Viva El Peru: Cusco

Our final day in Peru was spent in Cusco, where we had a walking tour included in our trip.  We stayed right downtown at the Sonesta Hotel Cusco, which was the only deviation we made from the suggested itinerary from the Sundance Spirit travel agency.  It turned out to be a huge mistake, the hotel itself was fine but the service was lousy and the are in the middle of a full remodel - so the construction noise during the day was obtrusive.  We should have stuck to the suggested Aranwa Boutique hotel again in Cusco as we did in the Sacred Valley. Anyways, live and learn.

Cusco was far more important to the Inca Empire than any of the ruins, including (gasp!) Machupicchu.  According to our guide, Cusco (which translated from Quechua means navel of the earth in English) was the historic capital of the Inca Empire state. The city was invaded, and overtaken, by the Spanish in the 1530s and destroyed most of the Inca buildings, though many of the foundations remain part of the city to this day.
During our city tour, we visited the famous cathedral, Church of la Compañía de Jesus, which is an impressive building both inside and out.  One of the more interesting items inside is a version of the famous Last Supper painting where a platter of guinea pig is prominently displayed on the banquet table. The original foundation for this cathedral was constructed soon after the Spanish takeover in the 1530s, but the current building is a rebuild after the earthquake of 1650 destroyed the original.

We also drove up to a look out point to see this part of the city from above - pretty nice view from up here!

We also visited Qorikancha, or Temple of the Sun.  This temple was also victim to the Spanish takeover, however the Spanish left most of the building and just added on in their own style.  You can clearly see where the old and new construction styles come together.


Even inside the temple, as you walk down one of the passageways, on your left there is the distinct look of the Incas contrasting with the righthand side with curved doorways and more modern materials.

Qorikancha also has a beautiful outdoor garden area where Talia found a comfortable spot to stop for a drink.  

We left the temple and walked around town for a while, the narrow streets of Cusco proving to be a little difficult to manage with our strollers.  I would love to explain where exactly we went, but most of the street names are similar to the one of the left - I cannot imagine trying to teach a little one your address with a name like that!
We stopped for lunch at a restaurant called Cicciolina that was outstanding.  We only had an hour before needing to continue our tours, but if there is ever a chance we are back in Cusco, I would go back to that restaurant in a heartbeat.  They offered salads like I only wish I could find in Argentina!  And the seafood!  So good!

After all that touring and lunch, the girls were tuckered out, they took matching naps in their strollers.

After lunch and nap, we got Gretchen strapped into the backpack for one final ruins visit.  We were scheduled to visit four more ruins sites this afternoon, but the lack of sleep throughout the visit combined with the constant touring, we decided to visit one site and then spend the afternoon shopping and recovering a bit.

The site we visited was Saqsayhuaman, a site set high in the hills overlooking Cusco city.  This site is said to be built in the form of the puma, an important idol in the Inca culture. The most prominent feature is these jagged formations, said to be the teeth of the puma.

Of course, no Inca ruins site is complete without lots and lots of stairs.

The rest of our day was spent searching for alpaca sweaters (we found great items at Kuna) and getting dinner at a little place in town that served ceviche and pisco sours.  We were exhausted - and needed to be up for an early flight back to Buenos Aires the next day, so we got to bed early and prepared for the trip home.

It was an amazing trip, and surprisingly easy to do with a little one.  I imagine that things get a bit harder when the little one isn't so little that you can carry them on your back, but I encourage anyone who asks me to take their kids on vacations like this - even if they won't remember it.  I feel like it exposes Gretchen to new things, even if those things aren't totally understood yet, and it reminds Jon and I that we can still travel, even with a baby!  She is a great traveler, and we hope to light the fire in her to see different parts of the world at an early age!

Viva El Peru!

