A lot of Travellers try to get to Machu Picchu on the Inca Trial, which takes four days and requires hiking on steep mountain paths at very high altitude carrying heavy backpacks with overnight gear. We didn’t.
Given the short time we had we opted for the easier way, by Inca Rail in a 360° train that promised spectacular views during the journey. Miriam had already booked the voyage while we were still in Los Banos and also a hotel the same night in the sacred valley of the Incas. Upon checking into the apartment in Cusco, the owners Tesoro and Fernando had arranged for a taxi to pick us up the next morning at 5:00 which will bring us to the train station to catch the train that was scheduled to leave at 6:00. We had to be at the station 30 minutes before departure to trade our online reservation slips for the train tickets. The day before we had bought tickets for Machu Picchu for the afternoon time slot starting at 14:00, the morning slots were already sold out. We were up at 4:00 in the morning, and boy, I felt tired.
The taxi drive was fast on empty roads and we reached the train station at 5:30. While Martin joined the ticket line of mostly young tourist folks in all sort of native outfits purchased from Cusco‘s Souvenir shops (which we did not have the chance to buy yet) and the occasional local person in the seemingly popular Michelin-man jacket, Mavic and Miriam bought breakfast in the form of coffee and ham and cheese sandwiches at the food stall of the train station. Note: Those sandwiches were delicious, howcome nobody can make them in similar quality in Asia?
Soon afterwards we were allowed on the platform and then assigned a wagon and seats. The ride was indeed very scenic, along the Urubamba River that Miriam had just baptised „Steve“, through narrow valleys with the occasional village, cows, sheep and some forests. Another breakfast was served. One time the train had obviously gone in the wrong direction because it stopped and then went around half a mile backwards to take another route. In Ollantaytambo we stopped for around 40 minutes to let other trains pass in both directions. The line had only a single track and was used by both, Inca Rail and Peru Rail.
We arrived in Aguas Calientes around 11:00 and therefore had three hours before we could enter the archeological site. Continuing in the spirit of the lazy version of the trip, we bought bus tickets to bring us to the Citadel and then decided that it was time for lunch first. A small restaurant overlooking the road and railway line had fantastic tasting trout on the menu, something we desperately miss in Asia. While we were eating, a naked black dog with red Cherokee haircut was entertaining our view and of course, Miriam used it as a photo model.
After lunch we had a bit of time to stroll around before taking the old Mercedes bus that drove us up to Machu Picchu over an unpaved, single track dirt road with many serpentines. On the 20 minute drive we met at least ten other buses on their way downhill, always giving way to us making our way uphill. Perfect old fashioned mountain driving etiquette. The bus driver did an excellent job, always closing the side window manually before passing another vehicle to keep the dust out, and opening it again after a few hundred meters in clean air.
Arriving at the top we queued at the long line of people waiting, as we assumed, for the afternoon shift entry, only to find out after 20 minutes, that they were actually waiting for the bus to drive down. Embarrassing- we had listened to meaningless small talk about wearing make-up in the mountains by three American women behind us in vain. The entrance was actually a few meters further uphill with no line at all.
They had luggage lockers. At least we did not have to carry our bags with the overnight gear around the ruins. Once we were inside several guides offered their service, but we preferred to walk unrushed at our own pace and politely declined. Martin could not resist stopping by at a group of tourists every now and then over the next two hours and listen to some of the stories the guides had to tell. Cheap touristic parasite behavior, and yes, he felt a little bit bad about it.
We spent the afternoon wandering around the ruins. First up to the guardhouse, from where we enjoyed the famous view that can be seen on all the advertisements and pictures in travel books.
Miriam could not resist to have her picture taken in „non typical boring tourist poses“, and to look for other photo models in the form of Llamas or Alpacas.
Amazing stonework all over the place. Huge blocks of stone carved three dimensionally in a way that they fit together so tightly that you could not fit a sheet of paper between them. How did the old Incas do that? With power tools I cant even shape two pieces of wood in a similar way and had to use many kilograms of marine epoxy to fill the gaps when building Magayon II. Truely awesome.
One of Mavic‘s Facebook friends from the Philippines had the answer: „A creation of God!“ Which god? Her god had led through the Spanish conquistadores to the extinction of the Inca culture, so obviously it was not that particular god. Pacha Kamaq, the Inca’s god, Creator of the Earth? Extra terrestrials? Erich von Däniken send his greetings. Referring to god seems like an insult to the Incas. They could not have possibly mastered the craft.
The whole town, or fortress, was even more stunning since everything needed here would have had to be carried up here. Including the stones for the construction. Considering our clear signs of altitude sickness and the related very much reduced capabilities, it seems an unbelievable task.
Martin had to think about the Wolfgangs several times, friends of his parents, who had been development workers in Peru in the 1970s. They had brought back many souvenirs, pottery and weavings, and had shown pictures and talked about Machu Picchu, fascinating and exotic stuff at the time when the world was far less connected and an Asia Shop was the thing to collect exotic gadgets from and travel books talking about strange cultures. What a different world we are living in now.
At the end of our self guided tour we picked up our luggage and joined the line with hundreds of people waiting for the bus going down. Back in Aguas Calientes we had three hours to kill since our train back to Ollantaytambo would leave only at 20:00.
We used the time to have dinner in a small restaurant with a terrace overlooking the Plaza Manco Capac of Aguas Calientes with the church, a statue of a golden Inca and other interesting features, but refrained from buying Souvenirs – everything we would buy we would have to carry around with us until tomorrow evening – and hung around on a park bench in the garden of the train station. The town is actually very interesting. It is naturally grown and there is only the main road. Between the buildings there is too little space for cars, so you have to walk all the way.
The train finally arrived picking up some of the many waiting tourists and off we went on the one hour train ride to the Sacred Valley of the Incas. There we started walking from the train station towards our 1.7 miles-far boutique hotel. To our relief a Vespa type threewheeler stopped and provided us with a lift to the hotel.
The hotel was a bit difficult to find since it had no „Hotel“ sign. After some stumbling around in the dark alleys a neighbor pointed us in the right direction and we could still check in despite it being midnight already. Breakfast would be served at 9:00 tomorrow.