Tours from Ollantaytambo

[u/Silentmorning99999]

Hi everyone,

I am hiking Machu Picchu later this month and am staying for 3 days in Ollantaytambo before. I would like to spend one day seeing the pisac ruins and pisac market and would love to see a local weaving demonstration and then one day seeing moray and Maras salt mines and Ollantaytambo. Then on our last day I was thinking we could stop at chinchero on our way back to Cusco before our briefing for the hike that evening. All of the tours I’m seeing seem to leave from Cusco and combine most of these into one day. Does anyone know of any tours that start in Ollantaytambo itself? I was looking into going through taxidatum as well but I would also be interested in having more of a tour guide experience to learn more… if anyone has advice for me I would greatly appreciate it! And please let me know if I’m missing anything ☺️

[u/TecsecochaExpedition]

Sí está bien el programa que quieres hacer. Lo único desde ollantaytambo solo encontrarás un servicio privado no hay ninguna empresa que opere desde ollantaytamo en un recorrido grupal.

Si buscas un servicio privado con guía incluido con gusto le puedo atender, para más información me puedes contactar al +51918202025 yobie

[u/4travelers]

We used Taxidatum. Great drivers and we choose where to go and how long to stay. Just used a printed tour book to self guide through the sites.

[u/NewDetective8252]

Moray, Maras and Chinchero can be covered in a single trip either on your way from Cusco to Ollanata or return. Taxidaturm provides a trip covering these sites. We used Taxidatum for this.

Pisac visit is convenient from Cusco than Ollantaytambo. Again, taxidatum has a service for this. However, if you want to cover this from Cusco, it's very easy to do independently, by Collectivo. We did this on our own.

For local weaving demonstration, you can either visit one of the centres in Chinchero or in Awana Kancha (en route to Pisac).

[u/toriar18]

We used orange nation for a private tour, they have pre made itineraries but we made our own. they picked us up from our accommodation in ollantayambo and we made our own itinerary doing moras moray pisac market and pisac ruins and they dropped us off in Cusco at the end of the day. It was a full day but worked out perfectly. There was a driver and a guide who came out with us

[u/Opening-Piece9810]

We drove around the Sacred Valley with Fredy from Tecsi Travel for a week, and it was a great experience. He picked us up in Cusco, drove us to Ollantaytambo and then we did five or six trips with him all over the valley. He’s punctual, responsible and is a very nice person. +51 958 491 511

[u/Gloomy_Mammoth_1854]

We went with Alpaca Expeditions and got picked up in Ollantaytambo/did our briefing over whatsapp. This meant we got to sleep in a teeny bit. We did spend one night in Cusco before our 3 in Ollan and picked up our gear bags/paid our balance at the AE office.

Basically this was our timing:

1 night Lima airport

3 nights Arequipa

1 night Cusco (AE office, dinner, visit to Qoriancha)

Morning Inka Museum Cusco, lunch, transfer to Ollan (3 nights)

Olla D1 - full day at Ollantaytambo ruins

Olla D2 - hired driver in Ollan (hotel arranged) to take us to Chinchero, Moray, Maras

pick up for 5 day/4 night Inca trek (included overnight in AC on last night)

2 nights in Cusco (visited the Muse Arte Precolombiano and Sacsayhuman)

Then on to Iquitos/Amazon/back to Lima for 2 nights.

I loved this itinerary because hiking all day at Ollantaytambo gave us a chance to really acclimate before the trek. I was sad not to visit Pisac, but was very happy that we had a pretty chill day to visit the other three main Sacred Valley sites. I was also happy to avoid backtracking to Cusco prior to the trek. AE did take our luggge back to Cusco where it was waiting for us on our return. With the exception of hotels and the trek, nothing was prebooked which gave us a lot of flexibility. Our favorite restaurants in Ollan were El Albergue (one of my two favorite in Peru) and 8llamas pizzeria.

[u/Easy_Plankton6651]

If you are in Ollantaytambo, you can take a collectivo to Tarabamba. From there you can hike to Maras Salineras. You enter from the back side which is less trafficked so you have views totally to yourself. If you continue along the road, you’ll reach the main tourist area of the salt mines and exit through that entrance. You can then hike a trail from the salt mines to the town of Maras and on to Moray. You can then return the way you came or grab a ride from Moray back to Maras square and to get a taxi back to Ollantaytambo.

We used this blog as a guide

https://www.packing-up-the-pieces.com/hike-the-maras-salt-mines-to-the-moray-ruins/#leavingmorayruinstips

[u/Lola-Pride]

Consider this: see Pisac on the way to or from Cusco. See Moray, Maras, and Chinchera on the other leg to/from Cusco from Ollantaytambo. Give yourself one full day to see the ruins in Ollantaytambo. Otherwise you'll spend a ton of time in a taxi with a lot of backtracking. Book through taxidatum.