Ollantaytambo.com exists because most of what is written about this town treats it as a car park for Machu Picchu. It deserves better. It is the finest surviving example of Inca town planning anywhere, the site of one of the few Inca victories over the Spanish, and a place where people still draw water from 15th-century channels.
We cover the practical side properly: which ticket you actually need, how the train and entry-slot sequence fits together, where to sleep for a 05:00 departure, and how altitude will feel on your first day. And we cover the town itself — the free hike almost nobody does, the cave shrine with no ticket office, the weaving villages up the valley.
The guide is published in ten languages so that travellers from Madrid, São Paulo, Amsterdam, Cairo and Taipei get the same detail as English speakers, not a machine-shortened version of it.
How we work
We check things
Prices, opening hours, ticket rules and journey times are verified against operators and official sources, and revisited rather than left to rot.
We say when something is not worth it
A guide that recommends everything recommends nothing. If a tour is overpriced or a stop is a shopping trap, we say so.
We are independent
No tour operator, hotel or agency pays for placement here, and none of them sees an article before it is published.
We are transparent about money
We earn commission when you book through our links. It costs you nothing and it does not shape what we recommend.
Get in touch
Spotted something out of date, or run a business in the valley you think we should know about? We read everything.
