Peru Part 4 - Machu Picchu

Machu Picchu

Machu Picchu is one of the great wonders of the world and should be on everyone's bucket list! It is breath taking and awe inspiring. Why the Incas chose such a remote place to build is a mystery, but you can appreciate the beauty and expanse of what they accomplished.
Now all that being said, getting to Machu Picchu is expensive and a hassle.

In the old days, the Incas walked to Machu Picchu and that is one option today. You can walk the Inca trail. With my three kids in tow, we opted to take the train and the bus. So I will be talking about that route. If you want to walk the Inca trail, people ran into said it was amazing, but difficult and you need to book early.
So if you want to take the train, I highly recommend finding a private guide who can book the train, bus and entrance tickets for you. You can do it yourself, but I found that you don't save very much money, you do save yourself a big headache.
I will be posting my itinerary and all of my contacts for Peru in a separate post.
The train leaves from Poroy (near Cuzco) and takes 4 hours to get to Aguas Calientes or from Ollantaytambo and takes 2 hours to get to Aguas Calientes. We tacked on a 1 day tour of the Sacred Valley to the front side and had our private guide drop us off at the train station in Ollantaytambo.
Ollantaytambo is a beautiful old Inca town with an aqueduct water system running through it. It is definitely worth a walk around.
Aguas Caliente gets a bad rap in my opinion. Not that you would want to spend a lot of time in the town, but it's interesting. The train tracks run straight down the middle of the main street. In fact, there are no cars on the main street, just the train tracks. Just watching the garbage train go by was fascinating.

Train tracks right through the main street of Aguas Caliente

Okay, here's where it gets interesting. The buses to Machu Picchu start running at 5:30am and take about 20 minutes to go up the hill. People start lining up for the bus at 3am so you can do the math, we (my husband and I and our guide; we left the kids in the hotel) got in line at 530am and the line was already at least a mile long. Our guide said it was the longest line she had ever seen, but I'm pretty sure the line is long everyday. Only 2500 people are allowed to our Machu Picchu per day. Most of them take the bus. So you get the picture. By the way, the reverse traffic happens around 1pm with people to leave Machu Picchu to get back to Aquas Caliente to catch the 5pm train back to Cuzco.

Crazy bus line at 6am

My recommendation since we did it all wrong in my opinion is to do the trip backwards. Plan to spend 2 nights in Aquas Caliente....arrive by train to Aquas Caliente in the evening, spend the night, catch the 9am bus to Machu Picchu and then you can stay until the park closes and the last bus comes down the hill around 4pm, spend the night in Aquas Caliente and take a morning train to Cuzco. I know it's an extra hotel night, but you have more time at the park so you can a hike or just enjoy the park after the crowds depart in the afternoon and you don't have to deal with the horrible bus line.
By the way, we did not pay extra for the Vistadome train and we could enjoy the view from the train just fine. So if you want to save some money, this is a good place.
Besides logistics, our trip to Machu Picchu (train, bus, entrance tickets for 5 people, guide for the park, Aguas Calientes hotel for 1 night, taxi from Poroy train station to Cuzco) cost us $1465 for 2 adults and 3 kids. Not cheap!
I did book the hotel through booking.com  so I got 10% back.

Peru Part 3 Sacred Valley

Maras Salt Pools in the Sacred Valley 

My theory is that you should fly for free and stay for free and then spend that money on experiences. After spending a few days in Cuzco to adjust to the altitude, we hired a private guide to take us on a day tour through the Sacred Valley. I highly recommend a private tour since there are many small towns, ruins and markets in the area and you can customize the tour. We found Percy on TripAdvisor.com. He had lots of great reviews and answered emails promptly. I felt totally comfortable wiring him an $800 deposit. We included in the private van, 1/2 day tour of Cuzco and Sacsayhuaman tour, 1 day of the Sacred Valley (Maras Salt Pools, Chincheros Inca Town, Native Church, Moray experimental farming terraces and Ollantaytambo), all train, bus and entrance tickets plus a guide for Machu Picchu, return pick up from the Poroy train station outside of Cuzco. We paid approximately $1500 for this tour for 5 people. When I priced it out separately, I wouldn't have saved much so I decided to let someone else do it and avoid the headache. We still needed to pay for park entrance tickets, overnight in Aquas Caliente and food. Found the Killa Inn in Aguas Calientes which had decent prices and included breakfast. For a family of 5, breakfast included is key. They also held our luggage for us while we visited Machu Picchu. 

