Advertisement
Published: January 29th 2010
Edit Blog Post
We made it to Cusco Wednesday the 20th of January. Cusco is a lovely town and a very nice place to spend a few days or longer. Well, normally. We spent our first day visiting local museums and churches and arranging for tours for the coming days. Our first, the next day, was the City Tour, which visited Inca structures and sites within and immediately surrounding the city of Cusco.
We planned to go from Cusco to Machu Picchu on Saturday and Sunday the 23rd and 24th of January. Many tours are available to go to Machu Picchu from Cucso. Most tours include travelling by bus part way, train part way, and taxi part way. These tours take all of about 9 hours one-way. Another option is to go directly from Poroy Station (10 minutes from Cusco city center) all the way to Machu Picchu Town (Aguas Calientes) by train, which takes about 3 or 4 hours. We decided to take the train, but seats were not available to return Sunday, so we made reservations to go to Machu Picchu Friday the 22nd and return to Cusco Saturday the 23rd.
We traveled by train to Machu Picchu
last Friday (the 22nd of January). We stayed one night. The next day (Saturday) we arrived to the train station at 2:30 for our 3:20 return trip to Cusco. We had arrived to chaos!
In recent days there has been an overabundance of rain in the Cusco region causing landslides, flooding, broken train tracks, and tremendous damage. Peru Rail (the train company) had two comments for hundreds of people waiting and wondering; "we know nothing" and "wait just one little minute". These were the only comments for hours! Eventually we were informed that there was a landslide between Cusco and Ollantaytambo (town and station between Cusco and Machu Picchu). There was one train on the Machu Picchu side of the slide that would transfer passengers to Ollantaytambo (half-way) as long as the remaining track remained secure. The train arrived about 5:30 pm, it was filled with those passengers who had paid the highest fairs (1st and 2nd class) and who were scheduled to leave the earliest that day. We were told our train, which was scheduled to leave at 3:20 was reprogrammed to leave at 8pm. In the meantime more and more passengers were arriving for there scheduled
departures completely unaware of the unfolding madness (a total of 8 trainfuls of humans were scheduled to leave that day). Also in the meantime, Peru Rail has an automated system, which announces the arrival and departure of trains, and which was never turned off, so every couple of hours hundreds of passengers thinking it was their time to leave would storm the doors. Each time the response of Peru Rail was "we know nothing" and "wait just one little minute"!! A final train arrived at 9pm and we made it on after being told to wait at door number 1, then door number 2, then door number 3!!! We were told by Peru Rail that buses were waiting at Ollabtaytambo to transfer passengers to Cusco. We were not told we would need to find the busses, determine which busses were for groups and which were for individuals, and that we would have to pay for this service. We made it back to Cusco at 2am Sunday morning.
There is no way out for apparently thousands of stranded people. And, the situation for the region appears to be getting worse! The rains keep coming, there is flooding, landslides, houses
and bridges crumbled, crops under water, roadways blocked. Nothing but devastation and destruction. As we drove from Cusco to Puno, where we are now, there was so much damage and so much hardship to witness. Homes were under water, some crumbled and drifting away. People were crying in the street or struggling to save their homes, belongings, and livelihood. Furniture and possesions were piled in the streets, which were also beginning to flood. It was absolutely horrible and growing worse.
Well, we are now in Puno. We left Cusco yesterday morning. We learned that there were landslides and flooding in Cusco as well. Unbelievable and horrible! We also learned today that there are more people in Machu Picchu Town than there is available lodging, people are running out of money and sleeping in the street. However, the Peruvian government is working to evacuate the area by helicoptor. This will take time though, there is said to be some 2000 tourists stranded, plus residents, and the helicoptors are said to carry 20 persons at a time. We are certainly fortunate to have escaped the landslides, flooding, etc. for so many days. On a brighter note, we awoke this morning
to sunshine. I hope and pray the sun is also shining upon the Cusco region.
Advertisement
Tot: 0.038s; Tpl: 0.012s; cc: 9; qc: 23; dbt: 0.0174s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.1mb
Marmie
non-member comment
whew!
Whew! Glad you made it out.