There are many Inca ruin sites near Cusco and throughout the Sacred Valley. Here are the primary ones that I visited and the ones that I enjoyed the most. This region is home to the indigenous Quechua people who speak the Quechuan language – which in 1969 became Peru’s second official language. Quechuas are a collection of several ethnic groups in Peru, Bolivia, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador and Argentina. I had an excellent tour guide, Jose Luis Blanco C., that I hired through th

I dosed off shortly after the plane took off from the airport in Puerto Maldonado. It had been a fun-filled four days in the Amazon region’s rainforest and I was a little tired. It’s a short flight to Cusco so I know I didn’t sleep for long. As I awoke, I noticed the snow-capped Andean mountains through the window. What a stunning sight! I almost felt like I could reach out and touch them – probably because we were flying between the mountains and not above them. It was such

The sharp crack of thunder woke me from what seemed like a dead sleep. As I opened my eyes, streaks of lightning came one after another – each one followed by a loud boom that seemed to be off in the distance. I glanced at my watch. It was 2:46 am. The rain was torrential hitting the thatched roof above my head. It sounded as if the skies had opened up. The sounds were especially loud due to the open-air construction of the lodge. There were no outer walls. Each guest room wa