Major Machu Picchu

Thursday, October 13, 2016
Aguas Calientes, Sacred Valley, Peru
A travel day on Wednesday. Got up, had breakfast, packed up and left our bags at the hotel and went and sat at our nice little bakery in the square and watched the world go by for a couple of hours. Then back to the hotel to meet our tuk-tuk ride to the train station. Boarding the the train was the usual chaos found in any less developed country, but no major problems. Nobody even asked to see the special letter that we got from PeruRail to allow us to bring our luggage on the train--normally only small carry-on is allowed on the train to Machu Picchu Pueblo, but we are not going back to Ollantaytambo, so we couldn't leave our luggage there. A very pleasant and picturesque 1.5 hour train ride along the river valley. We ended up sitting with a couple from Kelowna, BC (London, UK and Mexico respectively originally) and had a nice chat. Machu Picchu Pueblo is about what I expected. Lots of tacky souvenir shops and overpriced restaurants with persistent touts outside trying to drag you in. And I can't for the life of me remember why I picked our Hostal, Inti House, but it does have WiFi (usually) and is convenient and relatively cheap. On the other hand, there is no window to outside, only to an atrium which goes down to where a very large screen TV which is usually blasting soccer games. There was someone to meet us at the train station, though. We wandered around the village for a while and then went for dinner at Incontri del pueblo Viejo, a somewhat upscale Italian joint, where we both had lasagna, which was very tasty, but somehow they ended up different (one with spinach pasta & one not)--just odd. Up early, but not not too early, to head up to Machu Picchu and wander the grounds. When we got into the line for the buses at about 7:20, it seemed like a really long line, but it only took us about 20 minutes to get to the front and we were at the site just after 8 am. Machu Picchu certainly lives up to its billing. It is not as big some Mayan sites that we have been to, like Tikal, and does not have massive pyramids, but the setting, high in the mountains, and its intricacy, make it spectacular. we spent a couple of hours touring the grounds--somehow being forced to leave and re-enter the site in order to get from the lower levels to the upper because there are one-way routes that are strictly enforced. From the upper levels, we made a couple of hikes. The first was a shorter one, along a narrow winding path along the mountain face, to the Inca Bridge which is an ingenious way that they used to defend a back trail into the complex, along a sheer rock face, by using logs to bridge a man made chasm in the stone. The next was a longer 1 1/2 hour hike/climb up to the Sun Gate, which was the original Incan entry point to the complex and provides the spectacular views across the site to Huayna Picchu mountain on the other side. When we made it back and decided to head back down to the village at around 1:30, we discovered what a long line for the buses really looks like. It was stretching forever down the mountain road and we waited for over an hour and a half. Finally got back into the village after 3:00 and decided to go out for a late lunch/dinner combo and get to bed early since we would be getting up at 4:30 to head up and climb Huayna Picchu the next morning. We headed for El Indio Feliz, a pirate themed bistro billed as Franco-Peruvian, which was again highly rated but not cheap--in a place like Machu Picchu, I think it pays to spend a little more to guarantee quality.    We managed to pass a few hours there and almost finished our "menu touristico" meals, featuring Caribbean chicken in a pineapple for me, and a beef skewer for Carol. Then home for a really early sleep because the alarm was set for 4:30 am. Unfortunately the alarm was on my computer, which is still on Eastern time and we are on Central, so we actually woke up at 3:30. I reset it and we went back to sleep, but I probably shouldn't have bothered. When we finally got up at 4:30 and got ourselves packed up (because we had to be checked out before we got back from the mountain) and went to head for the bus line at 5 am, we discovered that the door to the hostal was locked and we couldn't get out. The housekeeper was supposed to be there at 4:00 but she obviously didn't show up and there was nobody else there to open the door--we rang and we rang on the front desk bell, but nothing. Finally on my second try at getting the sliding door out from the attached restaurant open, I managed to lift and jimmy it and we were able to escape. Don't want to think what would happen if they ever had a fire! We stuffed our bags behind the desk (the housekeeper was supposed to show us where they were to be left) and headed over to join the line for the bus at about 5:10. Buses don't start coming until 5:30 and the line ran way up the hill. We finally got on a bus about 6:20, which got us up to the site and to the gate for Huayna Picchu before they opened at 7:00 for the first group. Only 200 can go up in the 7:00 to 8:00 window and another 200 in the 10:00 to 11:00 window. It was a strenuous climb, especially starting from altitude, but is was not nearly as precarious as I had feared and there were lots of steel cables strategically placed where I might otherwise have felt "exposed". And of course the views were amazing. It only took us 2 hours 35 minutes to do the roundtrip that is supposed to 2 hours and we spent a lot of time taking in the view and snapping photos at the top, so we felt we did pretty good for a couple of old farts. We decided to head straight back down to the village, since we had seen and photographed everything else that we wanted the previous day, and as a result there was virtually no line for the bus and we were back down before 11:00. We went back to our hostal, rescued our bags and came back down by the train tracks to plunk ourselves at a restaurant, so we don't have to move again until our train at 4:20 for Cusco. And that is where we sit as I write this.

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