Machu Picchu Hotels
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Vomiting on a world wonder, literally
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After what I thought was a lovely dinner at a vegetarian restaurant (cue foreboding music), Jackie and I went to be early in our ghetto hostel in order to wake up before dawn and walk the 1.5 hrs to Machu Picchu. The one thing I wanted to accomplish at Machu Picchu , Peru's major tourist attraction and newly nominated Wonder of the World, was climbing Huaynu Picchu, which only 400 people are allowed to do each day. When we started to walk, we saw the line of people waiting for one of the twenty-two buses that were continuously shuttling people to the site and got nervous that too many people would beat us in line to Huaynu Picchu, so we bought bus tickets and hopped in line with the hoards.
We actually entered the gates at around 6:20am and immediately tried to find our way through the maze-like city to get in line for Huaynu Picchu. After a bit of confusion, we made our way into the line, eventually entering at 7:37am (you have to sign in with an exact time) as numbers 102 and 103. While standing in line, my stomach started to rumble a bit. I thought I was just hungry, so I ate one of the peanut butter and jelly sandwiches that I had brought with me. As we were hiking up the steep set of stairs to the top, my stomach started to feel much, much worse. I luckily had some Tums in my bag, so I popped a couple of them and took the ascent much slower than I normally would. By the time we reached the top, the Tums had kicked in and I was feeling great. We enjoyed the gorgeous panoramic view of Machu Picchu below and then continued on the longer, far less crowded, path to the Gran Caverna and the Temple of the Moon around the backside of the mountain.
As we reached the Temple of the Moon, my stomach was once jumping around all over the place. After sitting and resting for a while (and chatting with a guy who had been in my hostel in Quito my first couple of nights in South America), I knew that whatever was going on in my stomach wasn't going to stay put for long. I found a somewhat hidden spot around the corner and vomited up my sandwich, dinner from the night before, and a lot of water. It was loads of fun, exactly how I had planned to spend my day [/sarcasm]. Unfortunately at this point we still had what should have been about an hour of walking both uphill and downhill to get back to the main site. I had to go very slowly, but eventually made it back in almost double the amount of time it should have taken, officially exiting Huaynu Picchu at 12:08pm (the entire hike should have taken under 3 hrs total, even with some rests interspersed). The hike itself was beautiful as it's set in the cloud forest - it was too bad I couldn't enjoy it more.
After resting a bit more, we spent some time exploring the site, including a short, anticlimactic hike to the rickety Inka bridge. When we had had our fill, we hopped the bus back to Aguas Calientes, gringo hell multiplied by 3 million. The entire town is focused around being a gateway to Machu Picchu. It's even referred to as Machu Picchu Pueblo. As expected, everything is about 5 times the price anywhere else and a third as nice. My original train ticket involved spending a second night in Aguas Calientes and heading back to Ollantaytambo and Cusco the next afternoon. With how I was feeling, I couldn't even think of facing the ghetto dorm again and decided to change my train ticket to get back to Cusco that night, where I found a hostel with a single room for about $10. Dorm rooms are definitely not the place to be when you feel like crap.
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