Cusco, the over crowded Sacred Valley & the majestic Machu Picchu

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After another scenic bus ride along the shores of the never ending Lake Titicaca (apparently the lake is the same size as Holland) we arrived in Cusco, the 'belly button' of the Inca Empire. After a disappointing start to Peru in Puno, Cusco was not only aesthetically pleasing but also full of charm and culture. The main square, or Plaza was huge with a European style cathedral towering over it, all lit up at night time it looked beautiful. There were many other Plaza's in the city each with their own churches which were built in colonial times when the Spanish first conquered the city in the late 1500's. There are still remnants of the Inca's in the city centre, one of the most famous being a wall which runs along the outside of an old Inca building, it's famous because of the way the rocks have been fitted together to form the wall, each stone was hand carved by the Inca's and one boasts a massive 12 sides. Incredible. While we stayed in Cusco we would walk past this wall at least a couple of times everyday and every time without fail there was a Japanese tourist getting their picture taken pointing at this 12 sided stone, sometimes there would be a lady with a llama standing next to the stone, incorporating herself into peoples photos for a few coins.

We found that we were getting a lot more hassle from sales people in the streets of Peru than we had anywhere else. When we'd walk the city streets any time of day and night there would always be 6 or so sales people flocking around offering everything you need and also a few things you don't need. On one particular street which is well known with tourists we got propositioned by a man asking '... you want restaurant? cocaine? tourist information?...' We also found the shoe shine boys more persistent here than in other countries; always insisting that our trainers could do with a polish.

After exploring the city we organised our trek to Machu Picchu, which, as we hadn't booked the official Inca Trail, was to be the less world renowned 'Inca Jungle' trek and would take 4 days. With the same company we decided to book a day trip to see the Sacred Valley and the remaining Inca ruins. The trip didn't get off to a great start, after an hours drive the bus pulled over at a ticket booth and the guide informed us that we would have to now purchase out tourist tickets which would grant us entry to the three Inca sites that we were to visit on the trip. The tour company had neglected us tell us this information so we didn't have enough money on us to buy the tickets which were overpriced anyway. After causing a bit of a scene, the guide even called the tour agency to see if they had told us about this extra fee, of course they said they had so we looked like liers, the driver said that he would sneak us into the sacred ruins. So off we went.

The first stop was hideous, I don't mean the ruins; they were OK if a little unremarkable, but it was the sheer mass of tourists that made it unbearable. There were about twenty buses from which a swarm of snap happy, fat Americans fell out, they were horrified when they realised that they would have to walk twenty minutes up to the ruins "i thought this was a bus tour" they murmured. Unfortunately the path was narrow so we often got stuck behind them, at one point someone had to physically push a women up a tiny incline.

The next stop was much more impressive and pleasant. There were still a lot of tourists, but there was much more space to accommodate them. We had to sneak past the security who were checking peoples tickets on the way in and go through a back entrance. The ruins were huge Inca terraces which looked like giant steps carved into the hillside, they were used for farming. The size of the rocks used to form the terraces was impressive to say the least, they moved the rocks from neighbouring valleys using only human force to drag them up hill, some of them weighed up to four tonnes.

Our last stop was our favourite. It was a village called Chincero which was built on an Inca site. It was dark when we arrived and the little cobbled streets were lit up with lanterns and the shop vendors were desperately trying to sell their wares. These streets lead to a central plaza on which people were busy building floats and decorations for a four day religious fiesta that was starting the following day. At the head of the plaza was an amazing old church. The inside was like nothing else, it was an Aladdin's cave. The walls were painted floor to ceiling with colourful flowers and there were centuries worth of golden trinkets, portraits and other religious artifacts. The alter was huge and the gold finish reflected the candle light, projecting it around the dark room. It was also full of people preparing for the fiesta, decorating the church with candles and ornaments. It felt very magical. This was good end to the trip which had started badly. We gave our guide 20 Soles tip as by sneaking us around he had saved us 140 Soles.

Back in Cusco we spent another couple of days relaxing and exploring the city some more before embarking on our three day Inca Jungle trek. Our group for the trip consisted of us, a Scandinavian couple called Willy and Steina and our guide called Alex. We met early on the first day and got on a bus for a few hours to get to the starting point of our trip. On the way we found a tiny little puppy on the bus who decided to do a wee in the aisle, we adopted him for a short while before the ticket lady on the bus discovered him and left him at the nearest town. The first part of the trip was a downhill bike ride to our first overnight stop in a small village. We thought this would be easy after cycling Death Road in Bolivia but the bikes were cheap and it was a very bumpy but scenic afternoon meandering down through the valleys slowly descending into a more jungle type climate. At dinner that night we began to realise that our guide didn't speak much English like the tour company had promised. We hadn't noticed during the day as we had spent it cycling down a hill. Because of this he tended to answer "yes" to everything which made life difficult when trying to establish what the plan was for the following day. A typical conversation would go something like this.

