Thomas and I have both been fortunate enough to travel quite a bit – both together and independently. When we got married last year, we knew we wanted to go somewhere different, where neither of us had gone, for our honeymoon. Machu Picchu had always intrigued me, so it wiggled its way to the top of our list.

Thomas and I got married in April of 2016 (it is actually our anniversary this weekend) but due to some amazing photography-related trips, we didn’t have the vacation time to go on our honeymoon for a long while. Seriously, we worked the day before our wedding and were back in our cubes the Monday after our wedding. Regardless of the dates, we knew that one day we would go to Peru and call it our honeymoon.

Six months later, one of our past couples shot me a text and asked us if we wanted to join them in Peru. They wanted to hike to Machu Picchu and figured that they may as well see if we wanted to join, considering you need to go with a tour group and they knew this trip was on our bucket list. We absolutely love our couples, and Joyce and Andrew are some of our favorites (gahh – they turned me into a board game nerd….). So, Joyce started planning (thank you Joyce!).

Thomas and I started our journey in Tampa. We flew to Miami and then headed down to Lima. (Umm – has anyone had to change terminals in the Miami airport?! That place is huge!!)

We met Joyce and Andrew in the Lima airport and waived in the customs line. We had one more leg of our trip, but couldn’t go through security until 3:30 am (I think it was around 11 pm at this point?). So, we caught up in the cafeteria and played hanabi while trying not to fall asleep.

When our flight finally took off, we were all just ready to be there. We flew into Cusco and our tour guide picked us up at 5:30 in the morning. They drove us to our hotel – Rumi Punku. The hotel staff made us tea and showed us to our rooms. Normally, I’m a “let’s explore as much of the city as possible” kind of girl, but after those flights and that altitude (over 11,000 feet), I just needed to rest. We eventually mustered up the energy to grab lunch at a local organic restaurant a few streets away. They fed us amazing, fresh food that was really delicious! That evening, we relaxed out on the terrace at our hotel as we all battled off our own versions of altitude sickness (eehhhhhh…I won’t go into details there).

One thing that struck me from that first day was all of the dogs roaming the streets. So many! Our tour guide said that they were pets, they weren’t just strays, but no one had enough room in their home to keep the dogs inside. The dogs would run in the street and get out of the way when they saw cars. I never saw one dog on a leash. It was so different!

The next morning we got a private tour of the Sacred Valley through our tour group, Alpaca Expeditions. Our guide took us to numerous historic sites and explained the symbolism and meaning behind the masonry and the placement of buildings. We saw where the Incas farmed and where they buried those that had passed. They even had all of these secret animals carved into the mountains – frogs and llamas. We saw examples of how they would tell when it was summer solstice and how they would tell time.

Exploring the market was probably my favorite. I love seeing that kind of culture with my own eyes – especially when it was a real market where the locals were shopping – not just a tourist trap. I was so nervous to take photos of the people running the stalls. My heart was pounding through my chest. It is hard to be super stealthy with a gigantic camera!

That evening, we watched women dying wool and weaving runners. They were all wearing beautiful clothes that they had made themselves.

We watched the sun set over the fields that looked like patchwork quilts.

That evening, we met up with the rest of the crew that was also hiking the Inca Trail. Not going to lie, that rundown of what was going to happen over the next four days was a little terrifying. “Bring x, y, and z and make sure you don’t pack more than 4 kg of stuff. And oh yea, I know it is 8pm right now, but we’re picking you up at 4 am from your hotel, so be ready. Oh, also, this is how long you’re going to hike every day and this is what the elevation will be. If you can’t make it past dead woman’s pass, it is best to turn around at that point, so bring extra cash in case you need to pay a porter to help you get back down to the city.” Oh. Okay. Great. *terrified look in my eyes*

Needless to say, we spent the next few hours packing and repacking and weighing our bags. And of course we were still over the weight limit the next morning.

For now, I’ll share the photos from the Sacred Valley and I’ll save the hiking adventure for the next post. 🙂