we had a terrible experience with this company from day one and should've cancelled our tour with them from the first sign of a problem. book with any other company-tons of people run a very similar tour.
we booked our tour in june for november and sent our $300 deposit in june. we arrived in cuzco on a friday for a tuesday 3d/2n tour to machu picchu and went to office to pay the rest of our balance. they had no reservation for us and even though we had been charged, they did not have record of our payment. we spent 2 hours going back and forth with the company and then having to go in person to western union to sort things out, as they had lied to us and told us they sent an employee to work things out with western union, but the employee actually just went home. after having to sort things out our selves, we learned that they just never went to pick up the money. they did apologize profusely and gave us an "upgrade" of private hostel rooms for our two nights.
the first day of tour was fun, with down hill biking, rafting, and a visit to the hot springs. the hostel was super loud that night. our guide could not have cared less about us, he never even bothered to learn our names and all he would to us was "vamos" and what time to meet him for the next activity.
the next day we zip lined and hiked to machu picchu town. upon arriving in the town, everything was shut down. the entire town was protesting for days. this was NEVER mentioned to us until the night before we were supposed to get to machu picchu-don't you think the possibility of being stranded in a town with no way in/out should at least be mentioned to us before too late!? nothing was open and when we asked our guide where to buy water, he simply shrugged and said, "don't know." we just hiked for our hours in the heat and he could not care less that we were dehydrating.
we were checked in to our hostel, which was very nice, and were told to meet at 6:30 for dinner that night. at 6, we were told dinner would now be 7:30. upon meeting at 7:30, our guide finally explained to us that the town was protesting and that no trains were running to/from cuzco. he also said there was no where to eat.
the next morning we met at 4am to get to machu picchu. the day before, the guide suggested we buy bus tickets to/from machu picchu. the bus was not running and we had to hike up to machu picchu. he LIED to us and said the trains were running as scheduled and everything was fine. if the buses weren't running that day, why would you say everything is running as scheduled!?
our guide gave us a terrible tour of machu picchu, covering about 1/3 maybe 1/4 of the site and he proceeded to tell us how people have been caught doing drugs and having sex up there, didn't need to travel thousands of miles to learn that. he told us everything was a fine and left us up there, stranded.
we learned for another, more responsible tour company that everything was not fine and trains were not running as scheduled. we had to cut our day short and hike back down machu picchu, to the hostel and then out of the town. this day we had to hike 14 miles and 161 flights of stairs. we got back to a title town and then had to find our transport back to cuzco. this included a HELLISH 6 hour ride in terribly cramped van.
overall this company is unorganized and untruthful. they knew there was a problem in machu picchu town and NEVER TOLD US until it was too late. i understand that the tour ends at machu picchu and it is our responsibility to get back to cuzco, but i would think they'd have the decency to at least mention to us that there was a problem and we would possibly be stranded, not act like everything was running as scheduled, lie to us, and leave us stranded with no help. they knew we didn't speak the language and would have to negotiate a ride back to cuzco with locals.
there are plenty of tours that do the exact same activity, book with someone else and save yourself the headache. they ruined our tour to machu picchu and gave us the worst experience we've had in south america after 5 months down here.