Hello fodorites!

First of all, I want to say THANK YOU for sharing your experiences and all of your great advice(and some of your photos as well... they are wonderful to see!). Because of you all, I think we have planned a perfect honeymoon on our tight budget. We'll be sure to toast you again with a Pisco Sour when we get there!
My question is in regards to the guides, David and Percy. I initially wrote to David, but he was charging $126 for a full day and $64 just to get us from Cusco to our hotel in Urubamba, and of the 3 days we needed him, he was actually going to be with us for only 1 (and the others would be with another undisclosed guide). For that reason, we wrote to Percy, who initially quoted us $120 per day, and $210 per person for train, entrance, and guide for Machu Picchu (is that a good price?). After we gave him our passport numbers to book our tickets, his fee went up to $130/day. This makes me uncomfortable with him, but I know you have had good experiences. Can I trust him when he does things like this?
I am completely fluent in Spanish (lived 4 years in Mexico)... my question is, for 2 people who are broke from paying for a wedding, do you think a guide adds significantly to the experience of the Sacred Valley, or do you think we can do it on our own?
Thanks so much for your help!

I think a guide adds significantly to the trip. And I do think Percy is trustworthy and overall fairly reasonable, but I thought he was expensive for Machu Picchu. We had him get the train tickets for us and arrange our hotel in Agua Caliente. We hired our own guide at MP (right at the entrance, spur of the moment), considerably cheaper than if we'd gone with his. And we also just got our MP entrance tickets in Agua Caliente. (Our MP guide charged 120 soles for a little more than 3 hours, which we thought was really reasonable.)
When I added up our costs for the entire trip, we'd have been hard pressed to have gone with a tour group as cheaply as we did it on our own - and we really enjoyed our own private guides and the flexibility they afforded us. You could certainly hire a taxi for your time in the Sacred Valley much more cheaply - but I think a guide greatly enhanced our time there. To cut costs, you could hire taxis for the transfers (Cusco to Ollanta for instance). And you could go with a group tour of Cusco. I thought Percy was well worth the cost - especially for the Sacred Valley time.

Anybody with a name like Percy just has to be good .

Percy

For us who have always traveled on our own with no guides we decided to try out a private guide and used David for portions of our trip. I know we saw things and learned things that we would not have, had we been on our own. But yes, u can certainly do it on your own with a good guide book. I agree one way to save is to do the transfers yourself and even see the sights in Cusco on your own or with a group tour. Having a guide take you to some of the places in the SV and outside Cusco would be where I would put my money. And I think a guide is worthwhile for some time at MP, but there are many of them at the entrance and you could use one of them as alrady suggested. using a guide makes the trip easier overall. You don't have to deal with purchasing tickets and any mistakes that come along.

In terms of cost, since I didn't have a frame of reference it was hard to judge. People on this board seemed to think they were good prices for David and Percy, but I was clueless. In some ways it seemed really expensive but then in other ways, a real bargain.

I will say that we are planning a trip to the NW of Argentina and many people on this board highly recommend a guide esp for the driving, but we're doing it on our own. So while I think we got a lot from David, I think we can do just fine on our own picking up guides as we want along the way.

And thanks for the pisco sour--they are the best! Have a great honeymoon!

I have a Percy question. Someone mentioned that he arranged (for a commission) reasonably priced lodging for them in Ollantaytambo.

I'm wondering if that's something he does even if you're not using him as a driver, etc. I'd love to find a small inexpensive place to stay in Ollantaytambo in mid July (when, guess what, not much at all is available) - at least of places that have presence on line or reviews on tripadvisor etc.

Thanks for your responses! Althom, your idea of just transporting ourselves to our hotel the first night was a good one... it saves us $20, and since we don't arrive to cusco until 4pm anyhow, it seems silly to pay a guide for that day. Yestravel, I appreciate your input too.
I'll definitely post to share our experiences!

I was the one for whom Percy arranged a hotel in Ollanta: Las Orquideas. It got good reviews on TripAdvisor, but it doesn't have a website or email. So we asked Percy to arrange it. Cost was something like $32 per night - I think $2 of that went to Percy. Don't know if he'll arrange hotels if you aren't using him as a guide - but I'd check with him. Obviously, he's in Ollanta regularly anyway. Couldn't hurt to ask.

Junejuly, if you speak good Spanish, then you can just go around on your own as my guess. I haven't been to Peru yet (in May), but from the reports on this board, it sounds like it's not too hard to do it yourself compared to other places in the world.

If you can't contact a hotel by email, try calling them. I booked 2 hotels in Peru by calling them directly and w/ my just-learned primitive Spanish I was able to book the hotels that I thought were impossible to get in because they're highly recommended in guidebooks.

Good luck!

We just got back from a whirlwind trip to Peru- used Percy in the Sacred Valley and he was excellent AND very reasonably priced. He even arranged a superb guide for us in Machu Picchu for a reasonable price.

Percy is a good guy you can trust- I got him through recommendations on this site.

Thanks so much for your input! We decided to stay with Percy for 2 days, he returned to the original quote of $120 when I asked. He seems nice and it will be good to be with someone who knows the area, so we can relax a bit more. We are arranging our own transportation to the hotel to save some money. We'll certainly write to tell everyone how it went!