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Fresh off a 4 day trek, destination Machu Picchu, there is plenty of story to be told...
So Chris and I booked the mountain biking trek last Tuesday and we went shopping around agencies to find the cheapest price. It would probably be more accurate to say the agencies shopped for us considering hordes of Peruvians try and molest you about Machu Picchu information all the time. That might be the most annoying thing about this place, the shameless harassment...it really grinds my gears. Anyways, the cheapest we found was $160, but this more professional looking place was charging $170, so we figured it was probably worth the extra 10 bucks. Liz's Explorers is the name and Liz herself booked the tour for us promising many things. Some of the things included a
PROFESSIONAL, informative bilingual guide (English/Spanish) and transportation back to Cuzco so we'd arrive back before 10 on Saturday. The itinerary was basically as follows
Day 1: Drive to a place called Abre Malaga and downhill bike for 80 km to Santa Maria
Day 2: Walk from Santa Maria to Santa Theresa via Inca Trail then bath in hot springs
Day 3: Walk from Santa Theresa to Aguas Calientes, the base town for Machu Picchu
Day 4: MACHU PICCHU
I wish more than anything in the world I had the sheet that described everything. My spanish isn't great so I don't want to be too critical of someone elses English, but some of the descriptions were out of control. I remember reading something along the lines of "Day 3: Longest day, but coming with much adrenaline. Visit green zone fauna sector with trees and observing wonders natural of the dawn..." It was kind of awesome. That probably should've been our first clue anyways to the shit storm agency that Liz's Explorers really was. So we leave Wednesday morning and get picked up from 7 - 7:15 supposedly.
We didn't get picked up until 8:15 and are told our guides name is Raul. When we get to the mini-bus/giant van, our guides name is Daniel...last minute replacement? Very likely. Anyways, they cram 13 people into a 12 person van and we were off. Our group consists of 2 Israeli's, 6 South Koreans or just "The Korean Team", one French girl who was with the Koreans but not really on the team, and Chris and I. Turns out the Israeli's live in Fort Lauderdale where Chris is from and they strike up some good convo. Aviv and Noa are their names and we ended up hanging out with them for a good portion of the rest of the trip. So we get to Abre Malaga, altitude 4300m, and we're pumped to start but Daniel says we're going a bit further down to San Luis because it's too cold. Ok, that's fine. We pass San Luis and keep going down turning a 80 km bike ride into a 50 km one. We end up having to wait 20 minutes for Daniel while we sit idly on our bikes in the middle of the road getting eaten up by mosquitoes. Waiting for Daniel would soon become a recurring theme of the trek. We finally start and the biking was amazing. Really tight curves and steep roads which turned into gravel path, lots of water crossings, bridges, and oncoming cars and trucks. Overall, it was pretty dangerous and one of the South Koreans ended up falling and needing 10 stitches. Daniel had no idea what to do though so Aviv and Noa had to help her out. What a completely moronic human being he is.
We get to Santa Maria, a very small village and go to a crappy hostel, which was alright because I expected nothing more in a place that small, and spend the night there. At dinner, Daniel gives us instructions about the next day, telling everyone to wake up at 7. Here's a bit of the transcript between Daniel and the group...
Me: So we get up at 7?
Daniel: Yes, yes. Six.
(Korean Team starts freaking out because he just clearly said 7)
Me: Wait...six or seven?
Daniel: Yes, approximately 7, 6.
Chris: What? Do we get up at 6 or 7 Daniel?
Daniel: Exactly, 6...7....6.
This is no exaggeration and it went on for far too long. It also became very clear that day that our guide was not bilingual. I think the 230,000th time he used the word approximately we started to figure out his vocabulary was limited at best.
(NOTE: There is a break in the narrative right here because I traveled to Puno and just finished my 2 day tour of Lake Titicaca before I finished writing this. The details for Machu Picchu will be hazy)
The morning of the 2nd day we get up at SIX and eat so we can leave at the scheduled time. After everyone finishes eating, idiot Daniel strolls in and begins to eat a better and bigger breakfast than we all just ate while we're waiting. I hate him. Second day of trekking was the best by far though, we walked the old Inca Trail and went a bit into the Amazon. Monkies danced wildly all around us, dropping delicious fresh fruits into our laps - mangoes, pears, bananas, papaya - while we lounged in hammocks underneath giant palm trees, swaying gently to the melodious music the native bird the Cantuta was playing for us. It was far out. Lunch on this day was also especially frustrating because once again we had to wait for Daniel to finish eating, lest I mention the fact that it took us 1 1/2 hours to even get seated because the word "assertion" is not in Daniels vocabulary, Spanish or English. Oh, and we ate undercooked spaghetti with a tiny morsel of chicken on top while we stared at the other groups eating delicious beef. By this point the topic of conversation between Chris, myself and the Israeli's was almost entirely centered around our genuine dislike and the general idiocy of our tour guide. Anyways, we finished the hike to Santa Theresa and got settled in. The hostal was very basic once again, having one bathroom for all of us. I got there first and greedily hoarded the toilet seat for about 20 minutes while people sat outside, angrily waiting to pee/poop/shower/any combination of the three, possibly at the same time. I didn't feel bad, when the clock struck 12, it was my birthday...I considered it a present from the group to me. So that night we had a mini celebration at the hostel and caught word of a discotec (club) in the town. We decided to wander over at about midnight. There was a neon martini glass sitting atop the club, obnoxiously present from anywhere in town, and a sketchy truck was sitting outside. We walked in and the entrance was all blacklights with glow in the dark splotches against the wall...hmm? We peeked outside and upon noticing there was NOBODY there, got the hell out. Of course the truck followed us, as any sketchy truck outside a club might, but we managed to make it back to the hostel. Good start to my birth day.
