721. Peru Trip | Visiting Machu Picchu!

Machu Picchu is without a doubt the most iconic image of Peru and the Inca civilization. Nestled high up in the Andes mountains, it was constructed in 1450 and abandoned just under a century later due to Spanish conquest. It is now one of the 7 Wonders of the World. It was one of the (many) highlights of our trip. With Cusco as a base, we travelled there and back in the span of a day.

To get to Machu Picchu from Cusco, you have to take a train lasting roughly 4 hours to Aguas Calientes. From there the only way to get up to the ruins, other than walking, is a crowded bus of roughly 45 minutes. I LOVED the train journey over. It was just as enjoyable (maybe more) than the actual destination. I loved passing by all the local villages and observing daily life in the Peruvian countrysides. The four hours just flew by. The second part of the train ride was a lot of beautiful scenery. Here we were starting out, with a view over Cusco:



Passing by little towns


We booked a Vistadome train which we thought would be nice with the glass ceilings. But it actually made parts of the ride annoyingly hot with the sun shining through. & it didn't make a huge difference in terms of the view anyway as the windows are large. The train ride overall was very nice and comfortable though.




Arriving in Aguas Calientes! So we ran into a bit of a stressful situation here. Machu Picchu is an extremely popular attraction and requires advance timed tickets to be booked. We booked our tickets for a 12pm entrance I believe.

We hadn't thought to purchase the bus tickets as well, as we were under the impression that the train brought us straight to the ruins..or at least close enough to walk there. After getting off the train, we had lunch then started heading over when it was nearly 12pm/our entrance time. Then we saw a HUUUUUUGE line to get on a bus to go to the ruins. The longest line I've ever seen in my life. It also hit us that we needed to purchase bus tickets which there was also a long line for. I think we waited half an hour in the line to purchase the bus tickets. The line to get on a bus, if we were to wait, looked like it would be at least 3 hours. Walking up would have been the last resort but it is a strenuous mountain hike that would last a couple hours. Taxis and other cars are forbidden to drive up there so the only option is the bus.

We got super lucky in the end. We spoke with the bus company explaining our situation and showing that we were already past our entrance time to enter Machu Picchu. So they let us skip the entire line and go on the next bus! We were sooo relieved. We otherwise wouldn't have made it and probably would've had to spend the night at Aguas Caliente..since we only had a few hours' window before we had to take the train back to Cusco.

Anyway the whole transportation system to get to Machu Picchu from Aguas Calientes is quite a mess and you really have to be fully prepared and allocate hours of waiting around. We took the 7am departure train from Cusco which we thought was early enough. I would highly recommend going at an off-peak time but I'm not sure when that would be. I wish I took a photo of the long never-ending line, but I was so stressed out at that point I didn't even think of it lol.




The weather was so perfect that day. Apparently it rains a lot there. I'm glad it didn't for us..of course it's best to come here when it's nice and sunny but I think the rain would have made the bus situation 100x worse lol.








I'm not sure what was going on here lol.






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710. Toronto | CNE 2019

Taking a quick break from the Peru posts! Visiting the CNE is a yearly tradition for me. I've been going at least once every year for as far back as I can remember. I didn't get a chance to last year since I was in Europe during those weeks (I was a bit sad to have missed it!) but this year it started once we got back from our trip. I love going in the evening and taking photos of everything with all the lights. I went on opening night with my boyfriend, then again a couple days after with my mom and sister.

CNE is on until next weekend (September 2), ending with the annual Air Show. I will try to go again next weekend as well to see it.

If you are interested in visiting this week, the hours can be found here: CNE Hours. A general admission ticket is $19.99.



This is my favourite ride! It's probably the only ride I actually enjoy. My sister and I used to go on all the time.






Lantern installations: Legends of the Silk Road come to Light








In case I didn't post enough alpacas from Peru..




These "Fiesta Fries" were soooo good.


I get an ice cream waffle on almost every visit.





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705. Peru Trip | More from Cusco + Horseback Riding Incident

Saqsaywaman is an archaeological complex of Inca ruins, a short walk away from the city. We arrived there pretty late in the day so we didn't have time to explore the ruins but we walked up to Cristo Blanco, which is located in the park.

There we encountered this very nice woman with her alpacas. She was just standing there allowing people to take photos with her and hold her baby alpaca. It was really nice because all the other ones you see in the city ask for money (the previous one I took photos with demanded S/30) but she didn't ask for anything. We did give her some cash though for her generosity. Her alpacas were also very calm and well-behaved.


To reach Saqsaywaman, we climbed up this hill with endless stairs. We were both so exhausted by the time we reached the top.




Drone photo overlooking the city and Plaza de Armas



Cristo Blanco statue











Something I noticed about Cusco (well it is a bit hard to not notice) is that there are a LOT of street dogs. There are actually more dogs than humans in the city. Most of them look like they have owners though and are healthy, with a collar, etc. There are still some strays though. They just wander the city sometimes alone and sometimes there's packs of them. They seem happy to just be free to wander around and do as they please during the day.

We had set aside a day to visit Rainbow Mountain but when we decided to cancel it, we booked a horseback riding tour instead. The scenery was quite nice but it ended up being a bad idea since I got thrown off my horse in the end. :(

We rode around the countrysides, up and down hills then got off our horses to hike to a place called Devil's Balcony. After that we started riding back to another place called Temple of the Moon. There was some flat land so my horse suddenly started running quite fast. I pulled back the reins in an attempt to get him to stop. I don't remember clearly what happened next but after that I just found myself on the ground. It was quite painful. I got all bruised and scratched up a bit. I am grateful for those injuries though because I know it could have been a lot worse (like if he stepped on me after I fell, or if I fell off the side of a cliff instead).


At Devil's Balcony. To be honest the view wasn't really impressive so I didn't take a photo of it.



The day after the horseback riding incident, we had a tour to visit Sacred Valley. It was something like a 6:30am departure and I woke up feeling extremely nauseous. I think it was due to the mixture of pills I had taken the night before (altitude pills, malaria pills since we were going to the Amazon the next day, then one more type of unknown pill which was supposed to help with my bruising) on top of having to wake up so early.

The ride to the Sacred Valley was the worst, due to my nausea. I threw up several times along the way, and due to my fall it was super painful to sit. Especially sitting in the van, through the super bumpy streets the entire way and all the twists and turns lol.

During the ride I was just thinking I wish we hadn't gone instead. But I ended up getting better throughout the day..and I'm really glad we didn't decide to cancel the tour! The photo above is from a town called Ollantaytambo. We walked up so many stairs to get to the top (which was also super painful for me because of the injury) but it was worth it in the end.

I will post all about the Sacred Valley tour in a future post!

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