in, we turn around, and visit the museum.
This was the correct decision.
This museum was really well done. It cost about 30 or 40 soles each, so it was pretty expensive, but we had so much fun. It was structured around 7 sections, each section devoted to a different pre-columbian culture in Peru, starting with the earliest known urban civilizations (Caral) up to the Inca. In each section, the first room was a typical museum: artifacts, diagrams, descriptions, your usual museum fare. It was all bilingual, Spanish and English, which was really nice, and the explanations and artifacts were very interesting.
But then, in the second chamber for each culture, the museum would bring that culture to life. As you saw in the video, they would set up an elaborate, immersive reproduction of some distinctive element of that culture.
At left you can see a Paracas mummy-bundle reproduced in one of the standard museum-rooms. At right you can see the inner sanctum of the reproduction of the great temple to Pachacamac. Note: this reproduction was seriously creepy. You wander through a little mock-maze, there’s chanting, and darkness, and then you come around the corner and there’s this scene in front of you.
Finally, we saw Vicuna wool items for sale! This is one of only two places we saw selling Vicuna. And, to reiterate, holy cow it was expensive.
The Museo Inkariy was what we wanted it to be: informative, but also imaginative. Peru is full of interesting historical sites, but so much of it is just… ruined. Empty. Lifeless. No matter how much you use your imagination, these places never totally come to life on their own. But with the help of Museo Inkariy’s artistic illustrations, you can fill in the gaps and get a sense for what these places could have been like.
Trip Tip 46: Museo Inkariy is worth the money. It will help you enjoy the various ruined sites more, especially if you’re doing many non-Inca sites like we did. And if you won’t be visiting any non-Inca sites, then it will really help you get a taste for the wider range of pre-columbian cultures.
After Museo Inkariy, we carried on our way to Cusco. We passed through Pisac but didn’t stop, because it was getting late, and because Pisac didn’t look like a really pleasant town.
Above Pisac, when we’d regained a few thousand feet of altitude, we got this view:
Not bad, Peru.
Arriving in Cusco, we found our AirBnB and checked in. This was by far the nicest AirBnB we stayed in while in Peru. We had free parking right in front of our window. We had a snack bowl and bottled water provided. We had a lovely, decorated apartment in a pretty apartment complex. And most exciting of all, we had (1) English-language TV channels and (2) a fireplace, stocked with firewood!
Needless to say, after a nice dinner, we came back, made a fire, and watched TV: a wonderful, relaxing last night in Cusco.
Day 12: The Road Strikes Back
Day 12 started early. We were short on cash, so Lyman headed out first thing to get money at an ATM while Ruth packed the car. We ate a quick breakfast then got on the road.
So, 5.5 hours. No problem. Probably more like 7.5 hours as we would drive it but, still, no big deal! We figured we would get on the road early (due to more potential Independence Day barricades), make good time, reach our isolated river-side hotel early, and spend a pleasant afternoon reading.
And at first, we made great time headed out of Cusco.
Then we encountered the road above Abancay, which one travel blog Lymanread labeled the “Drunkard’s Graveyard.” Why?
Now you can see why. Switchbacks. This was the day of the switchback.
This was also the first day we used motion sickness medicine. Lyman, in the passenger seat, had to use these antiemetic patches that you put behind your ear, because it was just endless switchbacks for hours. This was the road’s first attempt to defeat us.
At the same time, we had really nice parts of the drive:
Sadly, that bit about rocks in the road would come back to haunt us. But not before we’d done more switchbacks, and seen some amazing scenery:
But not too long after we got lunch in Abancay, adventure struck. We say adventure, because, as GK Chesterton said, “Misfortune is only adventure wrongly considered,” or something like that.
Yep. We hit a rock. And we got it on video!
The result of that mean nasty rock that jumped out of the road and hit our tire was:
We’ll go right to left for some variety. At right, you can see the rock! That villainous piece of earthen crust which reached out and struck down Anastasios’ right rear tire! Woe unto it!
In the center, you can see Lyman having achieved victory in changing the tire. This was actually the first time he’d ever had to change a tire alone. Ruth wasn’t quite sure if Lyman knew how to change a tire. Turns out, he does! Also, you’ll notice that Lyman is wearing socks and sandals. The main reason for this is that we had to use Lyman’s tennis shoes to wedge into the glove compartment, because it broke on the first day and hung open, which made the light in the compartment stay on, which runs down the battery. So Lyman’s shoes had more important uses than protecting his feet. The other reason he’s wearing socks and sandals is that, with the rapid changes in temperature and chilly mornings and evenings, he found that it was actually a pretty efficient footwear combo. The third reason for the choice is obviously just that Lyman is at the cutting edge of style, and socks and sandals are going to make a comeback.