Viva El Peru: Machupicchu - Day 2

Early morning sky at Machupicchu

Our second and final day at Machipicchu was another early rise, we were up at 4:30am with the intention of watching the sun rise from the site - and we made it with only a few minutes to spare.  It turns out that we were not the only ones with this idea, and the line for the shuttle buses was at least 200 people long at 5:30am (when the shuttles start running).  The park was well prepared for this type of crowd and the line moved quickly, but we had to move in fast forward to get the girls into their backpacks and start the hike before the sun came up.

The more popular place to watch the sunrise is from the sun gate - but for this crew, that was too many stairs for this early morning trip.  We learned our lesson from the day before and brought all sorts of comfort items and snacks for the little ones, and had the added benefit of a big breakfast and decent night's sleep for the girls so they were nice and happy campers.  

I just love this picture of Jon and Gretchen.  They both look so happy, and so similar, it's endearing.  I also love Gretchen's new little curl "wings', she has been a little baldy for so long, I love seeing her with hair!  

 The morning was a bit cloudy, but as we waited for the sun to rise, the clouds disappeared.  This fog blanket seemed to be receding over the mountains throughout the morning.

If you look closely here you can see our buddy Jeff with little Talia on his back looking out onto the morning sky.  This was such a peaceful way to start the day.

The sun is up and the temperature is rising...

The number of visitors allowed at Machupicchu each day is limited to 3,000 - which sounds like a lot, but requires you to plan your trip ahead of time because they sell out months in advance.  To enter the park, you need your entry ticket and your passport, which they look at every time you pass through the gates.  (They don't stamp your passport each time, though there is a commemorative stamp available for anyone who wants to stamp their own passport.)  There is a small food court area and a gift shop just before the entrance, and they have bathrooms available for 1 nuevo sole per visit (and you have to take your toilet paper from the cashier before entering the bathroom).  One of the nicer services that they offer is a coat check - where you can leave your backpack or jacket while you tour around the area - we took advantage of this service when the temperature rose 20+ degrees in an hour.

One other improvement we made of our first day was to take time and let the kids run around outside of  the backpacks for awhile.  There are plenty of large terraces where the girls could stretch their legs, have a snack and we could change a diaper in peace.

Our little adventurer

 The second, lesser-known portion of Machupicchu is called Waynapicchu, and this area of the site requires an additional entry ticket.  Waynapicchu is limited to 400 visitors per day divided into two entry widows from 8 - 9:00am or 10 - 11:00am (200 visitors permitted at each window).  Your designated window is printed on the entry ticket - so we waited around until our 10:00am window to start the hike.

Waynapicchu is the signature tall mountain peak behind almost all of the photos of Machupicchu. We had no idea what to expect when we booked this portion of the tour.

 I imagine that the views from the top of Waynapicchu are amazing, the highest point of this ~2 hour hike is virtually to the top of the mountain.  But, I wouldn't know for sure, we never got there.

The hike started safe enough.  There were a few spots where you are on a narrow pathway that has the mountain on one side of you, and a very long drop on the other side, but aside from my fear of heights, we felt comfortable continuing on the path.  I was the biggest scaredy-cat in the group.

 And then we reached this point.  This was the first full climbing point on the trail, and Milena made it up without issue.  She took this picture from the top of this set of stairs - you can see Jeff and Jon working their way up the steps and me trailing behind.  You can't tell in this photo, but the stairs are slightly curved, very narrow and the one side has a multi-hundred foot drop without any sort of barrier. We decided it was an irresponsible parenting move to go any further - not knowing if the girls would suddenly shift their weight - and more importantly, knowing that if we got up, we would have to figure a way to get back down.  So we turned around, took some nice pictures and became the first group of the 200 people to return from the Waynapicchu trial. As amazing as the trail probably is, it really is just not safe for children.

Had we continued on the trail, you can see portions of the hike in this photo.  The stairs climb all the way to the top of this mountain, and I was way more impressed by the people who could actually complete the trail after I saw what that entailed.  This is my biggest piece of advice to people traveling to Machupicchu with little ones - it's very doable, but don't buy the extra entrance to Waynapicchu, it's far too physical and precarious of a trail for kids.

