Mission to macchu picchu

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The grand finale to our time in Cusco had to be a trip to Macchu Picchu. However, being Peru's number one tourist destination it is VERY expensive even just to go there for a day trip (the Inca trail was off the cards-booked out until the end of june). There are various rumours circulating amongst gringos about 'sneaky'cheap ways to get there, which we did our best to find out.

Pen received a hot tip from a friendly mexican one night at dinner about a special way of catching the train somewhere other than the 'macchu picchu stop' (she got the name on a serviette-it's a town called Aguas Calientes) and then somewhere else (she got that too). In this way we were planning to deceive the ticket sellers that no, we weren't like all the other tourists on their way to peru's most famous tourist destination, we honestly just wanted to go and hang out at 'Pueblo.'

at the ticket booth insisting in our best spanish that no, we didn't want a ticket for macchu picchu, but for pueblo. pen was doing most of the negotiating actually, and to compensate for her lack of spanish she was experimenting with various intonations on the word pueblo-which didn't seem to make them any less confused. meanwhile i looked up to a poster behind the man and it said ´Aguas Calientes-Macchu Picchu Pueblo´. So it turns out that pueblo is the spanish word for town. whoops. a few laughs, we bought two and off we go.

This all happened in Ollantaytambo. It is a cute little town with some inca ruins set into the hills above it, which earlier that day I decided to explore while Pen rented a hostel room by the hour (tumtroubles). scrambling up a steep and moving slope i made the first ruins pretty quickly, but really wanted to get to these OTHER, higher ones. There was a little boy hanging around who Ì'd seen accompany some other tourists down so, although I didn't really need it, the path to the next ruins wound around some gnarly cliffs so i thought investing a sol or two in a guide wouldn't be a bad idea. It definitely was. a bad idea.

The track he took me on was NOT a track. there was I, scrambling across this quite exposed and steep slope in my tevas, camera in one hand and water bottle in the other. I kept asking 'Camino? Aqui? verdad?'He assured me it was but even he looked a bit started and nervous when two police officers called up something to us in Spanish from below. After getting over my embarrassment of having to ask, I finally said to the little guy 'puedes tomar mi botilla de agua?´ to which he replied that no he wouldn't. hmmmph.

After 10 mins of this I'd had enough (I had grabbed a cactus plant on a point of off-balance at one point and still have three spikes in my left thumb) so I went down on my own. i still paid him 3 soles.

Macchu Picchu was AMAZING!!! definitely worth the trip.

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