Chincheros Inca Town 

Inca ruins near Ollantaytambo

Percy was able to tell us lots of personal stories and theories about the Incas. He answered all of our questions honestly and we really enjoyed spending two days with him. For kids, the Maras Salt Pools were a huge hit! The farming terraces and ruins were interesting and held the kids attention, but it is a long day. We ate dinner and took a walk around Ollantaytambo and then boarded the train to Aquas Calientes.

Next post: The trek to Machu Picchu

Peru Part 2 Cuzco

First stop: Cuzco, Peru

Cuzco is located at 11,152 feet above sea level. So that means leave yourself time to acclimate plus pack some altitude sickness medication. The locals will offer you coca tea as well to help with the transition and drink plenty of water. Cuzco is the natural place to launch your travels to Machu Picchu and/or to the Sacred Valley.

Cuzco is an old Inca city with small cobblestone streets. It is absolutely stunning. There is the main church with the famous painting of the last supper featuring a cuy dinner. Visit the church located in Plaza Las Armas during mass from 6am-9am in the morning and the entrance fee is waived. For a family of 5, saved us $40. 

The Artisans market and the San Pedro market are all worth a visit as well. Cuzco features lots of great restaurants and souvenirs. Buy all your souvenirs in Cuzco. You will get the best prices and selection. 

My husband loves to cook so everywhere we go we enroll in a local cooking class, the kids too! In Cuzco, we took a class at Cuscoculinary.com. The chef met us at the local market and introduced us to Peruvian fruits, vegetables, a chocolate shop and talked about the different uses of corn in the country. Then we went to the school and learned how to make a Pisco sour. She had marinated different fruits and chili in Pisco and let us taste each one. Afterwards we made a potato dish and lomo saltado. See the video below of us creating the lomo with fire. The class ended with a pre-made dessert. Great evening. 

When you arrive at the Cuzco airport, there are taxis available for hire. Be sure to negotiate the rate before you get in. You should be able to find a ride for about 15-25 soles. For hotels in Cuzco, there are numerous bed and breakfast, air bnb and a few hotel chains. For a family of 5, we did not choose to use our Marriott points since we would have to get 2 rooms and the Marriott Cuzco is a category 7 or 30,000-35,000 points per night. Instead, we opted for Casona Les Pleides, a charming bed and breakfast. I booked it through ebates.com and booking.com  to get an extra cash back discount. We still needed 2 rooms, but ended up paying just $150 per night for both rooms including breakfast.

Next stop: Sacred Valley and Machu Picchu

Peru: Tips and Advice

Our family standing in front of Machu Picchu - Amazing

We just got back from 2 1/2/ weeks of AlmostFREEFamilyTravel.com in Peru! What a beautiful and geographically diverse country with so much history and culture plus plenty of adventure activities for the kids.

And the best part, we travelled for almost FREE! I'll show you what we did and how much it cost and how you can do the same trip for the same price. Travel doesn't have to be expensive and I'll show you how. 

Since we saw so much, I am going to break this up into 6 parts.

