Day 9 in Peru was a pack up and move to Cusco day. However, the only trains on the schedule to take us to Cusco didn’t leave until mid afternoon. Therefore we had quite a bit of time to kill.
We spent the morning packing, cleaning our apartment, and running last minute errands, and then decided as a family to go out and do some service and “brighten” the streets of Aquas Calientes. We had brought a bunch of balloons, starbursts, jolly ranchers, colored pencils, and pens over from America with us and had HOPED to donate them to a school, but unfortunately all schools in Peru are closed right now and online.
So instead we decided to flood the streets with balloons and give away our gifts to kids in Aquas Calientes. This ended up being one of the highlights of the trip for me!
I wish we would have thought to take pictures of all the beautiful children we were able to interact with, but I unfortunately only managed to get a few pics. But we all loved bringing joy to the darling children of Aguas Calientes. It was so fun to look down a street and see if brimming with bright colored balloons and smiling children! It made my heart happy! ❤️
After that we still had quite a large chunk of time before our train was set to leave so I suggested we do one last short hike I’d heard about up to a waterfall called Alcamayo Cascades. The kids weren’t super excited about hiking AGAIN, and complained a little as we headed up, but then they discovered that the hike had darling little miniature rock cities sculpted along the way, as well as a giant chess board with hand made pieces. The trail was owned by a local family, who were very skilled in rockwork and had made the trail really cute. They too had two darling little boys so we were once again able to share our balloons and gifts with them as well. Their parents were so touched.
After our fun hike we returned home to grab our luggage and then headed out to the train station where we once again got to travel through the most beautiful canyon for 1.5 hours and be in awe of God’s beautiful creations. The train took us back to Ollantaytambo where our tour company had arranged a car to pick us up to retrieve our luggage from our hotel and then drive us 2 hours to Cusco, the next stop on our trip.
From there we checked into our Airbnb – a 3 bedroom apartment with a washer and dryer – and then headed out to grab some dinner. We were all starving! We settled on eating Chifa (Peruvian Chinese food) again since it was close, cheap, and fast, but once again ran into an issue when the restaurant said they didn’t take visa even though they had a huge sign on their window showing they did. Joj! But thankfully in the end the restaurant actually did have a machine and pulled it out and let us pay! But why all the hassle in the first place? So silly! But we learned a valuable lesson to always ask BEFORE sitting down to eat at a restaurant if they really did take Visa! 😂
Adam and I then went and put kids to bed and then immediately left to walk the 2 blocks to a grocery store to stock up on food for the weekend. We ended up emptying out two of our big backpacks and took those with us so we could transport our groceries home. Worked like a charm. But another amazingly beautiful day in Peru! ❤
