Machu Picchu Revisited

  Cusco, Peru
Monday, August 20, 2007

Day 18: With the overcast skies the day before, we had been debating whether it would be worth it to get up extra early so that we could catch the first bus at 5:30 a.m. so that we could see the sunrise from Machu Picchu.  We decided we'd still catch an early bus, but that we'd miss the sunrise.  So, after our worst breakfast of the trip at Gringo Bill's (think stale bread and a bowl of apples), we checked out of our hotel and headed to the bus.  We got the 7:00 a.m. bus up to Machu Picchu hoping we'd get there before most of the tourists.  There was hardly anyone there, which was really nice, although I think we got there before the English-speaking tour guides, so we went guideless again.  Although, this time, we picked up a free map when we were getting our Machu Picchu passport stamp.  It's a really cool stamp!  We pretty much walked everywhere up there.  For the second day I got whistled at by one of the "security" people there.  Walking around you don't even realize that they have people throughout Machu Picchu making sure people aren't doing anything bad to the ruins.  Well, yesterday, I decided to climb up a rock for a nice photo op, and once I got up there, I heard a shrill whistle and saw a man waving to me to get off the rock.  Funny because Mike and I had heard whistles before and we thought it was an obnoxious tour group trying to keep the group together.  This time I got in trouble because he apparently thought I was too close to the alpaca that roams the fields up there.  Except the day before the alpaca was hanging out by some stairs and tourists were taking pictures of him...which eventually sent him storming down the stairs right past us.  Anyway, we enjoyed searching for different places that our guidebook identified as worth seeing and found most of them.  The 32-sided stone, unlike the 12-sided stone in Cusco, took some imagination to count 32 sides, but it was still neat.  It's really difficult to describe Machu Picchu, but hopefully you'll get the gist when we upload the pictures.  Amazingly, my ankle was feeling much better, so we were going to hike up to Huayna Picchu (the 'Temple of the Moon').  They limit the number of people who can be on that mountain but we figured it was early enough so we'd be able to get on it.  We were wrong...there was a big group of people waiting by the gate to hike up, so we just decided we'd skip it. 

After spending a few hours there, we decided to head back to Aguas Calientes, via bus this time, and get some lunch.  We tried another pizza place.  It was good but not as good as Chez Maggy.  I tried a Peru Libre, which is Pisco with Sprite, which was ok; Mike was wise to stick with his Cuba Libre.  We had some time to kill before our train so we walked around the market a little and really saw nothing we were interested in buying.  So, after a drink, we got our packs from the hotel and made the trek to the train station.  Now, you may have noticed that yesterday's post said that it was a pretty quick walk from the train station to the hotel.  That is is true...however yesterday my legs weren't horribly sore from hiking down Machu Picchu!  Walking with our 30 pound bags now felt like a trek.  No more stairs please!  Going up was ok, but down was painful.

The train was very similar to the train we had taken before, but bigger and more people.  It was a 4-hour train ride, which doesn't seem that bad, but we had gotten up really early so we were pretty tired and just wanted to get to Cusco.  After making a stop about 2 hours into the ride, all of a sudden this creepy music started blaring over the intercom and the passengers were looking around confused and to the stewards in the back to fix it.  Then, out of nowhere, a weird masked man appeared, dancing up and down the aisle.  I was wondering how this crazy person got on the train when the rest of us had to pay to ride the train!  I wouldn't make eye contact because I didn't want him to ask for money...and his mask was really creepy!  Well, at the end of his song the music turned into a recording of a woman's voice and it turned out this was actually a show being put on by PeruRail and that was apparently traditional dancing!  After that, we were treated to a fashion show with our train car's stewards modelling various llama and alpaca clothing.  It was the funniest and oddest thing ever.  After the show, they came down the aisle with a cart selling the clothes.  At least it made time pass quicker!

Train show

  A few hours later we stopped in Poroy, the last stop before Cusco.  Mike pointed out that there was someone advertising that you can take a bus from Poroy to Cusco and the ride only takes 10 minutes.  It was going to take an hour on the train!  We were tired and decided to just stay on the train, but if we had to do it again, we'd get off in Poroy!  Now, yes, by taking the bus we would have missed the slow decent into Cusco and all the lights since it was now dark...but it would have been worth it to get their faster.  We were exhausted and hungry!

We were happy to arrive in Cusco.  Once again, our cab driver couldn't find our hotel!  We had decided we'd stay in San Blas, which is an artsy neighborhood overlooking the main part of Cusco.  At least this cab driver was really nice and was really trying to help us.  We eventually found it...the car couldn't get up to the hotel because it's on a pedestrian sreet...up a lot of stairs.  Yay.  We quickly checked in and headed out to find a restaurant we had in mind.  Of course, we made the brilliant decision to stay in hilly San Blas after hiking down Machu Picchu.  Everywhere we went, we had to go up and down hills!  Anyway, we had dinner at a really funky restaurant, Macondo, and then headed back to our hotel totally exhausted.  Yay sleep.