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Published: June 27th 2010
Well, the group made it happen. With lots of planning, more modes of transportation in 3 days than I have ever used and the most incredible sight I have seen in my life, we visited Machu Picchu this weekend with a little foreign weekend getaway! With of course lil hiccups and funny situations along the way as usual.
Note: I had been REALLY REALLY sick all week, and it was questionable for me to even go—up until about an hour before. My sister and I’s quote to each other was the defining factor “You have no sense of adventure.” Kind of a reverse psychology that gets us to buck up and GO! 😊 It worked, and I am forever going to thank her for that!
We began our adventure from La Paz on Thursday evening with a private micro bus that would take us to the border of Bolivia and Peru. Those tiny little vans are always a joy ride, but we always seem to be blessed with the best of drivers. This guy saw that I was a little uncomfortable, pulled over and shoved a piece of paper in the door to block the sun from my eyes! Just thoughtful.
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Plaza in CuzcoWe made it to the Peruvian border by 6:30pm, which is not a lot of time to spare since it closes at 7:00pm. We joked Peru was going to be lame since they close so early-SO not the case. We did a little sketchy migration/passport/stamp/visa business and symbolically (I do not joke here) walked across the border in a single file line to Peru. This was across a small bridge with a banner sign-Welcome to Peru! We step onto the Peru land and life was NUTS. Little mobiles of a bike seat and wheels but with like a wheel-borrow back-end thing- zooming around EVERYWHERE, screaming at us to SCRAM. Lucky enough to have our next driver lined up and ready for us right on the other side of the bridge. This van was a little more swanky, rightfully so since we took it a good 5 hours into Cuzco, Peru. This was late into the night and after stopping to eat and with small traffic situations-we arrived at our hostel at 3:00am. This sick girly was out.
Friday was Cuzco tour day! We arose from a short slumber (seems to be a theme of these weekend trips-LOVE IT) and dominated
the city. Cuzco really excited me! It is a beautiful city, very clean and bright, much warmer than La Paz and full of energy. There was a beautiful Plaza we spent some time in that reminded me of a European Plaza surrounded by historical cathedrals. There was even an art fair we hit up (What up what up—good souvenirs coming your way!)
We had some extra time, so decided to hitch taxis up to Saqsiwoyman (yes-pronounced similar to “sexy woman”) this was a land filled with Incan Ruins and stunning vistas of the city. Immediately we were talked into doing the tour on horseback. Not too hard with excited American Tourists. QUITE the experience. I told the man, “having stomach issues, PLEASE give me a nice/calm horse,” he assures me-this one is like a donkey, VERY nice. Must have been something in the air that day because this horse/donkey would not stop running! The combination of my already sickness and my anxiety of being on such large animals really did wonders for the stomach. “Reina” did settle down towards the end, and it was a surreal afternoon, trotting through the hillsides/jungly forests of Peru on horseback! 😊
Directly from our
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The Peruvian I was chatting with here told me lots of kids buy wheat to feed the pigeons horseback riding we hopped a train to Aqua Calientes (the closest town to Machu Picchu) which was only a little over an hour ride. I forget how much I love trains. This mode of transportation is HIGHLY underestimated and under-used in the US. So smooth and soothing (same thing? Meh)
We arrived not too far off the ETA, and here is one of the coolest parts of the weekend. The crowd outside the exit, waiting for all the train passengers with their signs, had a sign that read “SARAH CRAMER.” AHHHH DREAM COME TRUE! I tipped the man I was so excited.
He led us across this fern gully wooden bridge, through a quaint plaza, up a cobblestone alley to our hostel. It did remind me of a walk in a romantic comedy movie... We had a big day planned for Saturday, and had NO problems hitting the hay.
Saturday, one of the grandest days of my life.
Alarms went off at 3:30am, and we were out to the bus line by 4:00am. We were told; people take this seriously and wake up very early to catch the first bus at 5:30am, and to be in the first wave of
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Looking sickly holding a lil baby lamb climbers for Waynupitchu. Well, we may be those intense people they warned us about because we made it within the first 50 people. Then it was a waiting game. As Shu and I were sitting on the curb, 2 girls from England come up and ask “is this the line for the bus tickets or the Machu Picchu tickets?” Confused on the difference, we stuttered out machu picchu-then looked at each other and at the same moment figured out, we had not purchased bus tickets (for Machu Picchu that is, we had a COLLECTION of bus tickets in fact) Thankfully, we had a healthy group of 6, so we split-3 in the bus ticket line and 3 stayed in the bus-bus line. Timing didn’t quite match up and about 100 people had to pass us, which still got us in the first wave-just a little bit of a stressful scramble.
The shuttle wound and wound and wound and wound up and up and up and up. This was now about 6:00am and the sun was coming up in-between all the surrounding mountains. The only way I can describe the sight is like a screensaver or poster or something. Absolutely majestic.
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Brazil FAM club :) get it? We arrived at the park, got stamped and let in! I saw Machu Picchu and WaynuPicchu behind and started to tear up. I know this doesn’t say much since I cry during commercials, but I just had never ever never ever ever never seen ANYTHING like this. You could multiple the beauty of the Mississippi bluffs in autumn by a million and maybe get close? Simply incredible. Pictures don’t mean anything, this is a must see for everyone!
