Making My Way Through Peru’s Sacred Valley—and Bypassing Machu Picchu
5 min readWith every passing year, I’ve come to wonder if this type of Wonder of the World-driven travel still makes sense for me. And what, importantly, I’ve missed out on as a result. How radical might it be to flip that thinking—to spend a week untangling the stories in this area, to dig deep into the places most pass through on a day trip, without ever going to Machu Picchu?
“People hardly request this,” says Marisol Mosquera, the Peruvian founder of Aracari Travel, who coordinates trips through South America for her international clientele. Those who ask for a Machu Picchu-free itinerary are usually people who have already been, she says. Her colleague Cecile Fabre tells me that those who are so bold as to skip Machu Picchu on a first visit to the country usually only do so in exchange for banner ruins elsewhere in the country, like Kuelap in the north.
I belong to the former category. I visited Machu Picchu in 2014: I flew from Lima to Cusco, where I spent a few nights in the historic city center, then followed the Inca Jungle trek to the Incan citadel with a dozen other young backpackers. I placed my palm on the ancient structures in wonder; I took my photos in front of the iconic peak; and I promptly left the Valley and returned home. I’ve since become aware of just how much I missed in the process.
I didn’t even recognize Ollantaytambo when I arrived this time, even though the boutique hotel I was planning to spend three nights in—El Albergue Ollantaytambo—sits right on those Machu Picchu-bound tracks I once walked across (in a miracle of sound travel I’ll never understand, the train’s toots and rumbles don’t reach the 100-year-old inn’s guest rooms or patios).
But I knew one thing: This time around, I wouldn’t have to spend on pricey entrance tickets, or book anything beside my hotel stay in advance. I’d, hopefully, see a lot less people, and actually get to talk to those I did.
The choice is out of the ordinary for an El Albergue guest, as most of those passing through “usually stay no more than two nights,” according to Joaquin Randall, the hotel’s manager. He tries to convince them to stay longer; he feels strongly that slow travel is the future, and hopes that one day they might.
As my partner and I sit in the garden of El Albergue on our first day, eating a salad of herbs and veggies plucked from the on-site farm and a trout tiradito topped with mouth-puckering passionfruit, we can see this around us. Anywhere else, you could try to guess where fellow travelers were headed. Here, the only question is whether they are coming or going (to Machu Picchu). We have time on our hands: We order another round of cocktails mixed with the herbal elixir produced onsite (Matacuy).
Our only agenda for day one is to get our bearings and stay within walking distance of the hotel. Would we explore one or both of the ruins visible from the town center: Pinkuylluna, where the Incans once stored grains in stone structures clinging to a hillside above Ollantaytambo; or the town’s namesake site, where water still runs through ceremonial bathing fountains dating back to at least the 15th century?
When we eventually head out, set on seeing both, we’re delighted to discover that walking between these two attractions, through the town’s grid of cobblestone streets and adobe buildings, is yet another encounter with the past. The puzzle-piece stones that fit together so tightly a credit card couldn’t slide between them, a hallmark of Incan polygonal masonry, make up the walls of residents’ homes—some of the oldest continually occupied dwellings in South America. The din of TikTok videos spill out of a doorway topped with a single stone lintel that has to be 500 years old. The people who amble past us all seem to live here, or, in the case of those in lliclla capes fading past the town’s edge, higher in the hills. We get preoccupied with trying to walk every single street in the town’s grid, in awe at the reality of a modern-day town set within Incan constructions. For the first time in a long time, I not only forget to check the time on my phone—I notice the shift of shadows on the burnished stones. The gradual dip of the sun toward the horizon is the only reason I feel any semblance of urgency.
In a matter of hours we have become, beautifully, those people who say yes to the two-hour meal without wondering if we have time. On El Albergue’s farm, just behind the hotel, that looks like an earthen oven pachamanca beautifully prepared with foraged herbs, sweet potatoes, and tender meat. The ritual of assembling the oven—constructed, hot stone by hot stone, then later undone in the very same process—is punctuated by an offering to pachamama (Mother Earth). We sip chicha morada (a spiced purple corn drink), and we savor every bite. We speak to our fellow diners long enough to realize that one of them, whose family is from Peru, was born in the very same hospital I was in California.
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