Day 3: Get a nice and seemingly sincere happy birthday from most everyone in the tour group, and we commence to walk the most boring day of the trek. We go mainly along road to a town called Hidroelectrica, about 3 hours away from the base town of Machu Picchu, Aguas Calientes. Here we stop and eat and Chris and I notice a pretty decent soccer field fenced in near a school. We walk down there and ask the teachers if it's okay for us to play. As they say yes, I disregard the notion that it's pretty irresponsible to let little kids play with any strange tourist that walks up, and we have ourselves a match! 4 v 4 turned into 8 v 8 and the little kids loved us. Too bad for me, I had a bunch of pansies on my team with negative athletic ability while Chris had superstar William on his team. Damn William. All in all though it was a good time and we snapped a photo before we left.
The rest of the way to Machu Picchu was via train tracks until Aguas Calientes. Aguas Calientes is the epitome of the tourist industry. Any local who lives there literally lives there only to work for some restaurant, store, or hostel catered for tourists. Everything is overpriced and its about 95%!w(MISSING)hite people. Our hostel was right in the center of a questionable alley, near a construction area...definitely nicer than the other 2 though. As we're leaving to get dinner, Daniel pulls me and Chris aside and tells us we need to pay the difference between an adult and student ticket for Machu Picchu the next day. We had already worked it out with the agency and neither of us had student cards so we had already paid full price. Chris exploded.
Shouts of profanity echoed in the alleyway and Chris' eyes nearly popped out of his skull as he berated Daniel with a whole trek worth of frustration. The whole thing ended with Chris repeatedly saying "ES TU PROBLEMA!". Awesome. It ended up working out and we had a nice dinner where everyone sang happy birthday to me in French, Korean, Hebrew, Spanish (kind of), and English and I got a shower as we prepped for the 4:30 am wake up time for Machu Picchu the following day.
4:30 am came far too quickly.
Only about 1/3 of our tour group decided to walk because you can also take a bus up for $6 - EFF THAT - that's like 17 soles each way. It almost certainly would have been worth it though on the way up. We calculated around 2,500 steps we walked up in about 45 minutes. I ate a banana before we started walking and subsequently threw it up immediately after reaching the top. Who can legitimately say they've thrown up within 100 yards of sacred ruins...? The list is probably short. Chris the asshole tried to get it on video and failed. Finally though, we had reached Machu Picchu.
Walking into the park was definitely anticlimactic because of the thick fog blanketing all the ruins. At the time I would have described it as ethereal, but that's because I wanted so bad not to be disappointed. Our tour guide (this was a new one named Michelangelo - yes, a Peruvian named Michelangelo) told us a lot of very irrelevant information in broken English. I decided about 5 minutes in I wasn't going to tip him, but he wasn't so bad. As the day passed and the tour ended, the fog finally cleared and the ancient power of Machu Picchu finally presented itself.
It really is an incredible place, there's insane views of the mountains on every side of the ruins and the backdrop of WaynaPicchu is breathtaking. I heard people say they were disappointed when they went and I would disagree vehemently - the ruins themselves are enough for the admission, but the location is what really makes it badass. We ended up climbing WaynaPicchu, an hour hike we did in 30 minutes, to get a birds eye view of the ruins - also awesome. All in all, we spent about 7 hours inside the park before heading down. I loved it, Machu Picchu is a MUST SEE in my book.
When we got back Chris and I found out Daniel got everyone else train tickets but us. After some hours rampaging back and forth through Aguas Calientes trying to get our tickets, we finally found them but they were for the train 3 hours after the one everyone else was riding. This would not do as we had decided to celebrate in Cusco when we got back and wouldn't have time with the later train. Somehow it worked out for us to change the tickets and we were in this really weird state of delirious ecstasy for awhile because of our bad fortune turned good. The luck kept coming when we got on the train and our seats didn't exist but somehow we found seats in the other car and when we got to Ollantayambo, we realized they wouldn't have space for us on the bus because we were supposed to be on the later train. Not a problem.
The bus company that was taking us back to Cusco had everyones name written on a white board so people could find their ride. Our entire group was written on this white board, except for our names of course, but I astutely noticed two people that were not responding to their names. Juan Carlos Arinda and Steven Lee. And this is how Andres Bravo and Chris Seber became Juan Carlos and Steven Lee. Besides the snickering of the Korean team almost giving us away, I think the lady generally believed who we said we were. That is until we got on the bus and the real Juan Carlos and Steven Lee showed up...I was panicking pretty hardcore but laughing maybe harder, and somehow the lady didn't call us out.
SWEET.
Cusco that night was ours as we celebrated my birthday, our unbelievable luck, and the succesful trek to Machu Picchu....long live Juan Carlos and Steven Lee. Bravo Out.
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Esther
non-member comment
This sounds like an adventurous few days. My worry is how many times you used the word "questionable". HAPPY BIRTHDAY ANDY