And that was our trip to Machupicchu.  It was incredible, it was exhausting and it's closer than you think to the US!  A highly recommended trip for anyone who is looking for an adventure, and we are so glad that our little Gretchen is such a wonderful traveler so that we can do things like this.

Viva El Peru: Machupicchu - Day 1

In case I haven't mentioned it so far, traveling to Peru was far from a relaxing vacation.  We were up very early every day, took multiple forms of transportation to get to each archeological site, and when we arrived at each destination, we loaded up the backpacks and started hiking.  Not to mention that most of the Inca sites that we visited were built on mountains - and these folks loved building stairs.  Lots and lots of stairs.  

Machupicchu was no different.  We drove 30 from our hotel in the Sacred Valley to get to the train station that takes you to Aguas Calientes.  I think this was the most confusing part of my pre-trip research was figuring out the best way to get to Machupicchu with little ones (not to blame it all on the kids, I wasn't exactly looking for a multi-day up-mountain hike either).  The two options, as I now understand them, are: 1) Do the Inca trail, a multi-day hike that includes camping and carrying most of your belongings, starting from Ollantaytambo, or 2) Take the train and bypass this portion of the trip, arriving in Aguas Calientes, the closest town to Machupicchu.  The trail is supposed to be mind-blowing, lots of amazing ruins along the way, a way to test your faith in your health, this route allows you access to Machupicchu before anyone else has a prayer of arriving in the morning - all amazing things that I imagine are impossible with children.  Lots of people do the hike, so if that is your thing, you want to find a good tour company to guide you.  They have people to carry most of your things, set up camp, cook food and generally help you along the way.  The trail is strenuous, uphill, long, and in thin atmosphere, so it's a good idea to get in shape before attempting the hike. 

In contrast, we took the Vistadome train, and it was great.  The station is clean and well stocked with snacks, tissues, beverages, medicine and all sorts of yummy US candy (Kit-Kat and Reece's, specifically).  The train ride is approximately 90 minutes, and the train cars have large windows both on the walls and the ceiling so that you can fully enjoy the trip.  It is a beautiful trip indeed.  

Here is the other key point about the train  You are limited to 5 kilos (~11 pounds) of luggage.  This was not strictly enforced with us, but it was a major point of concern considering how heavy we normally travel.  We brought 1 backpack for clothes and night supplies, 1 camera bag also filled with baby supplies and the carrier backpack and we had just enough stuff for the overnight trip.  Here is when it was great to have a travel company helping out, because all of our other luggage was sent to our next destination for us - so that we could pack more for the other days on our trip.  I'm not sure how anyone else does it, unless you are headed to Peru solely for Machupicchu and then turning around and going home.  

As we arrived in Aguas Calientes, the plan was to head directly to Machupicchu.  Our overnight items were placed in a storage area specific to our hotel, the Inkaterra Machu Picchu Pueblo in Aguas Calientes, so we took a coat-check style ticket to claim our luggage later and headed to the shuttle buses.  Aguas Calientes is a very small town that exists almost solely to accomodate Machupicchu tourists.  From here, you can also hike to the archeological site, but it is a looooong way up.  Again, we took the fastest route there, the shuttle bus.  The buses are large and accustomed to the mountainous road, but even so, I was pretty nervous riding up this incredibly windy road.  On the second day, one poor kid got sick in the back of the bus, so for those traveling with children - come prepared!  Even people (especially kids) who do not usually get motion sickness can have issue with this trip - bring tissue, crackers, water, and the air sickness bag from the seat pocket in front of you on the airplane - no joke.

So, after a car ride, a train ride and a bus ride - here was our reward:

Pretty great, huh?  It was more extreme than I had imagined, even after all of my research on traveling here.  The architecture, the mountains, the fact that it remained hidden from the rest of the world for almost 500 years, it was all just amazing. 

