At Cusco airport we were met by a representative of Tripmaster who simply recognized us by the confused looks on our faces. He escorted us to our driver, gave us our many tickets, and departed. The drive to the Sacred Valley was 2 hrs., we arrived at Hacienda del Valle Sagrado (Sacred Valley) at 11 PM. This day started with bird watching in a wetland outside Lima, and ended several hundred miles away in the Sacred Valley. The hotel was an immaculate, interesting hotel, with almost no guests. Here’s a picture of the inside, looking down toward the lobby from our room:
The next day, Thursday we had breakfast, walked around, swam in the pool and decided to take a taxi to Ollantaytambo, about a 15 minute drive, a quaint Inca pueblo with ruins on the hills above the town.
We went back to the hotel, that evening had supper, we were the only people in the restaurant, and went to bed early as our train to Agua Caliente, the embarkation point for Machu Picchu, was to leave at 6:15. We packed over night bags, tagged them to go to our hotel in Cusco on Saturday. A driver showed up as we were told one would, we got to the train station tickets and passports in hand about 5:45, boarded and set out for Agua Caliente. You can’t drive to Agua Caliente, it’s either train or a four day hike on the Inca trail. We chose the train. Our guide for the day was there to meet us as we got off the train, he walked us to our hotel, Taypikala, where we killed about an hour bird watching and resting in the lobby (our Macchu Picchu tickets were for 10AM). He came back and took us to the bus to Maccu Picchu, a 25 minute switchback drive up a steep mountain. We needed round trip tickets for the train, round trip tickets for the bus, and tickets to enter Macchu Picchu. Tripmaster provided all those and had someone to meet us at each critical spot, and a box breakfast for us on the train to Macchu Picchu. The bus left to go up the mountain around 9:30, we started our tour at 10:15. Here is a pic to give a flavor of Agua Caliente, no cars, but lots of people, hostels, stores and restaurants.
There is a hot spring not far upstream feeding into this. We didn’t have time to walk there. Macchu Picchu next post.
Roses 1.0 Van Life 
Love reading about your days in such a fascinating place! Pics are great! I think you are both very brave and trusting to follow complete strangers around in such a foreign land!
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