Trip Tip 47: Be prepared to change a tire. And, similarly, make sure your car’s spare tire is inflated and you have the tools necessary to change it. This is really just good advice for life, but it’s especially true on a long road trip in a country with poor-quality roads and frequent rock slides. Popping a tire is not just possible, it is very likely. Also, it’s a good precaution to ask your rental car company for guidance in the event you have a car accident. Call your car insurance company and credit card to inquire about your insurance options. We used a mixture of credit card and rental-car company insurance products to manage our risk. Peru has one of the worst road safety ratings in the world. Be logistically, technically, financially, and emotionally prepared for accidents and flat tires. Have spare cash. Have a functional cell phone. Be able to solve some of your own basic problems. Keep a casual eye out for mechanics as you go through towns. And most of all, don’t get distracted participating in the video your spouse is taking from the passenger seat!
Finally, at left, is the llanteria (tire place) where we got our tire fixed for just $40 or so. They were incredibly nice and very efficient.
You know who wasn’t very efficient, though? The Avis 24-hour help service. First of all, we were told they spoke English: they didn’t. Second of all, even once we found an English-speaker, they weren’t at all sure whether we should pay for a repair ourselves, or if it was billed through Avis, or what. Third of all, when we asked them if they had any recommendations about where to get the car fixed, they spent hours dilly-dallying around looking for somewhere, neither telling us “Just go anywhere you find” nor telling us a specific place. In the end, we were not able to find the mechanic they sent us to, so we just picked what looked like a fairly reputable spot. Although the picture at left doesn’t show it, this place had a new-ish looking sign, and a large pile of new, clean-looking tires inside of their front office. Notably, this place was an hour back up the road away from our hotel for the night. Good thing we left early.
Negotiating a tire repair in Spanish was an exciting experience. Obviously, our mechanics didn’t speak a word of English. Luckily, it was a family-run place and really nice, and we seemed to be on the same page with our hand-gesturing, so it all turned out okay.
With a new tire on, we headed back down the road.
Trip Tip 48: There are four distinct types of fun, and knowing which type you are experiencing at a given moment will help you emotionally process difficult experiences. Type I Fun is just plain fun; you like it while it happens. This is what laypeople mean when they say “fun.” Type II Fun is not fun while you’re experiencing it, in fact it can be very scary or unpleasant, but it becomes fun in hindsight, when you talk about it to others. Type III Fun is not fun while you experience it, nor is it fun for you to remember, but it is fun for other people to remember, usually at your expense. Finally, Type IV Fun is the only kind of fun you really don’t want to have any of on your road trip. Type IV fun is just not fun for anyone at any time. It often involves dismemberment.
It got dark well before we arrived at the hotel. Now, normally this wouldn’t be a big issue. We would just flip on the data on our phone, locate the hotel, and drive there. Plus, since Lyman had Streetviewed all of our hotels and AirBnBs, he could recognize and remember how to get there as soon as we got in the neighborhood.
But Hotel Tampumayu was different. Hotel Tampumayu is not in a town. It is out in the middle of nowhere in the Apurimac valley. And the thing about Google Streetview is that it’s all daytime pictures. Identifying the turnoff at night could be harder. Luckily, though, Hotel Tampumayu is right off the road, and easy to recognize by its big gate and long, red-brick walls. We pulled in just ahead of two big tour groups, got our room key, then rushed to the restaurant to get our dinner orders in first. The food wasn’t the best we’d had anywhere, but it was good, and the hotel was very nice. Most notably, it had no end of hot water. That was a mighty blessing after a 12-hour day on the road with motion sickness, popped tires, and generally just less ease and comfort than had been anticipated.
Trip Tip 49: If you search for “Hotel Tampumayu” in Google, it sends you way off down some random road up into the surrounding hills. That’s wrong. If you just search for “Tampumayu,” it gives you the correct location, right by the road. Hotel Tampumayu is not at all hard to find, so don’t be misled by Google’s bad directions.
Day 13: Across the Sierra Again
We crossed the sierra way back on Day 7: The Longest Drive, using hundreds of kilometers of unpaved roads. It was an adventure that we don’t regret for a second. At the same time, we weren’t eager to repeat the experience. As such, we made sure that the entire drive back to Lima was along nice, paved roads.
