Machu Picchu train tix booked/ More baby alpacas! [YQrtw Day 102 Jul 20]

Location: Arequipa, Peru

This morning at about 6am, my neighbors were getting out of bed and the floorboards squeaked like crazy. I fell back to sleep much later and woke up for breakfast after 9am.

I tested out the 0% lactose evaporated milk I bought from the supermarket. I made lactose-less kopi C and it tasted well. I’ll write a full report for next Friday. Stay tuned!

After breakfast, I decided that I need to start planning my trip to Machu Picchu. I only have 2 weeks left in Peru and I don’t want to screw up my main reason here in South America.

I talked to the little travel table at the hostel. The guy quoted a US$270 package from Cusco to MP and back. He also said it’s quite easy to book the tickets myself.

So I started checking out the sites for trains to Machu Picchu’s nearby town–Aguas Calientes–and the tickets for the site.

I was a tiny bit disappointed to find out that the combination of Machu Picchu and Huayna Picchu were all sold out until September. (Don’t worry, there are still tickets to MP.)

Booking train tickets were a bit tough too. The original date that I plan to go did not have cheap return train tickets so I pushed everything to one day later.

For now, I have my return train tickets from Ollantaytambo to Aguas Calientes but not the entrance tickets to Machu Picchu because I needed to pay the entrance fee at a bank. I plan to buy the entrance tickets when I get to Aguas Calientes.

Baby Alpacas again!

After the tiring ticket buying, I set off to take the bus to the supermarket near where I used to stay with my homestay family. I walked all the way down Santa Catalina and realized that I was only 500 meters away from the cute baby alpacas.

My feet decided to carry me to Mundo Alpaca.

I was not sure how Milk (the white baby alpaca) escaped from the pen but it was calmly grazing and eating the tips of the flowers when I spotted it. I never got to pet it because it kept running away.

I saw baby Coffee (the brown baby alpaca) resting its neck on a bigger alpaca which I hope is its mom. They were so cute.

The baby alpaca snuggled against its mother and it was so adorable~~

At Mundo Alpaca, there’s also loads of sheared alpaca wool. I snuck away one pinch of it. Shhh!

After Mundo Alpaca, I walked back to the main street for the bus. Luckily, I found one which had an empty front seat.

The traffic on the main avenue was quite bad and the bus crawled until I reached my stop.

After having a ceviche at a restaurant recommended b one of the teachers, I headed to the supermarket where I couldn’t find cheap cotton pads. Can you imagine, one cotton pad here costs S$0.35. That’s quite expensive!

I was hungry for something else so I stopped by the supermarket cooked food area. I was horrified to find out that the lady reheated my chicken drumstick in the microwave on a Styrofoam plate.

After the meal, it was time to head back to the city center. It took a long time before I found a relatively empty bus (meaning it’s not crammed from the front to the back with human bodies) and I got on.

A quick summary of the rest of the day: quick walk to the market; watch Batman Return in Spanish; have dinner; head back and blog.

See you tomorrow!