To add to the amazingness was the fact that the two dads, Jon and Jeff, did it all with approx 40 pounds of additional weight to carry around.  Super-Dads!  

 So, a little bit about Machupicchu: Machupicchu is the name of the entire mountain that this site sits on, there is no known name to the ruins themselves.  The complex is believed to have been a sort-of summer home to the Inca emporer Pachacuti, who died in 1472 and is the most familiar Inca icon, but by no means was the most important in it's day.  Hiram Bingham from Yale University was the first to lead an expedition to find this hidden Inca site and it is said that he paid a local boy 1 nuevo sol (~$0.35 US) to lead him to the site.  One of the strangest things we learned about the expedition to study and restore the site was that Yale University spearheaded the expedition, and it was funded by Abercrombie & Fitch. The trendy-high-school-student clothing store.  How things have changed.

There is so much more to know about this amazing site, I highly encourage you to read more about it on your own since there is no way I can fit enough into this post.  

As for our experience, we were unaware at how few children would be visit the site, especially small children (since that seems like an ideal time to travel with them, they're not too heavy, they sleep more often and they're not big enough to want to walk on their own).  I can count on one hand how many other children I saw, and Jon and Jeff were a tourist attraction of their own.  People asked for pictures with them, of them, of the kids alone - so much that I was tempted to point out that the real sight to be seen was Machupicchu!  Of the other tourists that loved us, there were just as many that did not appreciate the presence of children.  The meditators, spiritual folks that were looking for enlightenment gave us a few nasty looks when our happy girls decided on Day 1 that they no longer liked Machupicchu.  Here is that moment for our family:

If I could read Jon's mind in this picture, he would be saying "I sure wish we had brought a pacifier...". Which we didn't.  And we paid dearly.  Poor little Gretchen was so tired - and her parents forgot the pacifier. Sorry baby!  We planned better for Day 2.

That afternoon, lunch was included in our tour for the day and we ate at the Machu Picchu Sanctuary Lodge buffet lunch.  This was not the best meal we had in Peru by far, but it was the only restaurant option without returning down to Aguas Calientes.  This is also the only hotel located alongside Machupicchu, and though I didn't see any of the rooms, the hotel looked pretty beat up on the outside.  Obviously, the location is amazing, but it is over US$1,000 per night!  Yowzas!  I don't have to see the room to say that it's not worth it.

After lunch we hiked more of the site, this time with happier babies.  It was a long day, and when we got back to our hotel we were glad that we made the choice to stay at the Inkaterra Machu Picchu Pueblo for the night.  It was beautiful. Filled with plants and greenery, great rooms, nice showers and an extremely friendly staff.  They provided cribs for the kids (super small cribs, but cribs nonetheless) baby bathtubs since they only had showers, and had a welcome gift waiting on the bed when we arrived.  They have a beautiful pool area that had a complimentary merienda (snack time) with coca tea (for altitude sickness) and banana bread.  It was a really great, comfortable place to stay.

As with most places we stayed, there was a downside.  The dinner service was incredibly disjointed and awkward, and we had to contest some of our charges afterwards with the front desk.  For example, the waiter wanted to charge us full price for both kids meals that were included in the cost of our room, charge separately for a cup of milk because it wasn't on the kids menu, charged us for water that should have been free, and the list goes on.  In their defense, I think we threw them a curve ball with having the babies with us, and the restaurant staff clearly didn't know how to deal.  The food was really good and we had a nice night, but it was very out of step with the rest of our experience with that hotel.

That last part is thrown in just in case you plan on staying there with children, overall the hotel was fantastic.  In addition to this amazing day, I saw this guy outside of our hotel room, so those that know me know that I was in complete heaven.  It was an amazing day, with more incredible days in Peru to come.

