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Published: July 17th 2017
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Saturday
Off on the train to Machu Picchu, rather later than intended due to the teachers from Cuzco apparently demonstrating on the railway line. We were three hours late arriving at Machu Picchu due to the industrial action by the Teachers. We were concerned that we may not be in time to visit Machu Picchu as we arrived at 15.15 and the site shuts at 17.30. However our guide assured us we would still get a good visit and the site was staying open until 18.00 for that day. We left our luggage with the hotel staff and rushed off to get one of the 26 busses which shuttle to and from the Inca site. The bus ride itself was quite an experience as the 'road' rises 400 meters by zig zagging up the mountain side, much of it is single track so reversing when meeting an oncoming bus was a little worrying. The site was, as anticipated, awe inspiring. Our guide was excellent and gave us lots of interesting facts. After a thorough tour of the terraces, complete with llamas, and the ruins he took us back down and showed us to our lovely hotel where we had a
splendid dinner. We were recommended to aim for a bus fairly early the next day as the queues can be tremendous. The busses start running at 05.30 but people often start waiting from about 04.00.
Sunday
We arrived at about 07.00 hoping the the first rush might have died down a bit. We waited an hour which wasn't too bad. At breakfast one of the waiters said they had brought in over 100 police due to the demonstration which had delayed the trains the day before. While we were waiting for the bus we saw many riot police around the town. Machu Picchu is about 1,000 meters lower than Cuzco so we all felt quite well. Our aim was to start the walk to the sun gate and see how we got on. It was slightly chilly when we left but by the time we started walking the sun was blazing and it was very hot. Our guide from the day before said that the view from the halfway ruins was just as good as the view from the Sun Gate itself. We decided halfway was fine in the heat so headed back for a bus. There was no queueing for the return trip and we were back in the village at about 11.30. We headed for the nearest bar with a lovely view over the river and all enjoyed a g and t! Just as we finished our drinks the main celebration for the festival of the Virgin de Carmen left the station, they walked up the railway track in wonderful coloured outfits with much accompanying music. We went out to take photos and were then shooed rapidly off the tracks before we were mown down by an oncoming train. We headed back to the hotel to visit the orchid walk and see the fabulous humming birds. It's not really the season for orchids but the walk and flowers were lovely. As we has missed our lunch yesterday which was included in our tour we were offered lunch in the hotel today. We took this in the smaller restaurant, which we had to cross the railway track (no bridge - just walk over the tracks!) to reach . The restaurant was delightful and inbetween the two rail tracks, which we thought were pretty quiet when we walked over, however there were quite a few trains each side, they weren't noisy, although we did feel rather like the passengers were joining our table for lunch!
We trotted off to the station to catch our train, it was absolute chaos. There was a screen which I assumed was designed to show train arrivals and departures, but it was not working. After quite a bit of discussion with fellow travellers and staff we queued up for what we hoped was our train. At embarkation we discovered that it was not going to our final destination Poroy near Cuzco and would terminate at Ollantaytambo, due to the teachers strike! Eventually Keith was able to speak to our tour operator representative on the telephone who assured us they would have a car waiting to take us to Cuzco, where our luggage had already been sent to. Getting out of the small town of Ollantaytambo with all the other displaced passengers was also chaotic and it took us ages to get out the car park and even longer to leave the town through the small streets. We arrived at our hotel about 20.30 rather tired and dishevelled. The hotel was a very pretty 18th century mansion with attractive open courtyards, unfortunately it was rather cool and our long awaited shower was disappointingly tepid.
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