Advertisement
Published: September 4th 2011
Edit Blog Post
We rise from our hostel beds at 5.30am and gather our belongings as quietly as we can to avoid disturbing the others sleeping in our dorm. At 6am a taxi us on a twenty minutes journey to the outskirts of Cusco, where grand old trains take passengers through the Sacred Valley towards Machu Picchu; the last hurrah of this leg of our adventures.
For hundreds of dollars we could have opted for a silver-service, Orient-Express like affair through the mountain highlands. We couldn´t afford that but our train is nevertheless fairly grand, it´s vista dome top and leather seats unlike anything else we´ve travelled on here. As it pulls out of Cusco we sit back to enjoy one of the most impressive mountain train journeys in the world.
The train´s wagons meander through the countryside, allowing views of traditional farming life that seem a world apart from the tourist-focused city. We´re chased by dogs, stared at by cattle and bulls, and startle the odd horse. But the hard working Peruvian farmers don´t raise their heads from their toil of the land - they are no doubt well accustomed to these daily interruptions of the huge, noisy capsules which skirt
their fields, carrying people from another world. Their tools seem rudimentary and their bodies contorted through physical labour but the lush greens of their produce, tied in bushells on the backs of their tethered mules, are evidence enough that these people know their land and how to live off it.
The valley path soon narrows as the sheer mountain sides close in on the Urubamba river, to which the train tracks run parallel. The river carries the momentum generated by sharp descents, and it swishes around bends before crashing over the rapids that make it a favourite of the white water rafters. It´s waters become more and more enticing as the sun´s hot rays begin to filter through the train´s glass. This is stunning countryside.
Our first stop, an hour or so in, is at Ollantaytambo - a pretty looking town which serves as the starting point for many of the trekkers. We have decided to go on by train. There are no roads through the next part of the valley. The train pootles on under the watchful gaze of century-old ruins, terraces and fortress that hold strong to the steep mountain sides above. Our destination is the
settlement town of Machu Picchu Pueblo (colloquially known as Aguas Calientes), from where we will ascend early tomorrow to one of the world´s most famous ruins.
Aguas Calientes has exploded messily out of a tourist boom, with scrapily built hostels, restaurants and shops vying for the limited amount of space in the foothills of the surrounding mountains. Alleys rise in all directions from the small square at it´s centre, and it is one of these that we climb in search of our hostel. The locals we ask don´t recognise the name of our lodgings, though plausibly may just not want to see business walking away from their own. But through a mixture of luck and intuition we strike upon it and head for a quick nap. The hostel, like the rest of the town, is heavily over-priced, so we savour our forty winks before heading out to make arrangements for tomorrow´s early morning visit to the ruins.
At 4.30am the next morning we are armed with tickets, passports and packed lunch boxes as we aim to catch the first bus up the mountain. We arrive to find hundreds of similarly eager beavers, and a bus queue which snakes
hunderds of metres up the hill. Luckily, there are also scores of buses, and it is not long before we´re crossing the river and making the 30 minute ascent up the mountain road to the site of Machu Picchu.
A short walk from the drop off point takes us through beautiful views of misty mountain tops whcih are being bought to life by the sun´s early morning rays. Yet they´re nothing compared to our first full sighting of the ruins themselves, which we find opens up over the crest of a hill. We´re immediately struck by the sheer scale of the place. To have built a city of such complexity at 2,500 metres would have surely been a feat of far-reaching vision, of engineering brilliance, and of brute strength. One of those who joined our ¨city¨ tour of Cusco a few days ago was a student of Latin American cultures, and told the tale of how Spanish invaders assumed the Incans to be a backward people, citing the fact that they had not even invented the wheel. Yet more recent discoveries of Incan children´s toys, with wheels, have disproved this view. The truth more likely is that the Incans,
who had no mules or buffalo to pull carts and whose trails, longer than any European road equivalent, typically navigated terrain that no wheeled vehicle could cross. The Maccu Picchu before us is certainly evidence of a sophisticated people.
We have 7am tickets to climb Wayna Picchu, one of the protective mountains that soar high above the citadel, providing a birds-eye view down on to the site. Entry to the mountain is limited to 400 a day - 200 at 7am, and 200 at 10am. From a distance, it´s faces seem sheer and we struggle to imagine how we will get up it without specialist equipment. But there are plenty of others doing the same so we sign ourselves in at the entrance gate, meaning that our absence will be noted should we fail to return, and set off.
Wayna Picchu is not a place for those with even a hint of vertigo. And for those who don´t suffer from vertigo, they are likely to develop it at some point during the trip. It´s an hour´s steep climb and we lose our stomachs a few times by looking over the edge of our narrow path down in to
the abyss below us. There´s not a safety barrier or restriction in sight, which does at least mean that, when we finally reach the top, we´re afforded unlimited views from which to appreciate Machu Picchu below. We´re so pleased to have made it. It´s been a highlight and seems a fitting end to our adventures of some of South America. We will leave with fond memories of exploration, discovery and expansion, and head home ready for new beginnings.
Advertisement
Tot: 0.1s; Tpl: 0.011s; cc: 7; qc: 44; dbt: 0.0501s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.1mb