Viva El Peru: Ollantaytambo

After we visited the Pisac market, we stopped to have lunch on our way to Ollantaytambo.  To give a little context to the distance between these places, the Aranwa Hotel is located halfway between Pisac and Ollaytaytambo, so we had to backtrack to get to the second part of our day.  We stopped at a restaurant called Toto's House (phone: (5184) 242037-234312) which was really pretty and had a really pleasant outdoor seating area, but consisted of a buffet lunch - and we were clearly the last ones to the buffet.  Many of the items were low or out and the dressings and sauces looked like they had been sitting out for awhile.  The food was generally good, but it would have been a much better meal if we had arrived a couple of hours earlier.


The great thing about arriving late was that the girls could run around and burn off some steam for a bit.  The stairs kept little Talia busy for quite awhile - I just love this picture of her enjoying herself on those stairs!

One of the more distinguishing factors of Toto's House is the large garden that is located at the front of the restaurant.  It would be interesting to know the percentage of food that this garden supplies to the restaurant (if any, they never explicitly said that the garden provided anything to the restaurant, I just assumed...) because it is such a large and well-groomed plot of land.  It certainly makes Toto's house distinctive to see from the road.

After lunch we hopped back in the car for another 30 minute drive to the Ollantaytambo ruins.  This site was most famously known for it's role in protecting Manco Inca Yupanqui, leader of the Inca resistance from the Spanish invasion in the 1540s.  Now it is known to tourist mostly because it is the kick off point for the multi-day long Inca Trail hiking and camping path - something that we opted not to try.

When we arrived it was quite a bit cooler than earlier in the day at the Pisac ruins, simply because the sun had dipped below the mountain line at this point.  We each added a jacket, plopped the girls in the backpacks and headed up some more stairs. We had some clothing adjusting to do as you can see in this picture of Gretchen - but after that we were ready to go.

Ollantaytambo consisted of an entire village where the important religious and wealthy members of the town lived up higher than the rest of the population.  It was also a fortified village, when looking down from the higher points you can see the remains of a stone barrier wall around the perimeter. There is also a neighboring mountain that houses some interesting buildings adjacent to the ruins.  It was explained to us that these buildings were for food and supply storage, a great idea, but difficult to imagine having to retrieve those goods from wayyyyy over there.

Like Pisac, this was one of a few sites that we saw that didn't use any sort of mortar or filling between the stones of the construction.  The stone masters were incredible architects and crafted their stones to be perfect fitting to each other.  Incredible.

One of the more distinctive aspects of these ruins were this wall of stones multiple times larger than the rest of the stones used in this construction.  This wall is called the "Wall of the Six Monoliths" for obvious reasons and we were told that each of the six weighs ~190 tons.

At this point in time, Gretchen was just about done with her backpack.  

We got this nice shot right before she had really met her limit. 

And then we had to descend all of these stairs...

And then we were really out of time with the little ones.  We descended the stairs and then immediately took the babies out of their backpacks.  It was an incredible day and an amazing introduction to our Inca Empire experience.

Viva El Peru: Pisac

This year, we decided that instead of flying back to the US every chance we had, we would expand our horizons and do some traveling within South America.  Our first real venture out of the country was this past week when we went to Peru.  And wow, what a great decision that was!

We booked our trip through Sundance Spirit travel agency, and would recommend that anyone who was traveling to Peru with children do the same.  When I was researching our trip, I had a difficult time deciphering between the hike/camp/adventure trips and the trips that were actually prepared to have a 1.5 year old in tow.  We wanted to stay in a decent hotel at night, hike a reasonable amount during the day but always have a contingency plan in order to accomodate traveling with a child.  

We decided on 6 days/5 nights in Peru, though that included our two travel days which were incredibly long.  It took us 5 hours to fly from Buenos Aires to Lima, where we connected on another hour long flight to Cusco.  From there we drove 1.5 hours to the Sacred Valley, and began our trip there.  We added the 1.5 hour long drive to the Sacred Valley in there because it is ill-advised to start your trip in Cusco due to the altitude, Cusco is 11,200 feet above sea level (for comparison, Denver is 5,280 feet) and if you're not used to that kind of altitude and you jump right into it, you're just begging for a problem.  

