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Published: November 10th 2010
Welcome to blog number 17, can you believe it!?!? It is day 39 of our trip, but this is just going to include days 37-38...but a big two days it was!! Here goes.....
Day 37, it's a Sunday morning, and we're ready to go to leave Cusco at 6:50am to catch the 7:45am train to Aguas Calientes. This little town is a 4 hour train trip through some amazing scenery through the Sacred Valley and finally arriving at the access point to Macchu Pichu. (Said "Picktu" otherwise it means 'old balls' instead of 'old mountain!!') There were numerous mountains with glaciers on top as we travelled from 3600m above sea level to 2300m above sea level. It was a long, hot but very enjoyable trip as we entertained ourselves with the other tour members with us. The train does this amazing thing as well, where the mountain gets to tight at corners, so it changes tracks. Not amazing in itself, but the fact the new track is about 10m below the old one is cool. We stop, then start travelling backwards on a new track. Before we know it, we have travelled down to be level with the new track, and
then we continue forwards again. Very surreal being able to see the track you are about to be on from above!! 😊
We arrived in Aguas Calientes at about lunchtime so we checked-in to our hotel (with a very make-shift roof!!) and headed out to find something to eat. Because the town is on a hill, and we were up the top, we walked all the way down, passing numerous restuarants, before choosing one. They didn't manage to serve us in time, so we up and left and headed BACK up the hill to another little place with a great view over the beautiful stream splitting the town. A nice chicken burger later, we ventured into the handicraft markets (not meaning to buy anything) but ended up coming out with a Paraguay (yes, we didn't get one there!! forgot!!) magnet and a Macchu Pichu magnet. It's quite fun bargaining, but when you realised you only really took off AUD$1, it's not much!! 😊 We had a peak at the hot springs available, but as we had been told they are quite dirty, we decided to chill out in our hotel room watching sport (Mischa as always), doing puzzle books and
playing cards. (that reminds me, going to search for a number of 2-player card games!! UNO gets a bit tiresome after the 17th round!)
Dinner came and went at the hotel right next door with the normal meal, pizza and chicken, and decided to burn off some of the amounts of food we had by walking down the hill....you have to come up.... We have found another very nice entree-sort-of-thing, an avocado stuffed with chicken, potatoes and numerous other vegies. Very nice...We made it down the hill and found a nice place for a hot chocolate and dessert!! (There goes the burning....) We had a great view out onto the plaza, where there were close to 50 kids playing volleyball (not all at once!!). We watched and were amazed at the amount of skill shown by these students of about grade 5-9!! Dig, set, spike, every time, with force, including jump serves!! The net was just a make-shift net set up on the concrete, but the kids loved it, and we enjoyed it too!! Dessert was nice with a lemon meringue (yes yes...) for Mischa and a Peruvian dessert for Jess. It was like a three milk vanilla cake, quite
nice but very strong!! After that, it was time to walk BACK up the hill to bed!! We were planning on getting up at 4:30am to get on an early bus up to the top so as to get a ticket to also walk up a very steep hill called Huayna Pichu. Jess fell asleep, Mischa decided to get hooked on watching Oceans 13 til 11:30....stupid man!! 😊
Yesterday started much earlier than anticipated!! A VERY STUPID, LOUD and ANNOYING rooster decided to start crowing at 3am!!!! For 2 hours!!! Lucky we had set the alarm for 4:30am so it wasn't TOO bad, but holy moly, we wanted chicken for breakfast!! We did make it up at 4:30am, had a quick brekky at the hotel, before catching the bus up to Macchu Pichu. There was a line, can you believe it, for the 1st bus that left at 5:25am, so we made it on the 7th bus and were then met with another long line at the entrance to Macchu Pichu. We did make it in by 6:15am though, which got us the ticket up Huayna Pichu (they only give 400 out a day in 2 one hour slots!!), and
a fair few photo opportunities without loads of people in the shot!! Enjoy...
Mischa managed to read the time wrong, so we sat around for an hour waiting for our group to arrive, but it was quite nice, cause we ended up doing a HECK of a lot of walking!! When the Inka Trail guys finally made it, it was 8:30, and we started our walk around tour of Macchu Pichu with Raymer, our guide, by 9am!! It is such a HUGE place, the amazing thing about this ruins compared to all other Inca ruins being that it is all in the one area!! A big area at that!! There is the farming, the religious, the living (houses) and the storehouse areas all in the one place. We walked through the Sun Temple, to the Sun Dial, the house of probably the richest Inca, and saw areas of meeting places. There was sooo much information, but a lot of 'legends' as well. It was very interesting, but by 10:30am we were finished and had time to just make our slot of 10-11am to start the walk UP Huayna Pichu!!
Now, when I say up, I mean 1hr of continuous walking
up hill, well continuous stair climbing, at angles above 60 degrees most of the time. We climbed 400m above Machu Picchu, and Jess almost died. She did say half way up that even though her heart was racing, her lungs screaming for air and having a dizzy head that she was enjoying it but as it got to the 3/4 mark she had to stop for a good 10 mins to try and revive herself! Lucky though, as the last 1/4 is the hardest, almost rock climbing on your hands and knees, being at a very very high altitude with no barriers or hand rails and then having to climb through the smallest of holes in a cave to reach the very top... All in all, we accomplished the challenge and the view was very rewarding! Tess made it all the way too but we didn't actually capture her up there (sorry!). Jess said that she felt like she had hiked the Inca trail and we were still yet to go down...
The guys from our group that did the hike were telling us about one of their porters who's dad holds the record for completing the Inca trail in
the shortest amount of time (3 hours 45 mins), the porter himself did it in 3 hours 48 mins, these two passed us climbing Huayna Picchu, they were running it, like it was a warm down after the trek!!! CRAZY!!
There were a couple of guys from our group that did the Inca Trail and Huayna Picchu, they were extremely fit and climbed up in about 28 mins, and then down in only 8 mins... Mischa would've liked to join in on the run but he was a gentleman and looked after his wife (made sure she didn't fall off the mountain!). The most hilarious part of it all was when we were resting at the bottom. Rob and Greg (both Poms) had taken off their shirts, baring very white chests and this Peruvian woman asked if she could have her photo taken with them, soon enough there was a queue of Peruvian women lined up to have their picture taken quickly followed by a school group of at least 30 kids who joined in on the fun! The rest of us were all gob-smacked and rolling around laughing, hilarious!! We slowly (as quick as we could) walked back to
the main entrance and caught the bus back down to Aguas Calientes for a bite to eat and a little relaxation time before our train departure at 5:03pm. We spent a total of almost 8 hours at Machu Picchu, a great day!
The train trip back to Cusco was not very interesting as it got dark quite quickly and then there was nothing to look at execpt the people opposite you. Jess quickly fell asleep for an hour while the rest of the group laughed and joked all the way back. We finally made it into our hotel room and into bed by 10:30pm, and were out quicker-than-you-can-read-this!! 😊 Enjoy....
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Cheryl
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Aren't you glad you're so fit
What an amazing place. Glad to hear that Mischa is such a loving, thoughtful husband!