Overpriced and Underwhelming

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Arriving in Cusco, I started researching the best way to see Machu Picchu in the time I had available. I wanted to go out on Friday night so saturday was out of the question, and on Monday I was flying to Guatemala, leaving Sunday the only real option. It was around this time the I realised that Machu Picchu was not, as I had thought, just up the valley from Cusco, but just up the valley from Aguas Calientes - a village 4 hours away which has sprung up purely due to the monument and is by all accounts a soulless place.

Unwilling to spend a night there, knowing that if I did I wouldn´t get up at 4am and climb the mountain for sunrise, however strong my intentions, I went to the trainstation to book a day return. To start with, I thought I had misread the price - $73 for a 4 hour trip. But no. The peruvians have clearly realised that they are harbouring a cash cow. I was informed that on top of this price, entrance to the ruins was $40, and the bus up the hill from Aguas Calientes was $6 each way. I was then informed that there were no tickets left for Sunday. The woman suggested that I change my flights (plural - cusco to lima, lima to panama, panama to guatemala) and sightsee on Monday.

Feeling mutinous, I returned to the hostel and booked a full-day tour, setting me back a massive $160. $20 more would have put me on a 4 day trek, had I had the time. I felt totally scammed.

Friday night proceeded as planned (well, almost - I hadn´t planned on lending Tom my skirt for a cross-dressing party but there you go) and Saturday was spent recovering and reminiscing with the rest of the hostel.

When Sunday arrived, i was awash with trepidation - not helped by the fact that the tops of all nearby high peaks were shrouded in cloud. The scenery on the journey to Aguas Calientes was stunning, but once we arrived things were as bad as i´d feared. I was part of an enormous tour group, instructed to follow our guide´s yellow flag at all times. His incredibly broken english, habit of repeating things 3 times, and lack of interesting knowledge (to be fair, the latter probably not being his fault) meant that I soon ditched the group, but it was impossible to avoid the multitude of others littering the site. I had adhered to the restrictions prohibiting food and drink (although I seemed to be the only person who had) and was hot, thirsty and disillusioned. It was the Taj Mahal all over again, although if I had felt annoyed paying $20 to visit that I felt appalled at paying $160 to visit this. I wished I had done my research earlier, and left myself enough time to trek. A pretty disasterous day, but one of my own making.

However, the day was not a total loss. After seeing everything that Machu Picchu had to offer, I set off down some steps, reasoning (quite reasonably, I thought) that they might take me back to Aguas Calientes (the fact that they began inside the grounds, making this exceedingly unlikely, didn´t occur to me until later on). Instead, I found myself on a terraced hillside - like that found inside the ruined city, but overgrown, and - to my delight- deserted. Over the next 2 hours I was able to traverse around, cutting through the jungle at points, and eventually re-entered the site by the exit, feeling that I had done my own (albeit tiny) bit of inca trekking.

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