Going Places Near and Far

This is the day that many of us have had on a bucket list, and for some of us, represents the fulfillment of a “trip of a lifetime”: Machu Picchu. We are awakened at 3 am when the Alpaca Expeditions staff bring hot coffee to our tents. We have everything ready for leaving the Wiñaywayna campsite by 3:15 am (I […]

On our third morning on the Inca Trail, we are wakened at 5 am to be packed up, have breakfast at 5:30 am and out by 6 am to begin what is generally considered the most relaxed day of the four-day trek, when our Alpaca Expeditions group will hike 6.2 miles mostly downhill, and visit two Incan sites, Phuyupatamarka (Town […]

This is the day I have been dreading for weeks. This is the day of reckoning. Dead Woman’s Pass. Everyone – and not just my about-to turn-71-year-old self, some 25 to 40 years older than the other 14 in our pack – seems to have the same anxiety over Day 2. It is the longest, most challenging day of the […]

For me, the first day of the four-day, 26-mile Inca Trail trek to Machu Picchu is a test. It is the second hardest (Day 2 is the day I have been dreading), when we will hike 8.7 miles, climbing 1,866 feet to an altitude of 10,829 feet where our campsite will be. My strategy is that if I find it […]

The day after we cross over Dead Woman’s Pass at 13,829 feet above sea level on the Inca Trail and the day before reaching Machu Picchu – the destination of this Alpaca Expeditions four-day/three-night trek –  I celebrate my 71st birthday. I say this because I am not a habitual hiker or climber, am reasonably but not especially fit and […]

The Incan ruins at Pisac in Peru’s Sacred Valley are our first introduction on this one-day Alpaca Expeditions tour to the massive scale of Incan building projects. Though there were settlements here before who built terraces (there were two other major empires before the Inca), it was the Inca emperor Pachacuti who conquered the area n the mid 1400s who […]

Just a few weeks after returning from our monumental adventure in Peru, completing the four-day/three-night Inca Trail hiking/camping trek to Machu Picchu, political unrest broke out when the president was impeached for corruption and replaced by the vice president. At the outset, some tourists were stranded at Machu Picchu because of protests that blocked transportation routes. The unrest has for […]

Travel, tourism, hospitality companies have embraced sustainability and the principles of responsible travel as a mission for their own sustainability. In so doing, they provide models for travelers to take back to their own communities and daily lives. From menu choices at restaurants, to low flow toilets and LED lighting in hotel rooms, to renewable energy to power new-generation cruise […]

There are many apps and websites to help you get to a destination (skyscanner, kayak, expedia, momondo, googleflights, flighthub, travelocity, cheapflights, flightfinder, hotwire, cheapoair) and apps and websites that help you find a place to stay (hotels.com, booking.com, trivago, agoda, airbnb, vrbo, glampinghub), but which can help you plan what to do when you get there?  GoCity Go City sells […]

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