Katherine Ritchey
Google
The train is lovely and the service is very good. We only took it down because we hiked into Machu Picchu.
Despite a generally positive experience, I have 2 concerns with the trip:
1) we initially were seated across from several families that literally seated the adults together, and then put kids (6-8 of them, roughly ages 6-12) in two booths. The kids were screaming, climbing around the booth, throwing things in the aisle, etc. One was clearly quite sick — a literal snot machine. The adults were focused on their own experience and were unconcerned that their kids were ruining the experiences of everyone else in the car. When I asked the train staff if adults could sit in the booths with the kids, they kindly moved us to another car. This train promotes itself as an exceptional dining experience. No fine dining restaurant anywhere in the world would permit what I saw. HB should require an adult in the booth with any child under 18. Needless to say, the parents are primarily responsible. I have kids, and have reasonable expectations for how kids should behave, but this was not only not reasonable, it literally was probably the most inappropriate behavior I’ve ever seen of kids for the setting. HB bears some responsibility for not creating expectations and managing the situation (I was moved, but the other 20ish passengers were not).
2) There was construction on the track, so we could not ride all the way to Cusco. HB can’t control Peru Rail, but we got notice just a couple days before, and had to scramble to rearrange our driver. They did offer shuttles, but group buses for over an hour drive was not the experience I paid for, so a little additional notice would have been better, and perhaps a small discount to offset the cost of our driver. The people who ride this train aren’t generally the group shuttle type.
Overall, the experience was still very good. Given how much it cost, I’m not sure the value totally aligned to the cost.
