In November 2016, Anne and I found ourselves waking up in a hostel in Cusco, Peru. After a couple of days of being okay, unfortunately, she finally succumbed to the altitude, and I was left to go on our tour solo. When you think of Peru, most people know Machu Picchu, but throughout the entire country you can have access to some truly wonderful archaeological sites. Easily accessible from Cusco is the Sacred Valley, where you can find various sites including Pisac and Moray.

The sign at the entrance to the Pisaq archeological site

I jumped on a bus and our tour first took us to the town of Ollantaytambo, where there were tons of locals ready to sell something. You find this on many of your travels, whether it be Chicago or a town in the middle of the Sacred Valley. I find that the only question is exactly how pushy are the salesmen going to be? Some make it a relatively painless experience and are happy for the sales but aren’t desperate for them or trying to con you. In other places around the world, it’s so uncomfortable that you feel compelled to escape the area. Luckily for me, this was the former. The people were sweet, this was their job, not a fight for survival. Tourist traps are just part of the game when you’re traveling, and even more so when you’re taking curated tours. They must get as much out of you as possible, and if what they’re offering is good enough, I’m fine being their sucker for the day.

I didn’t find anything worth buying, but I did give a lady a couple of bucks to take a picture with her alpaca. Money well spent

Ruins etched in the side of a mountain — There were ruins in the mountains near the site as well

When we headed out of town, our guide gave us a breakdown of the Sacred Valley and the archaeological efforts being done all over. Explained how they were still finding amazing things to that day. And eventually we arrived at Pisac. We didn’t get to experience the world famous Pisac market or the Old Town, because we headed straight to the ruins.

One of the features I noticed at many Incan ruins was the terracing the culture developed. Huge sections of mountainside bent to the will of the pre-Columbian people. It is hard to imagine how cultures with so few resources, compared to today, could possibly affect nature on this scale. The stonework on the buildings was amazing as well. The precision of how the rocks were cut and placed is still unmatched on my journeys. I walked around the different ruins we visited with a sense of awe that never really went away all day. Not for the first time on this trip, I felt like I could spend weeks exploring the Valley and never really feel like I had uncovered all it had to offer, but the show must go on.

Tim and Anne pose at a table on Peru Rail with their breakfast with the Andes mountains in the background — It was a great train ride

The next day, Anne was back in the game, and we jumped on Peru Rail to head to the small town of Aguas Calientes. Located at the bottom of the mountain that Machu Picchu sits on, we were surprised to find a town full of people, with kids just getting out of school, restaurants, neighborhoods, hostels and hotels, bars, and ice cream spots. We stayed at Supertramp Hostel. It was a pretty no-frills hostel, but we got our own room and the doors locked, so no complaints. It did have some really cool art all over the place though, so I guess mid-frills?

While our families were celebrating Thanksgiving back home in the states, we woke up early and took a van up Carretera Hiram Bingham, the road that snakes up Machu Picchu Mountain to get to the ancient ruins. There are many ways to get up the mountain. Some people do the whole hike and camp thing to enjoy the Inca Trail a little. Some walk up Carretera Hiram, which looked like it had some short cuts carved between road levels to help with that process if you choose, and others biked up and down. We’re 100% not hikers, and while it seemed doable to just walk up from the town, it didn’t seem appealing. Paying a little extra to hop in a van was definitely the way to go.

Machu Picchu is a UNESCO World Heritage Site, a New World Wonder, and still one of the most breath-taking vistas I’ve ever seen. To get into Machu Picchu, we had to order our tickets online in advance from the Ministry of Culture. They only let so many people in the park every day, so make sure to plan ahead. The ministry offers various options, so work with your travel agent or a tour company to make sure you pick the option that fits. We did not have a guided tour scheduled, so we talked to a couple of the local guides offering their services at the gate and hired Paulo.

A Panoramic shot of Anne at Machu Picchu

When you are at the gate at the park, you’re a bit underwhelmed, because you’re just seeing a lot of walls. It isn’t until you snake your way through some walkways and emerge in the park proper that you see one of the most amazing views in the world. The ancient Inkan ruins of Machu Picchu spread out in the foreground, and the landscape ringing it are some of the most beautiful mountains I’ve ever seen. The pictures really don’t do it justice; this is one of those places you must experience to believe.

A view of Machu Picchu from the entrance

There have been times in our journeys both in the US and abroad that we’ve gone without a tour guide, or ditched tour guides because we felt there was enough information presented by plaques, audio devices, apps or our own knowledge to let us enjoy the location without a tailored presentation. The pros of not using a tour guide include moving at your own pace, being able to stick around and focus on what you want for as long as you want, not having to pay for a guide, and not having to deal with someone who turns out to not be what you wanted in a guide. (For example, in Olympia, Greece, we ditched the guide provided by the cruise ship excursion because she was slow and a bit racist. More on that later.) The cons of course are these are usually locals who intimately know the attraction, and probably have forgotten more about it than you’ll ever know. If there’s a special rock that lines up with the mountain in the background, but you must stand at a certain spot at a certain time of day to see the effect… you may miss out.

Luckily for us, our private guide was a great balance of informative and chill. He didn’t take it personally when we interrupted his flow to ask questions, he didn’t pout when we slowed his timetable to take in more views or look a little harder at something he just showed us. He was very knowledgeable and always had an answer, or at least an educated guess, about everything we peppered him with. A guide like that is priceless… but they do take cash.

I will probably say this about a lot of our experiences through this series, but it really is impossible to explain the feeling of standing on this mountain among these ruins. I could literally sit up there and just relax for days on end and never get tired of the 360° views. At one point, Paulo just handed us a couple of bags of the Peruvian version of corn nuts, and we just relaxed against the stone work and took it all in.

You have the option of hiking further up to Huayna Picchu on the other side of the archaeological site, but we opted out of those. That is a ticket option you can purchase in advance as well. If you’ve ever YouTubed some videos of people hiking the narrow stairways up… hard pass for me, but do you.

We headed back down into town, and explored a little, had a couple of meals, and relaxed until the next day. The Tree House really stood out as a nice local spot to grab a bite. Then it was on to the next adventure. Two World Wonders down… many more to go!