Mountains 2 - Ruth 0

  Machu Picchu, Peru
Sunday, August 19, 2007

Day 17: After the annoying driver from yesterday, the lady at the front desk promised us our taxi driver would be there on time to take us to the train station.  That promise seemed to fade as we stood there waiting.  Our driver ran into a problem and so she called a different taxi driver.  We were a little concerned because the day before she told us to leave an hour before our train and now we'd be leaving about 30 minutes before our train.  Again, we didn't know how long it would take to get there and how difficult it would be once we got to the station.  After the taxi driver stopped for gas (and, yes, a roll of toilet paper!) and then again to put air in his tires, we told him that we were trying to make a train, so he picked up the pace.  We ended up making it to the train in time and all was good.  To go back to the toilet paper...we don't know why 2 taxi drivers picked up a roll of toilet paper when they stopped for gas.  Stopping for gas when you have a passenger is odd enough, but getting 1 roll of toilet paper?  We haven't mentioned the bathroom issues of Ecuador and Peru...we figured they were better not discussed... but sometimes the bathrooms have no toilet paper, so maybe it was their back-up roll?  I really don't know.
 
Anyway, the train...to our surprise, it was really small with only had 2 passenger cars.  We realized that it's called the Vistadome because it has skylights so you can see the sky and tops of mountains.  We got food and beverage service on the train, which was a nice addition.  The route through the Sacred Valley was along a river and it was really pretty.  We saw part of the Inca Trail on the other side of the river.  Definitely something we'll have to do eventually.  Here's a map of the Sacred Valley so you can see the route we took: 

Train map

  The train arrived in Aguas Calientes in only an hour, which was a nice surprise; we thought it was going to be closer to 3 hours.  Aguas Calientes is a small town pretty much built up to entertain the tourists visiting Machu Picchu.  From the town, it's about a 15-20 minute bus ride up to Machu Picchu.  Besides the bus, the only other way up to Machu Picchu is hiking.  Someone from our hotel, Gringo Bill's, was supposed to meet as at the train station, but he was nowhere in sight.  (By the way, we would never have stayed at a place called Gringo Bill's, however it got really good ratings!)  So, we just decided to start walking and figured we'd find the hotel.  We passed through a market and over a bridge and after asking a couple people where the main plaza, we found the hotel pretty easily.  It really wasn't a long walk - it was just made more difficult by the 30 pound bag on my back.  Our room was beautiful; it had a view of the mountains, a Jacuzzi bathtub, and a nice balcony.
 
We decided we shouldn't waste any time and should head right to Machu Picchu, however it wasn't so easy.  We pretty much walked in circles throughout the town in order to buy the entrance tickets to Machu Picchu and then find the bus to go up to Machu Picchu, and bought the bus tickets there.  We decided we'd take the bus up and walk down.  The bus headed out of Aguas Calientes and up the curvy mountain road with switchbacks all the way up.  It was a little disconcerting when another bus passed us going down the mountain because there was no visibility going around the turns.  At least the drivers did seem to have walkie-talkies and were working together to not crash...We made it up after about 15 minutes.  Everything was still confusing us a little but we found the entrance and decided to head into Machu Picchu without a guide or map.  We figured we'd wander around today and then be more structured tomorrow.  We headed up some stairs so we could get the view from above Machu Picchu.  It was overcast but still an amazing place to be.  We climbed down stairs back into the main part of Machu Picchu.  It was really neat seeing the stonework on such a grand scale, although we were a little surprised that the stonework wasn't as good as it was in Cusco.  It was a really cool place to wander around and were actually kind of happy it wasn't sunny.  There were a lot of stairs!
 
After spending a few hours there, we decided we should head down the mountain before it got dark.  There was a trail with steps winding down the mountain.  When we were about 1/3 down, I took a funny step down and sprained my ankle!  This is the second mountain that made me fall!  At least they're 2 pretty impressive mountains (Volcano Cotopaxi and now Machu Picchu mountain) and not some wimpy hill.  We had a lot of uneven steps to go, but I wanted to make it down, so we continued.  We got to town in a little over an hour...pretty sweaty and me limping.  We were both secretly worried that I'd really hurt myself, but hoping that I hadn't.  We decided to stop for a drink to reward ourselves and then went to a pharmacy to get an ace bandage for my ankle.  Since we skipped lunch we were starving so we cleaned up a little at the hotel and then headed out to find a pizza place that was recommended in the guidebook.  Pizza seems to be the food of choice in Aguas Calientes.  All of the restaurants have brick-oven pizzas, so we figured it would be best to go with the recommendation.  The pizza was amazing and we had a really nice dinner at Chez Maggy.  We bought some wine at a store and brought it back to the hotel.  It helped us keep warm since it was so cold we had to turn the gas heater on.