Part 1 Peru in general and our itinerary

Part 2 Cuzco
Part 3 Sacred Valley
Part 4 Machu Picchu 

Part 5 Paracas/Ballestas Island/Huacachina

Part 6 Iquitos and the Amazon

Here we go, part 1.
The Incas believe there are 3 pillars to life; love, work and knowledge. They were not lazy people as evidenced by Machu Picchu and the other ruins that have been left behind. Travel too is based on your love of culture, history and experience. Work hard to gather points and miles and the knowledge to use them smart to create a cost effective trip.
So we started planning this Peru trip 2 years ago, how time flies. We wanted to go to South America to add another continent and to practice speaking Spanish. When we first started planning the trip, my thought was to fly into or out of Lima and then cross the continent and fly in or out of Argentina. Some of you may know about my personal goal to visit 50 countries by my 50th year so I needed to travel in several countries on this trip to keep marching forward.
However, one of the points to keep in mind when flying with miles is to be flexible. Sometimes it is more cost effective to change your dates or destinations to maximize points.
When I started to research travel in South America for a family of 5, I quickly figured out that unlike Europe where you can take a train or low cost carrier from one city to another, it is very expensive and you have to fly. So every leg of our trip would cost an estimated $600 for us to fly for example from Cuzco to Lima. Ouch!
At the same time, British Airways was running a promotion on their credit card for 100,000 Avios bonus for a minimum spend. Since British Airways is a partner with Lan Airlines and the legs are all short haul, they only cost 4500 Avios points each. For 5 tickets, that's 22,500. 100,000 Avios then gets us a minimum of 4 legs. We had collected almost 200,000 American miles by signing up for the Citi American and the US Airways cards before the two airlines merged. Plus we had Starwood points which transfer to American 1:1 with a 5000 bonus for every 20,000 if we needed more.
So the next step is to spend time on American Airlines website to identify award seats which were all listed for regular economy points of 22,500 each way. But I check at least once a day and BAM, I looked and a return flight from Lima on August 10th was listed for 12,500. I jumped on it and called the desk and booked it for 5 people.
Now I researched flights to Peru or Brazil or Argentina, but due to the Olympics, all the seats to Brazil and Argentina were sold out on economy points. So we decided that we would just focus this trip on Peru.
So I started looking at flying into Cuzco to maximize our points. American charges the same number of points to fly into Lima or Cuzco so by flying straight into Cuzco, we save buying a whole leg of the trip.
I finally find a flight on Wednesday July 26th for 5 people straight into Cuzco for 22,500 each. The American Airlines operator can't believe it and we book it.
Now we have secured 5 round trip tickets from LA-Cuzco and Lima-LA for 175,000. BAM!
Now it's time to secure domestic legs with our British Avios points. Obviously, we need Cuzco-Lima and then we decided to spend some time in the Amazon near Iquitos so we need to fly there too. American Airlines was able to book the flights on LAN using the Avios and they didn't charge a fee since you can't book this online. The flights were wide open so we could pick and choose. Easy and done for 67,500. Nice.

Now our itinerary looks like this:
July 26 LA-Cuzco
July 27-28 acclimate in Cuzco
July 29-30 Sacred Valley and Machu Picchu
July 31 Cuzco-Lima
August 1-2 Paracas/Huacachina
August 3-4 Lima
August 4 Lima to Iquitos
August 5-9 Amazon
August 9 Iquitos to Lima
August 10 Lima to LA

Next stop, hotels. We have Starwood, Marriott and Hilton points. Hyatt offers 2 nights free with their credit card, but we used those for Hawaii a few years ago. Now for a family of 5 options in South America are limited unless you book 2 rooms. Awardmapper is good search tool so you can see what's available. So we opted for the Hilton Doubletree Paracas which is all suites and can fit 5 although you can only book the room officially for 4 people. And the Wyndham Lima Airport which almost everyone stays at because it is connected to the airport and flights around Peru all start and end in Lima so you will most likely end up with some strange layover there.
The Wyndham credit card bonus was 45,000 points with a $1000 minimum spend. All rooms worldwide cost 15,000 points per night so we could get 2 nights FREE.
For the rest of our hotels, we used Airbnb in Lima (I had a credit for referring a friend to host), Booking.com (through a cash back site Ebates.com) and Travelocity.com (through a cashback site Ebates.com). Both websites offered great rates even though we had to book 2 rooms. But Casona Les Pleides in Cuzco offered breakfast and allowed us to store our luggage while we travelled to Machu Picchu. Nativa Apartments in Iquitos did not offer breakfast but had air conditioning which was key. And Aquas Calientes has very few good deals since you are basically trapped. But the Killa Inn did store some luggage for us and offer us breakfast.
In the next post, we will start our adventure and I'll share tips and videos about things you don't want to miss and how you can save even more money on your trip than we did.