Our Base at Cusco

Leaving Lima Peru and with a last request for our hotel El Reducto; of printing out our electronic Boarding Passes sent to us the night before proved too much of a problem to accommodate. It is that frustration we head off the airport using our Beat app (taxi). We scored a great driver, Donato, who dropped us off at the right point for s28 (soles = Solees) .. $11AUD for 35mins drive.

That printing frustration caused far more pain as the airline only operates off printed boarding passes and for them to provide 2 small sheets of paper & 40 seconds of their time cost me $32US .. $44.60AUD. OUCH & utterly ripped off!!! I provided the required feedback when I completed the flight through their app. No response as yet & none expected; I guess.

Cusco sometimes spelt Cuzco; was the capital of the Inca Empire (13th century–1532). Elevation: 3,400m (11,152 ft) and founded in 1100AD. In 1983 Cusco was named a World Heritage Site and in 2017, the city had a population of 428,450. The city was built on a previous existing lake which is quite amazing considering the stone structures. The main tourist attraction here is the start for the Machu Picchu trek through to Ollantaytambo Village.

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Flying into Cusco (1.5hrs flight) there are some amazing banking manoeuvrers by this big plane to search for the valley of Cusco between huge mountains forming the Eastern bank of the Andes Mountains. You get a good vision of Cusco when the wing starts to point downwards. After the plane thrill and landing safely it was rather comforting to see our guide holding our name card amongst all the jeering taxi operators. We quickly bundled into the small car and went through all the varying sections of the city. We did become rather nervous when we could see a small laneway just big enough for our car & then it stopped midway immediately out the front of our hotel La Casa de Mayte.

With the feeling of hitting the doors of the building & the opposite wall we stopped the one-way traffic until we had all our bags within the hotel (footpath about 450mm wide). Once the doors opened; we immediately saw a quaint/ quirky and very cosy atmosphere and a warm reception finally. Our room comprised of a double bed and a king single with ensuite and a great view of the houses built onto the highlands (I mean mountains .. yikes!!).

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As nightfall was some hours away; we carefully stepped out the hotel doors to the opposite footpath (600mm wide in places) avoiding the single lane traffic. We noticed that Peruvians do not give way when walking … much like their driving. The road was cobblestone like most of Cusco roads but the traffic volume down this laneway was astounding. We saw one street that was one-way and extremely steep much the same size as our street. It just didn’t look right 😊 & must be heavy on the brakes.

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Our hotel was a great location within the Central Historical District (Main Square) and it was buzzing with all kinds of activity. Buskers, women in native dress with an alpaca or two, vendors of all sorts, fashion and hiking shops, cafes, museum and historical churches, 15+ young ladies hounding to give you cheap massages just to name a few. While missing lunch we ventured into an early dinner so my first commitment was to find Paddy’s Irish Pub which was luckily at the main corner of the square. It is the highest official authentic Irish Pub in the world at 11,156ft and I promised the wife of a close workmate I’ve known for 30+ years and tragically lost him in 2017 that I would toast a beer there for him. Of course, Michael was Irish and a superb human being and 2017 was the year he and his wife planned to be at Cusco for the Machu Picchu Trek.

We had a superb night’s sleep, hot shower and a beautiful brekky in the hotel to hit the streets shopping for the main trek equipment we could not pack from Australia. A warm waterproof jacket, walking poles, beanie & gloves for starters. Apart from the poles we gained a few bargains taking note of the falling Australian dollar rate.

We have a few days at Cusco to help with the high-altitude acclimatisation aspects so we called it our base.  We also ventured to Ollantaytambo Village for a few days too. We knocked over our Machu Picchu Pre-Trek meeting quickly so we could now focus on another massive one-day trek to Rainbow Mountain (5,031m high) in another day or so. More on that in another blog along with Ollantaytambo.