Today we had to reluctantly say goodbye to the incredible staff at Sanctuary Lodge, Machu Picchu and head back down the mountain to catch the train to Ollantaytambo. This meant a hairy bus ride back down the mountain, which zigzags and is hairpin bend after hairpin bend. The first panic of the holiday came when I thought I had lost my bus ticket, a very patient ticket man waited while I scrambled through my pockets numerous times til I eventually found it. Once at the bottom we then boarded a train which took us to Ollantaytambo. Unbeknown to us, it was a Paddington in Peru themed train ride 😂 - when we boarded there was a red Paddington hat on every seat for people to wear and big paw prints all the way down the carriage, it was much fun and rather amusing to see the numerous Thai tourists enthusiastically donning their Paddington hats for the entire 1.5hour train ride! There was also a band that boarded the train, providing music for the journey and after the staff had brought the drinks trolly round for tea and coffee, it was then announced that they would be doing a fashion show up and down the aisles showing local Peruvian knit wear….you don’t get that service on British Rail!
We had arranged for a driver to meet us at the Ollantaytambo train station and take us to Cusco, via any sites we thought we might like to see. We stopped at some more Inca ruins and had a mosey round them, a mooch around Pisco and a stop at Chinchero which at 12,300 feet, was quite something.
We passed through many remote little villages on our way to Cusco. In every village we noticed a red plastic bag on a long stick flying outside some houses. It turns out that the red plastic bag is an indication that Chicha (homebrew) is available there. It’s a moonshine that’s made from corn, takes 2 or 3 days to brew and is pretty lethal! It’s very cheap, around 20p for a drink, so no wonder the locals love it!
We passed a farmer hearding his Lama down the road, they looked like a handful and very mischievous! We also saw some road side stalls selling Guinea pigs which had been cooked on skewers - not something we’d see at home but it’s very normal here and apparently delicious according to David, our driver. Needles to say, I won’t be trying them!
Cusco is much bigger than I had anticipated, but very pretty. We are staying in an old Convent and our room looks out over the red clay tiled rooftops. It was a quick dinner and early to bed. The altitude here is approx 11,200 feet which does make you quite tired. We have been relatively fortunate, and other than a bit of a fuzzy head for a couple of days, we haven’t really suffered from altitude sickness. We have two more days to explore Cusco which has many museums and things to see so that will be tomorrows plan.
View from Chinchero
Paddington Train 
Inca ruins
More Inca ruins
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