But before we could leave, we had to have breakfast.
And that’s when we realized THIS PLACE HAS PEACOCKS! In fact, they have a whole little menagerie of animals within the walled enclosure of the hotel.
And beyond the peacocks, it turns out that Tampumayu is really nice! It looked nice at night, and the room was clean, and we had plenty of hot water, but in the daylight, we realized that it was not just some roadside stopover, but a genuinely nice place where you could really stay in good comfort for several days if you wanted. We’re not sure what there is to do around the Apurimac, but the hotel at least is nice.
However nice it was, though, we’d heard there was an independence parade starting around 10 AM at the next town down the road, Chalhuanca, so we got on the road early, about 7:30 or 8:00 AM.
We had a long day of driving ahead of us; probably 10 hours or so. After getting gas in Chalhuanca, we rushed on out of the Apurimac valley. And I have to say, the Apurimac really was a beautiful, scenic area. The picture at left is from when we were rising out of the valley into the pampas, but the whole drive was pleasant, even if we were keeping ultra-vigilant eyes locked on the road, looking for more jumping rocks.
The drive through the sierra was pretty, too. We saw llamas and alpacas, of course. And lots of rocks. And I have to say, we did really appreciate the terrain of the sierra more than we had the first time we came through it, as we’d now seen more of Peru, and had a wider frame of reference for comparison. At the same time, we didn’t take many pictures because, well, we’d seen quite a bit of it by then. We were of course deeply appreciative of the momentary break from the switchbacks!
And then we wondered if we’d driven into Cappadocia, in Turkey, when we saw these things:
They didn’t extend much beyond the picture, but, hey, maybe in a few thousand years the hills will erode some more, and they can carve cave-hotels for tourists! But this random set of rock formations really shows something we came to realize about Peru: its tourist gems have not yet even begun to be fully commercialized. There are so many pockets of this country with interesting, beautiful, or unusual sights and experiences, and so few of them have actually been publicized and developed to their fullest potential. We hope that in 20 years this road trip is unrecognizable, as Peru has developed its amazing natural and cultural resources even further, and capitalized on its strengths. Oh and, sidetone: this entire drive from the upper Apurimac to Puquio is over 14,000 feet in altitude. By this point, we didn’t even really notice the elevation change, except that our growing pile of empty water bottles would make popping noises as they expanded and contracted with air pressure.
As we began to exit the far side of the sierra around the city of Puquio, we saw a change in the scenery: flowers! Whole hillsides of flowers! Purples were dominant at first, but eventually we got yellows, and oranges, and reds. Our working theory is that the clouds from the Pacific hit these westward-facing hillsides at about 14,000 feet and lose a lot of water, enabling more varied vegetation.
It was a pleasant day, we were making good time, the roadside was filled with flowers, naturally we had to, well, stop and smell the roses.
Eventually, we carried on towards Puquio, where we got some snacks and gas, and then even further, towards Nazca, where the cross-sierra highway meets the Panamericana Sur.
But before we were quite at the descent into Nazca…
We drove through ANOTHER VICUNA PRESERVE! And look, the vicuna in the front is wooly! Look at all that textile gold hangin’ off that little camelid body! It just looks SO CUTE/LUCRATIVE! CU-CRATIVE!
But soon after the vicuna preserve, we were really descending. As I said, the sierra was over 14,000 feet up. The vicuna preserve was at about 13,000 feet. Ica, our destination by the end of the day, is at about 1,300 feet. We needed to lose 90% of our altitude, or over 11,000 feet, over the span of less than 100 kilometers. That’s a serious descent.
And it turns out, 100% of that descent was switchbacks through a dead, barren, rocky, lifeless desert.
The switchbacks got even more intense after that video, as we got lower down in the valley.
Eventually, however, we came to Nazca. Now, you’ll recall that we’d been to Nazca before, on Day 3, when we saw the Nazca lines. We felt the Nazca culture was a little underwhelming. But at the Museo Inkariy, the Nazca exhibit was pretty cool, and they talked a lot about Nazca irrigation. So when we saw a sign pointing us towards a “Nazca aqueduct” while driving down the road into Nazca, well, we had to check it out.
