Never in my life would I have considered driving from the United States to Machu Picchu. When I first heard the word “overlanding” in 2018, I was shocked to discover people drove across continents for the sheer pleasure of it. But in our latest video, we drove to the doorstep of one of the modern wonders of the world: the Incan ruins at Machu Picchu in Peru.
We are so excited to share this adventure with you. With our seven-year-old son, Caspian, we woke up early in the town of Ollantaytambo and walked to the train station. We rode a PeruRail train for an hour-and-a-half, arriving in the tourist town of Aguas Calientes (sometimes called Machu Picchu Pueblo). After breakfast at a local restaurant, we took a bus up the steep cliffside to the Machu Picchu ruins.
Watch now:
Our guide was waiting for us at the entrance. He led us through the ruins for almost three hours, and we even took a side hike to the mind-blowing Inca Bridge, which was somehow constructed along the side of a sheer cliff face.
We think you’ll enjoy this video, which shows the logistics of our visit, includes fascinating facts about Incan civilization, and features the moment-to-moment missteps and jokes that are always part of our drive around the world as a family.
In case you missed our video about Cusco, we used a tour agency to book our visit to Machu Picchu. They scheduled our train, bus, entrance to Machu Picchu, and guide on-site. It would be about the same cost for me to schedule the pieces myself, but it’s logistically tricky to get all the times to sync up. So I’m thankful an expert took care of that for us. We paid $628 USD for three people (two adults and one child). If you have any questions, then feel free to leave a comment.
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After visiting the floating islands of Uros, we left Puno with our Peru temporary import permit and visa about to expire. That was the beginning of about 10 days of intense travel.
We crossed into Chile smoothly, but then our travel plans got turned upside down. Two days before we needed to use it, our border crossing into Argentina was shut down! Plan B was a 2,000-kilometer detour south through Chile. We crossed into Argentina this past Wednesday, using the border crossing east of Santiago.
Whew. It really was intense, but there were wonderful moments along the way. We look forward to sharing more in our upcoming videos.
Thanks for sharing this journey with us.
-B
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