Us: "so what is the plan for tomorrow?"
Alex: "yes"
Us: "is there a lot of walking?"
Alex: "yes"
Us: "Is it easy or hard?"
Alex: "yes"
Us: "so it's easy?"
Alex: "yes"
Us: "or is it hard?"
Alex: "yes"

The second day was the hardest and involved the most walking. We walked from the village over a series of small mountains which had spectacular views back down into the valley. The landscape on this part of the trip was not particularly jungley, certainly not compared to the jungle regions we had visited in Bolivia. After a while we stopped at hut which was a makeshift shop nestled amongst tropical plants half way up one of the mountains. As a form of entertainment for the tourists the owners brought out a Capuchin Monkey and a Tejon which were what we had looked after at the animal sanctuary. This was exactly the sort of thing that the sanctuary is trying to save these animals from so it made us quite sad especially when some bright spark decided to feed the monkey a lollipop. After this short break it was time to do some more walking. We walked down over the last of the mountains and started walking in a valley next to a river for a while. We then had to cross over the river in a cable car type contraption, it hung on a rope about 50 metres above the river and we pushed off from one side and then had to pull ourselves along it to the other. Once we were safely on the other side our guide told us that a couple of weeks previous a guy had got his leg caught in the rope and as the cart was pushed off he had been pulled out over the edge and fell to his death. Nice! Our last stop before reaching the village where we were staying that night were some natural hot water springs. They were incredible, the main pool was huge and there were a couple of smaller ones of varying temperature. The water came from the earth and the heat was all completely natural, they were set in amongst the valley with hills and mountains surrounding them and the main pool had a huge cliff face coming out of it. We stayed here for a couple of hours to soothe out aching muscles and then jumped in a minibus to take us to the village. That night the four of us in our group went to the village night club, we were the only ones in there and they were playing reggae versions of Oasis and other British tunes. It was nearly as bad as the nightclub, The Matrix, in my hometown.

The next day we got up early and made our way to the cafe where we had agreed to meet Alex, our guide, for breakfast. However Alex didn't show up and after about 45 minutes we decided to look for him. We located him at one of the hostels up the road and it turned out he was still in bed as he was terribly hungover. He quickly got himself together, apologised and then went for his breakfast leaving us to wait even longer. Eventually we got going and we spent the day walking along a railway track through the jungle until we reached Aguas Calientes which is the base for trips up to Machu Picchu. In the afternoon we decided to climb a mountain called Putucusi which is in Aguas Callientes. It took about an hour to climb and at one section we had to ascend a near vertical 100 meter ladder without ropes which was secured to a cliff face. The views of the mountains and the jungle below on the way up were excellent but it is the view from the top which is the main reason climbing it. From the top it looks down over Machu Picchu and as we came up to its highest point we got our first views of the legendary Inca ruins, it was breathtaking and made us very excited for the next day when we would get chance explore them up close.

That night at dinner Alex explained in his extremely vague manner that he was going to buy our train tickets for our return trip to Cusco but the train terminated at a town about an hour from Cusco, but there would be a mini bus waiting for us there to take us the rest of the way, at least that is what we thought the plan was since he just answered "yes" to any queries we had. He also told us that another guide called Edgar would be accompanying us to Machu Picchu in the morning and he spoke good English. Good we thought, he will be able confirm what the plan was. This was not the case, Edgar came over to introduce himself and his English was just as bad as Alex's if not worse, it was certainly more confusing because instead of just saying "yes" to everything he said we had two options but went on to give about three or four different answers to our questions which all contradicted each other. This was most confusing when trying to establish what time everything was supposed be happening the next day.

Us: " what time do we start in the morning?"
Edgar: "mmm well, you have two options 5.00 or 6.00 or maybe we can meet at 8.30 but we must meet before 7.00"
Us: "what time is our train?"
Edgar: " mmm two options it's at 2.30 but maybe 4.30 but you leave at 5.30 or 6.45"

We managed to extract what we thought was the correct information and just hoped that everything would work itself out.

We got up at 4am the next morning to catch the first bus up to Machu Picchu. It is situated on a mountain ridge above the Urubamba Valley at 2400 metres above sea level and it is a magnificent setting. It was built around the year 1460, but was abandoned as an official site for the Inca rulers a hundred years later, at the time of the Spanish conquest of the Inca Empire. Although known locally, it was said to have been forgotten for centuries when the site was brought to worldwide attention in 1911 by Hiram Bingham, an American historian. Once through the gates we got our first views of the Inca ruins up close and it was breathtaking, just how we had imagined it would be. It definitely lived up to its hype.

We spent the first part of the morning being shown the main parts of the site by a guide who made assumptions about the history of the ruins which know one could possibly know as fact. When questioned he pretended he couldn't understand what we were saying. After this we decided to climb up Waynu Picchu which is the mountain that looms in the background on all the postcards. While we were queuing Edgar came over to tell us that there was no room on the train back that night and we would either have to leave now and get an early train or wait until tomorrow. We were pretty shocked by his and Alex's incompetence and there was no way we were going to go early after walking three days to get here so we told him that he had to get us on the train that night and after an argument he shuffled off to sort something out. We'd just have to hope, like with everything else, that it would sort itself out. The climb up was easy enough and the views from the top were excellent giving a birds eye view of all of the ruins. We then made our way down and walked to the view point from which you get the classic postcard shot. Even though we had seen it a thousand times before in books and on posters it still leaves you speechless when you see it for yourself and we spent a good hour just sitting up there taking it all in. Before heading back to Aguas Calientes we walked up to the Sungate which was the original gateway to the city.

We ran back down to Aquas Callientes with Steina and Willy and a panicky Alex was waiting for us, he quickly dragged us off to the train station to sort our tickets out and after much confusion and a baffling explanation from Alex we were on the train back to Cusco.

We intended to leave Cusco the next day but unfortunately I left our cash card in an ATM so we had to stay over the weekend until the bank reopened and they could retrieve the card...we hoped. Luckily the machine had swallowed it and we could finally get on our way.

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