In the Sacred Valley we stayed at the beautiful Aranwa Hotel.  The staff is friendly, the rooms are large, they had the best accommodations for children we've seen to date (real high chairs and cribs!) and the food and drinks were outstanding.  The bartender, Andres, made the a passionfruit Pisco sour that was, perhaps, the best drink I have ever tasted.  They even had a doctor on staff to see Gretchen after the flight when I thought she might have pink eye (luckily she didn't).  The only negative thing that I would say about the hotel is that the dinner service was extremely slow.  To their credit, this was not the only place in Peru that we had this issue.

We had a busy schedule from the start, but we were told that the Pisac Ruins were not to be missed, so we added that onto our trip at the last minute.  This made for an early pickup on our first day in the Sacred Valley, but it was a well-advised decision, the ruins were a really interesting stop. It takes about an hour to get to Pisac from our hotel, and the road is most certainly not direct.  There were more winds and turns than I thought possible, but when you get to the top, it is easy to see why there are so many switchbacks.  We were really high up in the mountains, which made for an amazing view of the towns below.

Back in 2010 there was an obscene amount of rain in this region, and although they are used to a rainy season, the rain persisted beyond what the land was able to handle.  This influx of additional rain caused Machu Picchu to close down for a full two months, as well as causing landslides all over the region.  One of these landslides went right over the original road to the Pisac ruins, completely covering a good 100 meters of asphalt.  There is now a separate entrance point to the ruins, but it is a humbling thought that such a large part of the road could just disappear.

Part of the incredible nature of the Incas is their knowledge of how to use the land.  The fact that they could farm the land on such a steep incline is ingenious, and it looks pretty awesome too.  These terraces are a key identifying factor of the Incas and they are all over the mountainsides in Peru.  They served the multi-purposes of allowing the people to farm the land, preventing against landslides and enabling a natural irrigation system, where the water travels through each layer and settles on the layer below.  The terrace curves mirror the natural curve of the mountain, and generally just look cool.

This stop was our first experience with the baby backpacks, and it was a good starting point before we got to Machu Picchu.  Our hike around the ruins was a few hours long which was enough to teach us to adjust the straps to the right settings and gave us a good idea of what we would need for our future days at Machu Picchu.  This shorter hike also allowed us a window into how the girls were going to react in the backpacks, which they both did quite well in, but neither of them particularly loved.

The amazing architectural skills are evident in this location, more so here than at Machu Picchu because there is no mortar between the bricks.  To add to the incredible nature of this location, this type of of stone does not naturally occur in this location, so it has been found that the Incas mined the stone somewhere 35 km away (21 miles) and somehow traveled with it to this spot high in the mountains.

Holy Moly, that a lot of stone

After visiting the ruins, we drove over to the Pisac Market, which is one of the largest and most well known markets in Peru.  During the week it serves as a tourist market, but on the weekends, particularly on Sundays, locals come from surrounding villages to barter their goods for basic food staples and supplies. 

This market is full of goods, both handmade and processed, and they are generally more than willing to bargain and to a deal.  I loved the art that so many people had on sale. Oil paintings, watercolors, pencil drawings, there were so many beautiful things to choose from the hardest part was making a decision!

The center of the market also has a communal oven where people were baking bread, meat and this guy - who was baking a few little critters of his own.

 Can you tell what they are?  Those are cuy, or guinea pigs, ready for roasting.  There was a cage next to the oven where the luckier little guys live prior to dinner time.  Guinea pig is a delicacy in Peru, not my new favorite meal by a long shot, but it's good to try anything once.

 Peru has a style all it's own and this was a fantastic first day to help us get accustomed to the area.  Next up, our after-lunch ruins trip and how to take a baby to Machu Picchu!