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Published: September 13th 2007
We got up the next morning and went down to the bus station to find out when our bus to Ollantaytambo was leaving...Sid, we had discovered, had eaten some uncooked cow sandwich the day before and was feeling pretty wretched, so we wandered out into the Cusco sun and with our lack of spanish to discover a)where the bus station was and b)whether anyone there would be able to understand us when we strung the words "bus", "Ollantaytambo", and "hora?" ... we were in luck. a kindly security guard who was very proud of his english managed to convey to us, in spanish, both that fact and when the bus left so it was ok...
we then went back and had breakfast, went on the internet and back to pick up sid, who was lying pathetic and fragile, popping immodium like there was no tomorrow...having finally extracted him from bed and paid the hotel bill and conveyed to the old lady that wed come back, we departed for the bus station, where we were comforted to find that Jesus was ACTUALLY our drivers co-pilot, shoe-horned into our seats at the back of the bus, and on our way...
and almost
The view from the bus...
At least the views could distract us from HIM. immediately a man stood up (girls, he looked like Gael Garcia Bernal, but this DOES NOT REDEEM HIM) and started talking very rapidly and fluently in Spanish at the bus generally. we, foolishly, thought this meant he was acting sort of like a steward, giving us safety information and welcoming us to the bus. no. for the ENTIRE TWO HOURS he went on. and on. and on. we thought at first he was collecting for charity, until he started passing around sachets of vitamins that claimed to regulate your sleep and make you fly, or something. after about half an hour this reall bagn to grate, so we stuck into our Ipods and began to determinedly sing along to 90s pop songs, which never seemed to deter him. MOST ANNOYING MAN EVER.
We finally got to Ollantaytambo, where we ate dinner and waited for the train to Aguas Calientes to leave... we felt most sorry for the girls working at the cafe where sid used the toilet. nothing really exciting happened there except that we couldnt get to a phone to book our hostel so when we arrived at nearly 10pm in Aguas Calientes, we AGAIN had nowhere to
Ta da.....Machu Picchu!!
In all its misty misty glory stay and so allowed ourselves to be led down a dark alleyway (that, I kid you not, literally had a painted arrow on the wall that read "ESCAPE") by a scary old lady to a room apparently built until the hill. still dont know the name of it... Sid was still feeling pretty ill so we left him and went to have dinner in a little pizzeria. Turns out they make the pizza here with Edam, with not untasty results...we wrapped up a couple of pieces for sid and went to a grocery story to buy some bread, cheeze and chorizo for lunch the next day, as Machu Picchu hasnt really got a lot of culinary options onsite...
We had planned to get up for sunrise the next day but we slept late (see, I had thought Liam was awake, and turning the alarms off on purpose. he wasnt) and so made a mad dash for the bus... turns out it was really cloudy so there was no sunrise...we are beginning to realize that when the guidebook decribes something as "unmissable" or "stupendous" or "with 24 hour hot water" they are not always being totally honest... 20 minutes later
Sid and Machu Picchu
This is going to go on... we were at the site, but you still have to climb a ways up before you see the real deal. we stood in line behind what had to be the worlds most annoying tourists, discussing how scary the bus trip up had been and how maybe it was because the driver didnt like tourists and was trying to get back at them by, you know, driving. the bus. the mind boggles.
we finally got in (did you know you can get a Machu Picchu passport stamp?? COOL, no?) and trekked up a little path, accompanied by the kind of tourists who buy all their clothes from travel clothing magazines because they are SO HARDCORE and HIKE stuff, and finally emerged from the trees to see the beginnings of Incan stonework, and then, Machu Picchu itself. It looks surprisingly doll-like from above, as though someone had decided to build an (admittedly ancient looking) entire model train village out of stone. Liam felt somewhat had when he discovered that the whole thing was built in what was basically the Renaissance in Europe... it looks as though it should be as old as time. However, it is beautiful and what makes it
a wonder of the world is clearly location, location, location. Spread in the saddle between two mountains, it is architecturally ingenious, the way the terraces support the town with a sort of solid rippling quality downwards; the whole thing seems incredibly permanent while constantly reminding you that it has been perched almost impossibly thousands of feet in the air and that the effort required to get it all up there was astronomical...
We didnt get a guide, and we really should have, because the site is frankly enormous and we knew and know nothing about it. We gamely tried to inconspicuously follow a couple of english tours around (sid was not inconspicuous and shamelessly latched on to as many as he could find) but this got tiresome, both in terms of stretching our spying skills and subjecting us to tedious tourists, and there is only so many times in a row you can hear about the incans and how they polish stones...!!
We wandered up the terraces above the site first. I would like to pretend this was for some Indiana Jones-esque "why, look...a hidden doorway...covered with cobwebs. could it be? an undiscovered treasure cave?" but really it was
because I saw llamas. lots of llamas, a few levels above us. we looked at them for a bit, sid looking bored, me fascinated and attempting to lure the llamas to me, and Liam taking pictures. then I wanted to go see the Inca bridge, which the guide book described as stupendous. after a half an hour walk we ended up at a cliff face...and after some close examination, an inca bridge some ways below. not exactly spectacular, but a lovely place indeed to have breakfast (and take some precariously placed timer group photographs, which included the hilarious sight of Liam launching himself at the rock we´d chosen to sit on top of...). We stayed there for ages, and Sid didnt really want to ever leave, but the sun was beginning to burn off the cloud and we didnt want to hike back in the boiling heat, so we headed back to the main site. Apparently Monday is the worst day, so we expected it to be clogged with tourists, but the site is so big, it really swallows numbers up so it doesnt seem so crowded.
