Sacred Valley – Oct 2025

The travel from the Galapagos back to Peru was more brutal than we expected. I’d booked one of the later flights out of Baltra since it was so much cheaper, which meant a bit of a wait in Guayaquil before we continued on to Lima. I naively though that arriving in Lima at 10:30pm would mean the airport was quiet – incorrect! There was an even longer immigration queue than when we arrived the first time. It took just over 2 hours from when our plane touched down for us to make it out to our pre-arranged taxi driver. Fortunately (?) he was keen to get home so our trip to the nearby airport hotel was very fast. At 1am we settled down to try and get what sleep we could since we were going to be up again less than 5 hours later on our way back to the airport. Somewhat to our surprise we had the same driver – anyway, we got back to the airport and checked in with no dramas.

The flight into Cusco was a little exciting as the mountains surround the town so it was a somewhat fast, steep descent! Somewhat nervously we emerged with our luggage hoping someone would be there to meet us – I’d made the arrangements several months earlier and not received any further communication. Fortunately I spotted my name on a sign and we were soon piled into a car on our way from Cusco’s height of 3,300m to the Sacred Valley at a far more approachable 2,800m. I hadn’t thought through the altitude when we planned the trip – while I hoped that some of our acclimatisation from a month earlier would remain it was probably wishful thinking. Unsurprisingly after the whirlwind day of travel we weren’t feeling our best when we eventually got to Ollantaytambo!

We did manage to walk up to the Pinkulluna Ruins which overlook Ollantaytambo that afternoon – partially for acclimatisation, and more importantly they were free!

The next day we purchased our Tourist Ticket and went for a wander around the impressive Ollantaytambo ruins.

Our final day in the Sacred Valley we engaged a driver to take us to three archaeological sites. We started at Chincero which I had low expectations for as all the pictures were of the whitewashed church, but it turned out to be a sprawling complex with many terraces. Tucked away in a far corner found some interesting dwellings (great camp caves!) under boulders. All surrounded by eucalyptus trees, so we felt somewhat at home.

The second site was Moray – when we arrived there was a massive queue of traffic and eventually our driver said we should just get out and walk. So we did, just as we’d walked the kilometre or so to get to the entry we saw him pulling up in the car park. For whatever reason the road to that car park is only open for specific times, and we’d arrived just before it opened. He emphasised we needed to be back within the hour as the road would close again. Fortunately, while Moray is impressive, it is not a huge site so we were able to do a lap within the hour. We had hoped to eat our lunch there but no time for that!

Our last stop for the day was the Salineras de Maras – the salt mines of Maras. These were fascinating, and we found time to eat our lunch 🙂

We were back in Ollantaytambo by mid-afternoon with enough time for a quick visit to the Quellorakay ruins before an early dinner. The early dinner was necessary as we had a briefing call about the Inca Trail which we were starting the next morning.