The last leg of our journey – hard to believe!  It was sometimes hard to focus on the present, with the end of the trip looming and the home-to-do-list coming to the front of our minds, but we really enjoyed the time we spent in Peru, and this last leg was full of great experiences. Making it especially fun was having the Davies family with us, so there was never a dull moment. 

Cusco

We arrived in Cusco via a van ride through the Sacred Valley after our big day at Machu Picchu.  We had a quick stop in Pisac along the way, a small town well known for its markets.  Despite the markets having changed as of late from authentic to touristy, we enjoyed browsing the stalls full of knick knacks and yes, we did buy another baby alpaca wool stuffy.

In Cusco we stayed in a spacious airBnb which worked really well for our two families – lots of room for the kids to play their card games, and ample relaxing space for the adults.  We also indulged in some Olympics watching as we felt like we had missed out on some of the excitement surrounding the games. 

We spent only two days in Cusco and spent much of that time wandering the city streets.  It’s the oldest continuously occupied city in the Americas and has an interesting evolution of architecture which started as Inca structures but turned into colonial buildings. In fact, many of the monumental buildings were built from the stones taken from the ceremonial Inca sites surrounding the cities and you can easily see the evidence of that.  

Cusco sits at 3400m (11,152 ft) in altitude and we were grateful that none of us had any altitude sickness, but we could all really feel the thin air with any exertion.  Our favourite excursion in Cusco was to the Saqsaywaman Incan ceremonial site which sat above the city at 3625m.  We hired an incredible guide who explained all of the marvels of the site including the earthquake proof construction and building rocks cut meticulously without any obvious use of tools.  Amazingly there was even a soccer field right by this site so we played our highest game of soccer on the trip.

The Amazon near Puerto Maldonado

From Cusco we flew to Puerto Maldonado which sits right near the borders of Brazil and Bolivia and is the main gateway to the Peruvian Amazon.  Early in our trip planning, the kids had requested a trip to the Amazon given its current fragile state with all of the deforestation happening, and we were happy to oblige as Steve and I had not seen it either.  We stayed at EcoAmazonia, an eco lodge about 30 km up the Madre de los Dios river by boat.  It was a lovely set up on almost 5000 hectares of rainforest that they were required to protect and maintain as part of their lease (there are a handful of similar lodges in the area with the same set up).  It was incredibly serene and remote with very little evidence of civilization nearby, but comfortably set up for us with cabins, a central dining room that served us three meals a day and even a swimming pool.  Highly recommend!

We spent our 4 days there on guided walks through the jungle or boat rides on the river’s small tributaries.  It’s the middle of their dry and cold season, so while temperatures were very warm during the days, the nights were surprisingly cold.  Except for in the heat of the day, the rainforest hummed with the sounds of birds and monkeys.  The monkeys were definitely a highlight as we got to see different packs all over the place – howler monkeys, spider monkeys, squirrel monkeys and capuchin monkeys.  The lodge had an island where they kept monkeys recovered from traffickers so the monkeys were only semi-wild and fed regularly by the lodge.  This meant they were used to humans and happy to grab bananas out of our hands and eat while sitting on our shoulders.  The birds were quite varied too and the swampy rivers were filled with caimans (alligator-like reptiles which grow up to 3m long). 

We completely unplugged while at the lodge given the lack of wifi and phone reception, which was a needed break at the end of our trip.  It was a really beautiful spot and we feel lucky to have had a chance to experience the Amazon.  Apparently so much of the Peruvian Amazon has been logged, and lots of it illegally, so we are hopeful that places like this will help protect the future of the rainforest. We have sooo many photos of the Amazon. Hopefully the set of photos below help capture its beauty.

Final Days

We spent 2 nights back in Lima before our final flight back to Canada.  We re-visited a few of our favourite Lima places with the Davies while we mentally prepared to go home.  I have lots of parting thoughts, but I’m going to put them in a blog post which will be published soon, because there’s so much to say. Stay tuned!