You have many weeks worth of sites in NORTHERN PERU to visit. There is more to Peru than the southern Andes that you won’t regret visiting.

I suggest… Lima –> Trujillo –>Chiclayo –> Cajamarca –> Chachapoyas –> Moyabamba –> Tarapoto.

If you’re interested in ruins, you’ll see some of the world’s most impressive, and the best museums in Peru.

To drive the point home, because some people are completely unaware, I tell them that Cusco, Machu Picchu and the Sacred Valley are over-rated tourist traps.

It’s not that they’re not worth visiting, it’s just that Peru (a large country that extends beyond the urban limits of Cuzco) has roughly a dozen or so alternate locations that are equally impressive. There are Andean communities living among ice-capped mountains and glacial lakes. There are ruins of lost cities in the jungles, in the deserts and on forested peaks. There are valleys filled with pyramids, there are jungles full of wildlife and mountains that hold lakes the size of seas, so large they have islands.

You could visit any of these places and slash your budget in half or more, stay twice as long. And the country is so easy to get around that paying for a tour is just giving your money away.

As for Cuzco in February… it wouldn’t be unsafe as nothing could possibly happen to you. It might be ill-advised because of the financial cost of paying for something that nature doesn’t let you have plus the annoyance at getting stuck at a landslide, and it certainly wouldn’t be selfish as the region could use all the tourist money it can get right now.

But generally, you’d have to be very ill-informed to visit Peru just to see Cuzco, and you’d have to be nuts to decide not to come to Peru at all!

our train got canceled, and we got offered a ride to santa teresa, where you can walk to aguas calientes – in good weather – in about 2.5 hours. we didnt know what was going on because, surprise surprise, peru rail had no one there to explain the situation – just that the trains were suspended according to a note taped to the train station gates. we asked the guards… they said that there was a problem at km 78. i figured it was a rock slide on the railroad, just like when i was there with my parents and that the trains would resume the next day, so we decided to try this hike from santa teresa. BAD DECISION. i saw a mudslide actual happen from the other side of the river, and half a house fall. that’s all ill say about that…

ppl were leaving aguas calientes on foot to get to santa teresa and try to find transport back to ollanta or cuzco. was this safe? no. i can tell you that from first hand experience… i did that hike there and back, and i can’t believe that nothing happened to me or the ppl i was with. there were vans full of ppl going to santa teresa when we were leaving yesterday. i cant believe no one was warning ppl or trying to prevent ppl from going there and attempting the hike to mp. by now, i would imagine, most ppl shouldve heard about the situation, though, so hopefully no more are going.

but really, my guess as to why they are trying to get the tourists out first, if that is the case, is because the tourists aren’t used to this and don’t know what to do or not do in these sorts of problems. ppl who live in aguas calientes deal with flooding and mudslides on a fairly regular basis. am i saying that makes it fair? no… but im saying that is a way of thinking that makes sense to many people.