Beautiful Peru

We landed in Lima, Peru in one day in May 2010 and right away we flew to Cusco. But we did not stop in town, and had a bus to Ollantaytambo,  a touristic village, where we stayed 3 days at Pakarytampu hotel. 

We employed for two days a tourist agency run by a local guy; he had a one room office in the central plaza of the village. First day we had a rafting down Urubamba river, that flows all the way from Titicaca lake to Amazon river. We shared the boat with another couple. It was a challenging ride with one, two, even class three rapids.

When I was a kid I did a lot of horseback riding in my grandmother village, but my wife never tried it. But thumb up for her, it was no problem when we had a full day of horseback riding with our Peruvian guide. 

The final destination was a fall at 3800 meters (12,460 ft) altitude. The last segment we had to do it on foot, we left the horses behind in a meadow, tied by a tree. The trail was adventurous; not more that 3 meters (10 ft) wide, it had the mountain on one side, steep like a wall, and an abyss on the other. At one point the trail narrowed to at about 0.5 m (2 ft) because the rain washed it. We crossed that distance tied with ropes, but we made it, twice. 

​From Ollantaytambo we took the train to Machu Picchu city. The train stops in different spots where from the tourists could have a 5, 4, 3,2 or 1-day trip to the mysterious Machu Picchu. We had the one-day trip. 

​Machu Picchu is one of the wonders of the word. From Wikipedia: “Most archaeologists believe that Machu Picchu was constructed as an estate for the Inca emperor Pachacuti (1438–1472).”

Next stop for us was Puno, the city on the shores of Lake Titicaca. The lake is the "highest navigable lake" in the world, with a surface elevation of 3,812 meters (12,507 ft). It is 190 km long with a total surface of 8372 square km. It has 41 islands and 120 self-fashioned floating islands where Uru indigenous people live. 
​

We had a one-day trip on the lake with a boat with a capacity of 40 passengers. Some Uru families accept visitors, and we were happy to learn their traditions. A 15 years old girl offered to drive us on her little boat ($20 cost) to the next island. She took her 4 years old sister on the boat, and the little cutie sang all the way between the two islands.  

​Since the lake itself is at an altitude higher then 3800 meters, some islands had hills with peaks at over 4000 meters. The politics, as always, is tricky, both Peru and Bolivia claim they own 60% of the lake.