The Nazca were a pretty amazing culture, making deserts bloom with life well before modern agricultural methods were invented. They would chart out the slightly-moister areas underground where water percolated through the soil, excavate those areas, build a rock tunnel, then cover it all back up. Then they’d make those big pits you see at right. There’s debate about the purpose of the pits, but the theory Lyman prefers is that they (1) provided access up-stream of the fields to remove cleaner drinking water, (2) they directed more runoff during rare rains into the aqueduct, and (3) they allowed the tunnels to “breath,” sucking air in and pushing air out as the air pressure and temperature outside changed. This matters, because the warmer outside air can hold some moisture, and when it’s sucked into the much cooler, very-moist air of the tunnel, it condenses, creating water droplets on the side, which run down, and add to the flow of the irrigation channel. With 8 or 10 such pits built over hundreds of yards of naturally-occurring water channels and tunnels, you can get a pretty good flow of water going.
Eventually, when the flow is large enough, they built the channels you see above. Those channels are deep enough that they stay shady, and the morning mists pool in them.
To be clear, we were there in the dry season. There had been no substantial rains in months. And yet, the irrigation channel was flowing. Further down, it emptied into a pond, which was still being used to irrigate nearby fields.
How many irrigation systems of even remotely similar complexity are in operation after 1,500 or even 1,000 years anywhere in the world? Not very many.
The day was running out, so we hurried on. Around sunset, we arrived at the incredibly nice AirBnB where we were staying in Ica. As our hosts prepared dinner, we walked up the dune right behind the house and enjoyed the crisp desert night air.
Day 14: The End of the Road
We woke up day 14 knowing that we had to return the rental car in Lima by 8 PM, and that we had about a 4–6 hour drive back to Lima from Ica.
But the night before, our wonderful hosts had given us some pisco to try (well, had given Ruth some, since Lyman doesn’t drink), and had also given us directions on how to get to the Tacama vineyard. So, since Ica is the wine country of Peru and the birthplace of Pisco, we figured, we should do a vineyard tour.
Tacama is the oldest vineyard in Peru, founded in 1540, just 7 years after the fall of the Inca empire. It changed hands a few times, but has been consistently producing for longer than just about any other vineyard in the western hemisphere. It was neat seeing how they make Pisco, and just enjoying a beautiful, historic place. Plus, we had an awesome meal at the restaurant in Tacama, and obviously bought wine and pisco to stock our own house, and give as gifts to friends. Tacama’s good food and lovely scenery were a great wrap-up to the trip’s activities. We’d had our first big adventure of the trip in Huacachina, not even 30 miles away, and our last at Tacama.
But… we still had a drive ahead of us. And, as it was Peru’s independence day, there was heavy traffic the whole way. That 4 hour drive turned into a 6 hour drive very quickly. When we got into Lima, right near the center of the city, we accidentally turned off of the Panamericana Sur. As such, we ended up having to drive directly through the heart of Lima, on a weekend, at night, on Peru’s independence day.
Thanks to Ruth’s incredibly skilled driving and Lyman’s navigation using our incredibly useful international data plan, we were able to get to the airport. But there were more than a few stressful, hair-raising moments.
At the airport, we had one of our favorite foods of all time: airport Chinese! Except this time, it was Peruvian airport Chinese food! A unique twist on an already great food, what could go wrong?
Well, what could go wrong is that despite good health the whole trip, right here Lyman managed to pick up bacterial gastroenteritis. Now sure, we don’t know for a fact it was here, but about 18 hours later, Lyman was feeling really bad.
Luckily, our flights took less than 18 hours! We had an overnight redeye flight to Orlando, then a flight to DCA, where our amazing neighbors once again picked us up and took us home.
Epilogue
Our Peruvian roadtrip was amazing. Looking back over our pictures, retelling our stories, remembering the moments of excitement, confusion, craziness, and discovery, we couldn’t have picked a better vacation. We got mountains and beaches, deserts and rainforests, colonial-era vineyards, dune-buggies in the desert, museums, ancient ruins, hiking, hot springs under a starry sky, geysers, volcanoes, sing-along in the car, Machu Picchu and the Nazca lines, and everything else in between. Now, sure, we had a flat tire, got momentarily disoriented a few times, faced road closures and corrupt cops, cash shortages and various discomforts along the way. We encountered difficulties we didn’t expect, like road tolls, sunburn, and sinus issues, but in the end, those are just part of the experience. We can confidently say that this trip was at least 90% Type I Fun, 9% Type II Fun… and then there’s Lyman getting sick at the end. That’s Type IV Fun.