On the way back we encountered more LLAMAS. The others had hitherto
Liam and Machu Picchu
Its just the thing is, there were these australians, and they were really rude about making us get out of the way of their pictures, and everyone is taking all these pictures, and the pressure starts to get to you, and before you know it your memory card is full and you are very embarassed but endowed with 4700 pictures of you and freaking machu picchu. ahem. failed to understand my llama love, but when you encounter them close up it is difficult to avoid their limpid intelligent eyes, with their absurdly stupid behaviour and frankly absorbed attention to their feeding. They are dirty, dirty creatures that manage to somehow still be incredibly cute. So Im not ashamed to say I spent ALOT of time there, as did Liam (Llamas being curiously difficult creatures to capture on film) and then wandered down to find sid who was perched on a wall looking down at the site. He was feeling pretty tired, being still a little rocky from the day before, so was happy to rest there before finding another tour group to leech off. Liam and I meanwhile spent most of the rest of the afternoon wandering around looking at things and thinking they were cool, taking pictures, getting horribly bug bitten (turns out Liam isnt such a manly man when it comes to the insect world...). We sat for a long time in this sort of mysterious boulder field, eating sour skittles and being very, very hot. The sun had come out in force and what was pleasantly warm when a breeze was going, was horribly
hot otherwise... still, it was an absolutely incredible setting. Machu Picchu has an almost impossible-to-live-up-to reputation. It is stunning, but its also not...how to put this. Its amazing, but not "If I do one thing before I die and it costs me a million dollars, let it be MAchu Picchu" amazing. If that makes sense. We had a really cool day just wandering around, poking in ruined door ways and looking over perilous edges (its really amazing that stupid people dont die there more often...no railings, and limited wardens!), pretending to be tame tame Indiana Jones´s and not feeling pressured to have the MOST INCREDIBLE LIFE-CHANGING experience. I think thats a way healthier way to travel, without expectation and without paying a whit of attention to the poncy people who write guidebooks... you have much more fun that way.
After a lengthy and arduous afternoon tramping about in the sun (there are SO MANY steps) we happily and exhaustedly headed back down to aguas calientes for a much needed pizza and cold drink. we just rested (and argued a lot about politics-dont ask) in the afternoon and...well that was pretty much it. Sid watched a lot of seinfeld on
his iPod which resulted in unnerving snorts of laughter from his bed during amusingly incongruous moments in conversations Liam and I were having... we went out for some hot chocolate and then it was pretty much off to bed...
We got up ridiculously early the next morning (Sid plainly felt that Liam and I had somehow orchestrated this for his personal discomfort-"Time to get up, Sid" "I KNOW!" turns over and goes back to sleep) and schlepped down to the train station, only to discover that there was no train. We waited for a while. Still no train. Sid made smartass comments about certain people being way too keen to get to the train station, and Liam paced irritably and kept wandering down the tracks looking for the train. I wanted to ask someone, but there were very few people about and I really wasnt sure about how I was going to get my meaning across anyway. There were a few other gringos there, all as bewildered as we were. Finally, 5 minutes before the train was due to leave, I walked all the way down the platform until I found an open hostel. I peered in, then asked
the man there "Donde est...train?" He looked at me, at the clock, and even I could understand it when he said, in spanish, "The early train? The one leaving now? thats the OTHER station!" The "dumbass" was implied. I gaped at him for a split second, before legging it back down the platform shouting that we were at the wrong platform. Everyone waiting shot up and away and we pelted (as fast as we could with our heavy bags...) uphill towards the hitherto unknown ´local´ station. STUPID peru. this made Liam and I, fit as we are, nearly die of heart failure and we sat wheezing miserably while everyone else smugly watched us, confident that we had slept late and were idiots. We glared balefully at them all and, perhaps wrongly, felt somewhat vindicated when one of the other (smug git) passenger´s bags fell on their heads halfway to Ollantaytambo. ha.
We got breakfast when we arrived in Ollantaytambo, and decided to see the ruins there. These were a really neat set of ruins, and we enjoyed them as much as we had Machu Picchu if only because the pressure to do so was not as great. They let
Sid and a llama
Sid, apparently boring of the single life abroad, turns to a furry friend for comfort... us keep our big bags in the office at the site, and so we were free to clamber all over in the morning sun. It was really nice; none of us felt any need to rush, so we could sit and look at the view for ages, just being and making fun of the other idiot tourists (a poncy gay couple from Chicago who pronounced all the Incan names wrong and a man taking dozens of pictures of EXACTLY the same rock. over and over again.)
Eventually we needed to get back to Cusco, so we took a taxi and bus back (with a busload of fascinated school kids) and went back to our old hostel...the old lady was VERY happy to see us. Sid was catching the night bus out of there, so we went on the internet, bought a llama sweater (come on, I HAD to), found Liam a scary balaclava with a FACE, bought food for the train and finally, our train tickets leaving for Puno the next morning. We rescued Sid from the internet, and had a final dinner with him before packing him off to Bolivia and the Salt flats, while went to Puno,
Sid´s camera by the inca bridge
thats a huge abyss on the other side... Lima, and then the North Coast beyond...
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Lucie
non-member comment
this is brilliant, and really funny to read. have fun in the galapagos. x