09-10 Sep 2010
The stop most travelers to Peru really look forward to is the visit to the old Inca town of Machu Picchu at the height of 2,400 meters above sea level. The closer the day to hopping on a train to Aguas Calientes – or “Machu Picchu village” – came the more I felt that happy, bubbly, tingly feeling spreading all over my body. I’m going to Machu Picchu! I can’t believe how lucky I am.
I made friends on the way to the Ollantaytambo train station with two Argentinean men, Roberto and Enrique, who were travelling in the same car as I was, crammed in with 6 other passengers. We had a cup of coffee and a burger in the café closest to the train station and boarded the train to Aguas Calientes. There was a man waiting for me at the train station to show me to my hotel, which I found absolutely hilarious since Aguas Calientes is a small village with two main streets and no hotel can be further than 200-300 meters from the station. Yet they wanted to make sure I don’t get lost…
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| Exiting the train station in Aguas Calientes |
Hotel Santuario in my opinion was pretty nice, particularly considering I had spent most of the time on this trip either living in a tent or sleeping in a hostel dorm. Hey, this place had a private bathroom and two beds in the room (and they were real beds, not camping mats or bunk beds). There also was tv in the room. It was so long since I’ve seen a tv in my room I did not know what do with it anymore - so I decided to have a nap instead. I could have enjoyed a bath at the famous hot springs that gave their name to the village of Aguas Calientes (i.e. “Hot Waters”). But no. Instead I happily slept for a couple of hours in the privacy of my Real Hotel Room and felt extremely refreshed upon waking up.
Later that day I went looking for my two newly found friends Patricia&Andrew. I met them at the Flying Dog Hostel in Cusco and after having exchanged travel stories and tips, we realised that we will be in machu Picchu on the same day. Fabulous! So we decided we shall meet for dinner after P&A’s train gets to Aguas Calientes. I went looking for their hostel Oro Verde in the small village. (btw, Oro Verde is the hostel you do NOT want to stay in if you ever visit Machu Picchu. It had moldy, smelly rooms with broken locks on the doors and no breakfast on time despite the fact that breakfast was supposed to be included in room price.) We had a stroll in the village, bought some snacks , wondered about the train tracks that run down on the main street of the village (the “city train”) and eventually settled in a small restaurant near Oro Verde. We had a not-so-impressive dinner at the place – although we did manage to recruit a new friend. His name was Alfonso and he was studying medicine in Chile. He was having dinner all by himself so we invited him to join us. The impressive part of the dinner was that the cook had some talent in turning carrots into sculptures. We found a flamingo, a dog, a llama and a turtle on our plates when the food arrived.
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| The Flamingo in the salad |
We had planned to get up early so we all headed back to our hostels after dinner. I was planning on taking a 7am bus whilst Patricia, Andrew and Alfonso were thinking about being on the first bus at 5.30am. In the end I was so excited about going to Machu Picchu that I was at the bus station already at 6.45am. To my great surprise I found both my two Argentinean friends and Patricia&Andrew on the same bus. What a great start to a day!
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| Map of Machu Picchu |
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| All the travellers flocking in to Machu Picchu at 8am... |
P,A&me all got on the same guided tour. The tour was excellent and well worth the money. Apart from getting a comprehensive view of the old Inca town we also learned that Peru has over 400 species of orchids and that coca plants don’t grow well at altitude.
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| One of those 400 species of orchids |
We viewed the town from the official “National Geographic” viewing point from where all those fabulous Nat Geo photos have been taken from, entered the town through the main gate, visited the observatory (the Incas were quite good astronomers), saw the Temple of the Sun – Temples of Sun were only located in important Inca cities, got familiar with Inca’s ways of creating echoes in the main square and in the building structures and admired the carved stone walls that have survived almost intact for so many centuries and earthquakes.
