Cusco was a way point for us. A stop before we head to Aguas Calientes. We didn’t think about how tired we’d be arriving at 4:30am on the overnight bus. I checked hotels.com and found a place that for $10 would let us sleep for a few hours and shower. Tocapu Boutique Hotel was so great, we cancelled our reservation for after Machu Picchu that was a lot more expensive, and booked our two nights here. The manager was extremely helpful, and let us leave our luggage while we took our backpacks to Machu Picchu.
We walked down to San Francisco Plaza where we easily found a shared van ride to Ollantaytambo for 10 soles each. The trip took about 1.5 hours.

We got back to Cusco mid afternoon a couple days later after exploring Machu Picchu. We went to the same San Francisco Plaza and booked our trek to Rainbow Mountain with a tour company there. Discover Peru Travel is the name on the ticket. We really enjoyed eating at La Casa Del Kebab and the next night at McDonald’s in the Plaza Mayor de Cusco where we enjoyed a Signature burger, think spicy Big Mac. We always like to try the local item at foreign McDonald’s locations.