Ollantaytambo is a wee village that sits an hour and a half from Cusco and is one of the main connecting villages to Aguas Calientes where you access Machu Picchu from. We had heard that Aguas Calientes although closer to MP wasn't as nice so we opted to sleep in the less touristy town of Ollantaytambo. After grabbing a connectivo (shared taxi) from Cusco we were soon in the mountains and in the sleepy village for a bargain price of around 10 soles.
Ollantaytambo is one of those hidden gems that people ignore in their rush to get out of their taxi and on to the train up to Aguas Calientes. It sits surrounded by some of the first Inca settlements in Peru, meaning you can easily trek some amazing Inca and pre-Inca ruins for free. If that isn't enough for you, the surrounding mountain landscape also offers a long list of outdoor activities such as downhill biking and white water rafting (we heard the water was full of jobbies now though).
We stayed here for 2 nights and managed to squeeze in two free treks, one to some ruins an hour or so uphill behind our hostel and another around some amazing ruins at the end of the village. The latter shouldn't have actually been free but we snuck in the backdoor and did the trek in reverse. Confused a lot of people but we enjoyed it.
Our hostel was more like a hotel so we couldn't cook our own meals which was a bit of a stinger on the old wallet but we found this amazing little cafe called HEARTS in the village square. This cafe was started by a british woman who came across a few years ago to establish aid for abused woman and children in the village. The cafe does amazing food at reasonable prices and all profits go towards supplies for the woman and children of Ollantaytambo. This made eating out feel a little bit better.
Ollantaytambo is a rad wee village. If you ever get the chance to visit Peru this has to be on your lists of places to see. We could have spent weeks there but we had to get our butts in gear for Machu Picchu which was next on our list of Peru To Do's.
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