But still, in case you can’t tell, we loved this trip! We loved it so much we didn’t just make a picture slideshow, we basically made an advertisement for Peruvian tourism. Go to Peru! Rent a car! See the country yourself! You can do it!
Logistical Notes
Summary Stats
Time: 14 Days
Driving Distance: 1,996 miles
Time on the Road: 70 hours, or about 20% of the trip
Average Speed: 28 mph
Time in Air/Air Transit: 30 hours, or about 8% of the trip
Time in Other Travel: 7 hours, or about 2% of the trip
Time Sleeping: 100 hours, or about 28% of the trip. (exclusive of sleeping during travel)
Time Spent Doing Core Vacation-y Stuff: 125 hours, or about 36% of the trip.
Total Gross Cost: $4,782
Total Net Cost: ~$4,100
Finances
We know that some readers will be interested in the trip logistics. So we’ll start with finances. Was our trip expensive? Answer: yes. As 2-week-long international vacations to major tourist locations go, it was not terrible, but, let’s be honest, there were a lot of different cost factors involved here. The two charts below break down the costs.
As you can see, the biggest cost items were all transportation-related, either airfares or in-country car-related costs. Choosing to roadtrip absolutely incurs costs that, say, staying in one place for 2 weeks doesn’t. An all-inclusive resort will always be a cheaper trip. Furthermore, we could have reduced the burden of the driving cost if we’d had 4 roadtrip participants instead of 2. Plus, the all-inclusive cost for Macchu Picchu was over half of the total “core tourism” costs (we include the MP train and bus tickets as core tourism, not transport). But it should also be noted, food and lodging, though not “core tourism,” were also a positive part of the experience. And the food portion is partially offset by the fact that we would have bought food back home. Likewise, the transportation costs are partially offset by the fact that we would have driven our car if we were home, which depreciates the vehicle and costs gasoline and other routine costs. And, of course, we like road-tripping, so in some sense these costs were “core vacation” too. So to be clear, this cost breakdown (1) slightly exaggerates the real marginal cost of the trip and (2) understates the share of our spending going towards activities we valued as part of the unique Peruvian experience.
Likewise, we could have saved money if we’d stayed in the cheapest hostels or AirBnBs, or if we’d only eaten the cheapest food. But we wanted to enjoy our vacation. We wanted to stay in interesting, comfortable, pleasant places; we wanted to eat food that was unique, good, and, crucially, safe. So we didn’t always opt for the cheapest things. And, of course, we bought a lot of souvenirs to bring home. Even so, we spent under $70/day on food and accommodations combined for 2 people.
All of that to say: this trip is quite expensive if you’re comparing it to a domestic vacation, or an all-inclusive resort type situation, which may very well be your alternative vacation plan. And obviously having both airfare and car rental adds cost. But then again, our airfare was under $1,400 combined. If we’d gone to southeast Asia, it would have been hundreds of dollars more. Even many European destinations are much more expensive if you want checked bags; and of course we got 2 checked bags each, both ways (though we only checked one bag on the way there, two on the way back). Often the cheap fares to Europe give you no baggage, no seat selection, and uncomfortable seats to boot.
Health
Altitude and dry air do a lot of strange things. If you have had an ear infection recently (Ruth), you may have serious headaches and ear-aches. The solution is to take a non-drowsy allergy pill like allegra alongside a decongestant like sudafed. You’ll be fine soon enough.
Meanwhile, you need to bring sunscreen and moisturizing lotion: you will get sunburn and dry skin. Sunglasses and hats are good too. In fact, for the natives, hats are pretty much universal.
And of course, we mentioned that we took acetazolamide for altitude adjustment. This one probably isn’t strictly necessary, but we did feel like it helped, even if its side effects were comically extreme in cases (having to pee like every 30 minutes). If you handle altitude well, you probably don’t need it. If you’re unsure, it’s not a bad choice.
There are immunizations to get, too. All your standard immunizations should be up-to-date, and, if you’re going to the Amazon, there are more, including Yellow Fever. We also took antimalarials for the days before/after Machu Picchu, because the malaria-carrying mosquito is known to exist (if not be super common) around Aguas Calientes.
Also, we brought a lot of water purification strategies. Steripen, tablets, filters, etc. We didn’t use any of it. Instead, we just ended up buying tons of bottled water to use for drinking and brushing our teeth. This was (1) an unexpected expense and (2) an unexpected inconvenience.
