723. Peru Trip | Playing with Monkeys at Monkey Island!

Monkey Island, aka La Isla de los Monos, is a new world monkeys sanctuary a few hours' boat journey from Iquitos. They rescue, rehabilitate and release monkeys that were victims of the pet trade. The monkeys live freely on the island and are super friendly with visitors, climbing on people and playing around. They are all babies. Once they get old enough, they must be released back into the wild (otherwise their natural instincts take over and they could start becoming aggressive and territorial). We were so excited for this part of the trip. I've never interacted with monkeys before. It was a really fun afternoon and I highly recommend it if you are ever in Iquitos.

Getting to the Island was quite an unconventional journey though. There are no boats that take you directly there and the Island itself doesn't arrange your transportation. There are also no scheduled boat departures..and also, the port of Iquitos is not very tourist-friendly (there's no signs or anything, and people don't speak English). You kind of have to figure everything out on your own. Everyone there were locals and walking down to the port on wooden planks was quite scary for me lol. Luckily we had a guide in Iquitos who took us to the boat. The rest of the journey we had to figure out ourselves. Fortunately my boyfriend speaks/is Spanish so that helped a lot. I would not have survived there on my own.

Here are the scenes from Iquitos port. I really loved it (even though I hated walking on the planks) - it felt like a really authentic experience and we were the only foreigners around.







Then we went in a boat headed to "Varadero" port. One of these boats:


This was Varadero port. We got out and was kind of confused what to do next.


Oh & this was what we had to walk on lol. I was sooooo nervous.

We waited at Varadero port for quite a long time. We saw a lot of locals arriving and departing again on those boats, carrying all sorts of things with them. We were told that a boat from Monkey Island would come by to pick us up and bring us there. At first we didn't know that we were supposed to call the Island to ask for a pick up. Luckily another visitor knew and called them for us.


Finally it came and we were off!


We arrived!






I really loved this Howler monkey. When we visited the Amazon, we heard their "howls" at times. I think it's the coolest sound in the Amazon but also very frightening.


This was my favourite one!


Most of them were these - Woolly monkeys


This Scarlet Macaw kept attacking my boyfriend's shoes. I think he sees other colourful things as competition and wants to fight them lol.


Heading back..we had to do the same route. Take a boat from the Island to Varadero, then from there head back to Iquitos.



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722. Peru Trip | Exploring Sacred Valley

On our last full day in Cusco, we joined a tour to explore the main parts of Sacred Valley: Pisac, Ollantaytambo, Maras and Moray. The valley stretches from Cusco to Machu Picchu, with many Inca ruins dotted along the way. The towns have a very authentic feel. Locals speak Quechua (language of the Incas), farm (on terraced land), raise alpacas and weave colourful textiles as their ancestors had done. Thanks to the Urubamba River, the Valley's land is fertile and perfect for agriculture. Here you can find a lot of unique types of potatoes, vegetables and fruits that are only found at high altitude places.

The winding roads through the Peruvian Andes was very beautiful and scenic but I didn't get to enjoy it in the first part of the trip. The day before our Sacred Valley tour, we went horseback riding where I fell off my horse. It was super painful and I wasn't able to sit comfortably until maybe a week after the incident. The night of the accident, I took some pills to reduce swelling. I think I may have overdosed on medication since I also took altitude pills and malaria pills the same day. The next morning (the morning of the Sacred Valley tour) I felt incredibly nauseous. Our departure time was something like 7am so I was also super tired.

The thought of just cancelling the tour and resting for the day crossed my mind a few times but I didn't want to lose the last chance of visiting these places, and we had already paid for it. In the end I'm very glad we ended up going. I felt better eventually but the first few hours I was super sick. The windy roads and super bumpy drive was so painful for my injured butt and my nausea. I did throw up a few times in the car lol.


Our first stop was Pisac. A lot of tourists come for the weekend market. I didn't take any photos here unfortunately since I was still feeling really sick, but there wasn't much to see besides the market.



Next we visited Ollantaytambo which I really enjoyed and would have preferred to spend more time exploring. They are known for their archaeological site built on two mountains overlooking the village. At that point I was still feeling pretty weak and had to climb all the way up these steps..I just barely made it.




At some point we stopped for a buffet lunch and also visited this home where a woman made us "chicha". Chicha is a type of drink that could be fermented or non-fermented, made from variations of corn, grains and fruits. It was delicious.








Guinea pigs there are food, not pets!

Moray was pretty cool. It is a series of circular terraces believed to be used as an agricultural laboratory. Each level of the terraces have a different temperature and microclimate which could suggest that the Incans used it to experiment with different crops. It also had a unique location that prevented floods from happening there.

Finally, the Maras Salt Mines which have been in use since Inca times. The thousands of salt ponds now belong to hundreds of families living nearby. The salt mines were traditionally available to anyone wishing to harvest salt. The owners must be members of the community and the size of the pond assigned would be dependent on the size of the family.




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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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