Day 35 – Ollantaytambo and Machu Picchu – Day One

---

Another early start today as we are ready to hit the Machu Picchu express vista dome train at Ollantaytambo Station at 0630. This is sort of a one-car passenger train with big leather seats and holds about 50 people – very nice. We think we had groused about being on the “wrong side of the bus” for photos and sights earlier somewhere in this blog, so we are here to say “THERE IS KARMA!!”The Perurail vista dome is sort of that, as it has long narrow windows along the top of the one-car train as well as side windows, but not like the vista domes we are used to in the U.S. and Canada. Steve and Carol were assigned seats one and two randomly when the tickets were spit out by the Perurail Company back in July of 2012. We showed our passports and tickets to the conductor and were escorted to the very front two seats in the car. Two HUGE picture windows right in front of us, as we are sitting right next to the little engineer’s compartment – Steve went nuts with the cameras so all we can say is we knew it was going to be a great day and enjoy the photos we took! The train winds through a deep canyon with high Andean peaks on either side, and along a FAST, roaring Rio Vilcanota with just amazing rapids of roiling brown water (this is the same river that destroyed everything in 2010) all of the way to quaint macho Picchu Pueblo (AKA Aguas Calientes). Peruvian train drivers are just like their auto drivers – NO Mercy! We saw at least one dog and one rooster disappear under those huge picture windows, and people scatter off the tracks as the train comes roaring along at about 35 MPH, blowing its horn. Great fun if you are IN the train – Not sure about outside the train. However, regarding Perurail…. These guys have it nailed! Spotless train stations, banos and trains, trains run on Swiss/Japanese time, and the staff is all business and super friendly. There are large crews of laborers working alongside the tracks keeping the rain forest vegetation manageable all along the route. We have been extremely impressed by the Peruvian travel system everywhere we go, and it is clear that Machu Picchu is responsible for many thousands of jobs here.



We arrived and were escorted right up the vertical, winding mountain on what we jokingly named the “Road of Death” in a 50-person bus that was pulling three-to-four positive G’s, passing buses going downhill on a one lane dirt and rock road, got our passports stamped with the famous “Machu Picchu” entry and were looking at the “money shot” everyone sees in all of the travel posters and photos with our guide by 1000 hours. Paul, our guide, was a tremendous wealth of knowledge and had studied Machu Picchu’s history for his anthropology degree, so we got the entire other side of our more romantic tours yesterday. He focused on the astronomy, science, mathematics and engineering of the site, as well water delivery and farming methods and the thievery of Hiram Bingham and Yale University, which still has not returned about 70% of Machu Picchu’s artifacts to the Peruvian government. There is more history than one can cover in this short Blog, so we plan to do some serious studying of all we learned today when we return home. As for Machu Picchu itself, it is sort of a dichotomy. Machu Picchu was actually a very small community that housed only about 600 Incas (much smaller than the two sites we explored yesterday), and the main reason for its fame is that when Bingham and his archeologists unearthed the site between 1911 and 1915, it was about 70% of total remnant when essentially swallowed by the jungles. We also learned the Spanish never found the place, and it was wiped out as a jungle entry linchpin of the Inca civilization by a civil war between two brothers (both Inca Kings) in about 1540. The bad side of Machu Picchu is it is so small and so popular, that it is like Yellowstone or Yosemite on HEAVY steroids. There are MOBS of tourists (some with little kids who should never be in a place like this), crowding around, running up and down steep, arrow rock stairs, and generally being obnoxious ass holes everywhere. Thank God we decided to come during the “off season,” as our guide told us the traffic here is only about 40% of the high season. We completed our 2.5-hour tour (yes, the place is that small) and bid our guide adieu, but wait! There’s more! In typical Steve and Carol fashion, we decided to dump the tourista ass holes and go solo back country, so we dug out our handy dandy Machu Picchu trail maps, and hit the trail. We decided to hike the Inca Trail in reverse for about a mile or two, climbing about 1,000’ fairly quickly along a narrow rock path as we passed through the Sun Gate (actual park entrance from the Inca Trail) heading out toward Machu Picchu Mountain, which is about a three-to-four hour hike, round trip. This is the area just after “Dead Woman Pass,” which is the highest point along the Inca Trail coming into the site. Then the brown stuff hit the fan, as a heavy rain began just as we got to our planned turn-around point at the summit, and when it rains here it is like Costa Rica – IT DUMPS! We pulled out the Gortex and began slogging back to the actual ruins site down a steep, slick winding trail along the mountain in drenching rain. We arrived two hours later soaked like a pair of tired dogs everywhere the Gortex did not cover, and sweating and bleeding sun block in the high humidity. It took us another 30 minutes to descend through the actual ruins and get to the front gate, where (thank God for the efficient transport system on and off the mountain) we only had to wait about 20 minutes to a ride back to Machu Picchu Pueblo and our hotel. Steve was REALLY pissed at our travel agent, as he sat in the Jacuzzi in our hotel bathroom, drinking a large iced cold Cusquena Cervesa while reading the latest Tom Clancy novel on his Kindle. Matthew, YOU ROCK!! Each hotel we get to is better than the last. We watched the heavy mist and rain sink into the valley as the lights came on along the river in Machu Picchu Pueblo from inside our hotel balcony and called it a day!

---