We stayed in the San Blas area which is up the hill from the main plaza and has great views of the city below, this meant that it was a bit of a trek at the end of the night, but hey we needed the exercise! We spent 5 days in total in Cuzco, as we had 2 days in the Sacred Valley/Aguas Caliente on the 'Tom & Claire trek' to Machu Piccu - unbelievably you now have to book 6 months in advance if you want to go on the Inca Trail - absolute madness!
Cusco is undeniably a tourist mecca, if you shut your eyes you could think that you were in Thailand with the number of people trying to sell you a massage! And unfortunately, with stacks of tourists descending on this city to get their flicks of the 'famous ruins', comes inflation.
This city is not cheap, well not to us on our backpacking budget! With this realisation in mind, we needed to get in and out asap in order to stay in budget. Unfortunately, this was not an easy feat as the Ministerio de Cultura recently reduced the number of tickets to Machu Picchu. These ruins are literally starting to crumble and there is a concern that in years to come with the hordes of tourists trampling in the area, they could disappear. We therefore had 4 days in Cusco until we could head off, so we checked out the city and became quite addicted to an Australian run cafe for awesome avocado sarnies and the best coffee we've had over the past 6 months!
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