Finally, as with all travel to developing countries, you’ll want a prescription of Ciproflaxacin in case, like Lyman, you get a case of bacterial gastroenteritis. Cipro works really well, and it keeps for a while, so even if you don’t use it, you can keep it on hand.
Packing
We knew we were going to have space issues in our car from Day 1, so we packed densely. Ruth carried a hiking backpack and a purse, Lyman carried a hiking backpack and a messenger bag. We also had a mid-sized suitcase, which was itself packed inside of a large suitcase, like a Russian doll.
The reason for the bag-nesting was that we wanted to have a bag free to pack souvenirs in on the way home, and because, inevitably, items packed very efficiently on the way out tend to expand when you repack to come home. Packing one bag inside another forced us to economize, bring only what we needed, and then gave us ample space to pack souvenirs for the way back.
In hindsight this strategy had an added bonus. Peru’s roads are very dusty, and the dust gets in the car, especially the trunk. The road-dust got in everything stored in the trunk… but only the first layer. So we found dust on the outside of the outer bag, and a little on the inside, but no dust inside the second bag. Each night when we stayed in an AirBnB, we usually left our suitcase in the trunk, brought backpacks in.
Planning
As you can tell from the preceding post, lots of planning went into this trip, and obviously lots of shopping around. Some people may be curious what our method was.
To begin with, we came up with a list of 3 or 4 vacations we would like to take (in our case it was vacations to Peru, Turkey, Israel, or Malaysia). Then we set up Kayak price alerts for the flights, and costed out the basic outlines of each trip. When we had a little price history of airfares to get a sense of what they might cost, and had a broad sense of the total trip cost for each place, we debated our various preferences some, but then ended up picking the cheapest-estimated trip, Peru.
Then came the intensive planning. We found things to do mostly just by googling “Things to do in Peru,” then selecting the cool stuff. Once we knew what activities we wanted to do, we narrowed ourselves down to a broad geographic range (in this case, car-accessible sites in the southern half of Peru). From there it was just connect-the-dots. We used Google Maps to estimate each day’s drive, and tried to make sure Google never estimated more than 8 hours driving, usually more like 2–6. As we’ve mentioned, Lyman Streetviewed almost the entire driving route in advance, and wrote up pages of narrative notes describing key turns and intersections.
Early on, we had to pick dates for Machu Picchu, since you have to buy tickets, and especially train tickets, in advance. We had a fairly specific schedule already before we bought those tickets, but once we bought them, we were committed: we had to be in Ollantaytambo the night before our train departed for Machu Picchu.
As we explored routes in more detail, read up more on various activities, and contemplated what we would really want to get out of the trip, we dropped some things we’d initially wanted to do. For example, we decided not to go to Lake Titicaca, unlike the vast majority of tourists. We also dropped an initial plan to drive around the eastern, Amazonian side of the Andes on our way back to Cusco, and see some of the more northerly sierra country. Constraints of time (and maximum permitted mileage on our rental car!) forced us to make cuts.
Once we’d charted out an exact route that we felt was fun and feasible, we started booking lodging. We used AirBnB in most places, but several nights there were no AirBnB options, like Hotel Puerto Inka and Hotel Tampumayu. Notably, those non-AirBnB options were (1) more expensive than most AirBnBs and (2) some of our best lodging experiences in Peru. Likewise, we found Casa de Bamboo in Huacachina on Facebook, after just googling hotels around the Oasis.
For every day, we printed off a driving map, Google’s narrative directions, our lodging information, Lyman’s Streetview notes, supplementary maps and pictures for landmarks or confusing areas, and instructions from our AirBnB hosts about how to check in. To get these instructions, we messaged every AirBnB host a week or two before departure, confirming our stay and getting precise details on how to find the house. This ended up being important because many AirBnBs had the wrong address listed on the official AirBnB website, or Google placed the address in the wrong spot. You will need AirBnB hosts to tell you how to find their homes.
We also printed off copies of our passports, Machu Picchu admissions tickets and train bookings, airline ticket confirmations, as well as credit card information like the number and the emergency help line numbers. We made 2 copies of all of these documents and bound them in binders, like so:
We then stored these 2 books in separate bags, one checked, one carry-on. We ended up using the crap out of these things, as we often had to rely on various pre-printed elements for navigational guidance, or compare between different sources. Plus, having the contact information for all of our lodgings, rental car company, etc came in handy more than once.
Fin.
