The Wandering Hart

Standing in an AirBnB in Cusco at 11k above sea level you can truly say you feel on top of the world – trust me, your lungs will remind you. But all the impact from altitude are worth it to visit Cusco, which is Peru’s 3rd largest city and is at the center of many of the amazing reasons people travel to Peru. In other words, Cusco is the perfect home base for all your Peru adventures.

We booked an affordable AirBnB in Cusco for 5 nights even though we knew we might spend a decent amount of that time traveling outside of the city. The affordability of the AirBnB options allowed us to leave the majority of our belongings behind while traveling to Skylodge Adventure Suites (our mountainside pod climbing adventure) and to Machu Picchu. This was critical because both options had limits on what you could bring – PeruRail tickets only include a backpack and SkyLodge would store our suitcases for us but obviously we wouldn’t be bringing our suitcases up a mountainside!

Trips from Cusco

While staying in Cusco, visitors can take a number of different daytrips or overnights to nearby sites. The most popular of course are Machu Picchu and the Sacred Valley. It’s very easy to travel for an overnight or daytrip to Machu Picchu from Cusco and you can read more about how to do this and my experiences here.

The Sacred Valley tours are most commonly done as daytrips and there are a million different options for what you can include and how you want to arrange this trip. Upon arrival at Cusco you’ll notice a lot of tour group vendors offering full day and half day trips to Ollantaytambo, Moray, Maras, Urubamba, and Pisac. You can easily book one full day tour to include all the highlights, but I decided personally that another full day of travel outside of Cusco after Machu Picchu and SkyLodge would be exhausting. Instead we decided to book a half-day to Moray and Maras only and take the opportunity to book it as an ATV tour! This ended up being a great way to see the countryside in the Sacred Valley while hitting 2 of the most popular sites.

Moray is an archeological site of agricultural terraces used by the Incans to research different crops and climates. The circular depressions at varying levels actually create microclimates in which different crops, even those not native to the region, could have been grown. There isn’t a ton to do once you get there other than walk around the terraces but it’s pretty cool to see. I’d recommend if you go either book a tour guide that you know will provide you with some good info or print off/download a guide ahead of time so you can get the most out of your walk around the morays.

Maras is a working salt mine with over 3,000 salt ponds on terraces below a viewpoint. The appearance of the salt mines as you round a corner in the mountains is striking and it only gets more impressive as you walk down to the viewpoint. Pro-tip: book a tour that plans to end at Maras in the evening to try to get a sunset view! The site also has some vendors that can sell you the local salt. Again, this is mostly just something to go and look at but if you have a good guide it can be fascinating to learn about the way the salt is harvested and why the different pools may look so different. Pro-tip: try to hit it in the evening (which is easier to do if you’re there in Peru’s winter) to see sunset hitting the pools!

Other things one can do from Cusco easily are SkyLodge Adventure Suites, which is a pod hotel hanging off the side of a mountain in the Sacred Valley (read more about that here), Rainbow Mountain, and Humantay Lake. Personally I’d recommend allotting only one of these daytrips per day even if they’re half-day tours to avoid burning yourself out.

Activities in Cusco

While I do recommend daytripping to some of these amazing sites, don’t miss out on seeing some of the cool things within Cusco itself! Cusco was once the capital of the Incan empire and there are plenty of ruins and great museums to prove it. Saqsaywaman, for example, is a former Incan complex sitting just outside the main city that you can drive up to and tour. My personal favorite, though, was Qorikancha.

Qorikancha was once the most important temple in the Incan empire and some of the original structure and artifacts are still there and visible! A wonderful museum complete with both English and Spanish informational plaques has been established there and you can walk through at your leisure to learn more about the history of the Incan empire and the Spanish invasion. The building itself was rebuilt as a convent after the Spanish took over the city so the museum is a fascinating mix of Spanish Catholic and Incan history. Definitely worth a stop.

While in Cusco you also have to stop in at San Pedro Market, both for great souvenirs and some amazing food. About half of San Pedro Market is goods for sale including touristy items and groceries and the other half is food stalls. We grabbed the majority of our souvenirs here as well as an excellent pollo broaster from one of the stalls.

Speaking of food, you also can’t miss the Plaza de Armas, which is surrounded by restaurants and a nice place to wander during the day. Not all of the restaurants around this main plaza will be excellent but at least one is a must-stop: Morena. Morena had a wait every night we stopped there and finally we decided to wait the 40 minutes they mentioned and it was extremely worth it. This was some of the best food we had our entire trip to Peru (pictured below is their chicha morada sour and cacao pod dessert – delicious). Make a reservation if you can!

Cusco also has a pretty lively nightlife scene if you’re into that and many other amazing restaurants and small museums. We passed a number of options to do cooking classes as well, which could be cool. It would be easy to spend a lot more time in Cusco between the activities in the city and the daytrips outside it!