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Machu Picchu is truly marvelous, beautiful, impressive and brilliant. The mere size of the place is awe-inspiring. It's an entire Inca town that used to have 500 people living in it - and 90-95% of the buildings are almost intact. That's because the Spanish conquistadors never found the place. Only 5-10% of the place needed to be reconstructed after Mr Hiram Bingham wandered upon the place in 1911. He effectively paid the locals only one sol each (a day's pay at the time, to be fair) for finding him mummies of the Incas. He removed them, as well as all the precious artifacts that had any historical or monetary value, shipped them to his university in the US with a promise the objects will be returned as soon as they have been evaluated and listed. US Mail or Fed Ex must have run into some serious trouble with the shipping since the Peruvians are still waiting for the objects to arrive back to their home country and it has been nearly 100 years since Bingham promised to ship them back...
What also really impressed me was the Incas' relationship to nature. Mountains were considered gods and before one would attempt a long trip he would ask permission from the mountains to pass through. (Maybe I would have had better luck with the weather during my hike in Huayhuash if I had paid due respects to the mountains before wandering off and Happily Heidi-Hopping on the Hills during my 8 days in Huayhuash?) One of the impressive carvings that is still on display in Machu Picchu (it was probably too big&heavy for Bingham to steal and ship to the US) represents a condor carved in stone. What's very clever about the statue is that although the body and head of the condor are carved in a flat stone, two natural rock formations behind the slate depict its wings.
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| The Condor. I did not get a decent picture of it with its wings so you will have to use your imagination to figure out what the wings look like |
After a snack break in the only place with shade (which smelled of wee, btw) we made some plans of how to best use the remaining hours that we had left for tackling Machu Picchu. We had already decided in the morning not to climb the Wayna Picchu peak which is limited to 400 climbers a day due to the steep and narrow path that leads to the top as we were informed that the views from Puerta del Sol (Sungate) and Machu Picchu mountain top would be better. Therefore we set route towards Puerta del Sol where the Inca Trail ends. The 30-45 minute sloping uphill walk in scorching sun to Puerta del Sol was well worth it. The view that opened in front of us was spectacular, making the entire Inca town look like a toy model city surrounded by the majestic mountains. I can really imagine how impressed those arriving at Machu Picchu along the Inca trail must be when they are rewarded with the view of the entire Machu Picchu town after four days of hiking on the mountains.
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| View of Macchu Picchu and the road leading to Machu Picchu viewed from the Sungate |
As that would not have been enough, Andrew and I spent another hour climbing up Machu Picchu mountain while Patricia explored the ruins further. The views from the peak were well worth the climb - although I do think the best views were still from the Sungate.
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| On top of the world - I mean, on top of machu Picchu peak |
After a long day of walking and climbing we needed to reward ourselves with Pizza&Beer. Oh boy, was a cold Cusquena the best thing I've ever tasted after the steamy and dusty day! We were also very amused by the "city train" passing by a couple of times on the street. "A train on the main street of a village? No, I have not seen that before" I had to explain to our handsome waiter Leo who did not quite understand what was so amusing and worth taking photos of about the little train that was making its way towards the station.
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| The city choo-choo train |
Eventually we too got back on the train and the trip towards Ollantaytambo and Cusco started. I was seated with two British guys and a German girl in their 20s. They had just been 9 days in the jungle and trekking. Ed who was sitting next to me suggested we'd play games to make the train journey pass quicker and as we did not have playing cards we ended up playing the alphabet game with names of countries and animals. We also ended up in silly discussions over whether Wales and England count as countries - according to our two British representatives they do count as sovereign states as they do have their own governments. Oh well, although me and the Germal girl did have a bit of a differing opinion about this we eventually counted them as countries... A few rounds of the game and some banter took us to Ollantaytambo more entertained than bored.
It took me while to find my bus in Ollantaytambo but eventually we did find the buses, got back to cusco and reached the flying Dog together with Patricia&Andrew and half past midnight. Oh no, and tomorrow I will get picked up from the hostel at 7am to go to Puno! Not much sleep - but it does not matter. I had so much fun and I was so impressed by The Old Pile of Rocks of Machu Picchu it makes up for any lack of sleep.
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