We decided to go straight through Machu and hike the Waynupicchu. They only let 400 people per day hike this mountain, and 200 in 2 waves. We made the first one which was good since it was not in the heat of the day and headed out by 7:45am. It was the most intense hike I have ever done (I keep referring to THE MOST in MY LIFE sort of situations, it is the only adequate, epic, description) At points in the climb we would be taking steps straight up (like a ladder almost) and then we turn the corner and BINGO a bamboo ladder to climb! Other points would be so steep you would have to hoist yourself up using the
guide wire. It was SUCH a fun morning, playing the rock climber. Brother Joe-this beats our rock climbs in South Dakota by a little bit haha
Can’t really describe the feeling of satisfaction and the magnificent view once reaching the top. It is something I won’t ever forget! We sat at the tip top rock for a very long time…TRYING to grasp where we were, and what we had just done. Eventually we got pushed to the side since other climbers were making their way to the top. We decided to take the longer way done the mountain to see the Caverns. (All I heard was they were historical living quarters on Waynupicchu) and it was a descent…all that mattered. I actually found this harder than the climb up! I really had to watch where I stepped; one wrong footing and it could be bye bye picchu. The trail did take us to the caverns, which offered another really awesome view from the mountain and a neat little cave home, however descent-not necessarily true. After the caverns, the trail took us back UP and THENNNNNNN down. I feel as if I essentially dominated Waynupicchu as a whole now 😊 we
were back to the main area of the park by 1:00pm, starving and thirsty. Tourist trap, they only had one option for the un-prepared picnic hikers, a $33 USD buffet. I didn’t blink twice; I needed food, and finally had an appetite. Let me just say, this was THE BEST buffet! I don’t know if it was because we were all so hungry or if the food was so delectable, but we spent a good 2 hours eating---and then curled over in balls from eating so much! Another wave of satisfaction feelings. My favorite=Chicken lasagna! Totally going to Rachel Ray that stuff and see if we can have anything similar!
We headed back out and explored the MachuPicchu Park up and down. Laid in the grass with the roaming llamas, walked in the maze of stone formations. We saw the fountains, towers, agricultural area, sun dial (a rock that was the first way of telling time!) caves, etc. My luck ran out, and camera battery died throughout this exploration, so not all are included in pictures. I don’t think there would ever be a good enough time to leave this place, but the exhaustion of getting up so early started
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Oh Reina...we just didn't communicate well to set in. We closed the park with soft serve ice cream and enjoyed the weaving ride back to Aqua Calientes. I probably had a goofy little grin on my face the entire way. The day left the MOST satisfying feeling I have ever had.
We hit the town with some time to spare before our train left back to Cuzco where we would be staying the last night. We were walking through the plaza to our hostel and there were 2 little Peruvian boys playing soccer. The ball went between Natalia and I, and well...couldn’t pass up a pick-up game! This was SOO much fun and SOOOOO funny. Natalia and I were the goalies (we were appointed the position by our 6-year old captains) but the game got pretty popular! Little boys from every angle of the plaza joined. This was right in front of a small church, I felt bad people were trying to take pictures and then would get pelted with the ball…
I think I did a pretty good job being goalie, my shins started to burn from stopping the ball, and one of the little boys would come over and rub my shins after I
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The horses grazing...as we took a break stopped the goal haha-so adorable! They gave us kisses as we left and a high-five.
Now, extremely exhausted we went to the train station to wait for our 9:00pm departure. This travel group of mine may or may not be cursed with delays. There were at least 4-known departures trying to get organized and leave this station. The 7:00pm train for our railway was delayed until 12:00am, and once we heard that we figured there was no hope of ever leaving. But then it turned into what I like to call a foreign fiasco. I had tears in my eyes I was laughing so hard. Quite an entertaining situation. There were about 300 people or more in the waiting station area with glass windows to see the trains coming in. The workers were outside the windows with notebook sheets of paper-slamming up against the windows different numbers of trains that would be loading next. They kept changing every 5 minutes, and instead of waiting for an announcement, people were going CRAZYYYY!!! At one point (and this is the point I was laughing hysterically) I see: a Spanish woman yelling going on and on about how this is ridiculous, this is
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The first sight stupid, she has a plane to catch, something else about her cat (while no one is even next to her or listening to her), a choir group from Liverpool singing Coombaya, a couple making out, a Dad struggling with a stroller around a bench corner-with a baby in it, gets frustrated enough to pick it up and carry this thing OVER his head, a rando teenager playing a wooden flute (horribly), and then a super confused elder American couple who are trying to figure out what train they are EVEN on and where they need to go next. I sit there thinking, how LUCKY I am to be seeing all this. I think I was probably the only one laughing in the station. I digress. Long story short-we get on a train by 1:00am (All the delays were due to an earlier de-rail that actually killed 3 people that day). I nabbed a dinner-class cabin with 2 extremely nice French siblings. One of my favorite things about traveling is meeting the people and hearing their stories!! Extremely interesting. We got to Cuzco by 3:30am and thankfully we had a bus driver waiting for us to bring us STRAIGHT to the
airport for our flight at 9:00am. We nixed the hostel since we would have only gotten a few hours before we would have had to get to the airport. It was nice to be able to sit and just wait for ONE MORE, QUICK, transportation. Our flight actually got delayed by an hour-but that was ok since the England vs. Germany game was on. (Odin...I would be embarrassed if I were you)
Safe and sound back in La Paz. First time I have slept through a complete landing!
Sadly, this was our last weekend adventure, and we all agreed it was the BEST finale trip we could have asked for!
Love from Bolivian Bear
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Steph
non-member comment
WOW!
LOVE THE PICTURES!!! I can't believe you went to Peru and saw Machu Pichu... this is a dream of mine! You always seem to find adventures along the way so I don't believe you are ever at risk of loosing your sense of adventure since it finds you. I especially loved the picture of you senior posing with a lama... I couldn't help singing "Mary had a little lamb..." at that picture. What a trip........ :)