It’s been nearly three years since my trip to Peru.  Last week a friend reached out to solicit advice on behalf of his brother who’s preparing a similar trip.  I boasted that they were in luck, as I knew a truly excellent guide. I found Miguel Jove when I was in Cusco.  I was intent on […]

It’s hard to walk 40 miles in 4 days, visit a remote set of Inca ruins, and then come back and bang out a quick, snappy blog post.  So tonight it’s the Cliff’s Notes version.  My trek to Choquequirao was successful.  Me and my merry band of mules made it there and back, and what a […]

I’d heard this can happen.  You spend day after day looking at one staggering set of Inca ruins after another.  Eventually they’re not so staggering.  Such was the case for me today, sort of.  I visited the Pisac ruins, about 30km north of Cusco.  But rather than dwell on the physical structures, I found myself focusing […]

It’s funny, sitting in my living room in Portland reading about Inca history I read the name Ollantaytambo 50 times.  And even though I know how the double-L is pronounced in Spanish, in my head I kept pronouncing the L’s in the English way.  Now that I’m here, no chance.  I have an hourly reminder.  Ollantaytambo […]

Today was unbelievable.  Not because I visted Machu Picchu, but because I got more done before noon than I have in a long, long time.  But the site was pretty impressive in its own right.  I got out of bed at 4am so I’d be on the mountain in time to see the sun’s first […]

It really should be a holiday for a lot of the tourists here.   I’m in Aguas Calientes tonight, a pure tourist-trap-of-town cultivated for no other reason than the fact that tourists needed a launching pad to Machu Picchu.  There was no other town in the vicinity when the Peruvian government decided to start pimping out […]