Machu Picchu or Bust!!

 

Typical street in Ollantaytambu

Laura came to Peru to visit friends. Lili came to Peru for a fun week with friends in a new place. I came to Peru to go to Machu Picchu. And today was the day! I’ve been wanting to get there for years and it was one of those experiences that after seeing so many pictures of it and thinking about it and reading up on it for so long, it almost seemed surreal once I was actually standing there.

Considering that Machu Picchu is THE thing to do in Peru, and what brings most tourists (as well as their money) to the country, you would think that there would be some simple, logical way to get there. And yet, not so much. After talking to lots of people and getting lots of conflicting information about both prices and modes of travel, we decided to figure it out ourselves. Think you could just go to one place to make all the reservations? Nooo, no, no. That would be far too easy and this is South America, after all! We spent Monday morning running around Cusco buying our actual park tickets in one place, our train tickets in another, our bus in yet another…. but we figured it all out and were out of Cusco and on our way by lunchtime.

For not being a kid person, I do seem to find kids in other
countries pretty darn cute 

We took a bus to a town about halfway between Cusco and Machu Picchu that we had been told was definitely worth the stop. The bus in and of itself was an adventure where it was one of those things where you go to the actual bus station to buy your ticket but then some random guy with a van approaches you and offers you a shared ride with others (which seems a tad iffy but I knew was legit from previous experience). So before we knew it we were crammed into a van with 11 other strangers, bouncing along through really lovely countryside. Another amusing sidenote about the buses here: they don’t leave at a set time (nothing here happens at a set time) but they leave when they’re full. So you can get in and leave in 5 minutes, or you could get in one and leave in 45 minutes. Always good to keep a book handy in South America….

My frustration at not being able to pronounce
the town name of Ollantaytambo

 

We arrived to Ollantaytambo (a town name I STILL cannot pronounce properly, no matter how many times Lili quizzes me on it) and spent the afternoon poking around along the cobblestone streets and small aqueducts running through the city. There are also some famous Inca ruins there, which we thought we would just quickly check out since we had some extra time on our hands, only to find out the admission price was MORE than that of Machu Picchu. So, yeah, we’ll hold off til the main event, thank you. We had the worst restaurant experience of our time thus far in Peru, but it was balanced out by offering the best view we’ve had so far. We also had the BEST coffee in Peru and took an unexpected tuk-tuk ride to the train station. Less than 2 hours later and we were in…

 

Look how perky we are at 4 am!

… Aguas Calientes, the town at the base of Machu Picchu and the jumping off point for about a million tourists to get up the mountain. Once Machu Picchu became a huge tourist destination, the town of Aguas Calientes was created specifically to house tourists on their way to the site. So it’s only the train station, hostels, restaurants and shops. And tons o’ tourists. But the second you walk out of the train station, you realize you are entombed on every side with massive mountains that don’t slope, but rather jet STRAIGHT up all around you. We arrived at night and it was momentarily creepy to feel to closed in but it provides a really incredible scene during the day, a tiny little town set in the valley and completely surrounded by such majestic mountains.

Just chillin' with a 6-day-old llama at Machu Picchu.
You know.

Since I’d been waiting so long to get there and since it was my one and only shot, I wanted to be on the first bus of the day to the top, hoping we would be able to see the sun rise while we were up there, and to beat the crowds. So we dragged our sorry butts out of bed at 3:45 am, had breakfast (all hotels there offer breakfast starting at 4:30 as so many tourists do the exact same thing), bought our bus tickets and made the first bus as planned! And we did beat the crowds… but we did not see the sun rise. Doh! The day was super hazy and there was no official sunrise to speak of, it just got kind of gradually light. But, hey, we were in Machu Picchu so all was well!

 

The levels where the Incas grew their crops

There are several theories as to why the city of Machu Picchu was built: for the Incan emporer, as a residence for the noble families in the area, as a place to keep the most beautiful women of the time, or as a religious site. However, most agree that it might have been some combination of all of them: built for Emporer Pachacuti while having religious parts to it, as well as being a residential city and a farming community that supported about 150 or so upper echelon families. It was incredible to walk through the ruins and try to imagine real families living there, not just caricatures of people. To think of couples making homes there, children running around playing in the grassy areas, friends gathering, people working the fields and the community gathering for religious ceremonies.

 

Construction is thought to have started around 1400, but the city was abandoned about 100 years later as a result of the Spanish Conquest. They say that the only reason it still remains is because the Spanish never found the city and so were unable to destroy it, as they did so many other things at the time. In fact, ever since that time it has always been known to locals but only came to global recognition in 1911, when an American historian discovered it and published about it.

 

We hiked up, we hiked down, we hiked through it, we sat for long periods and soaked it all in. We took a coffee break and then hiked up and down some more. We saw houses, religious sites, the fields where they grew the food that kept them alive and the place where they figured out astronomy and how the seasons worked. While I think it’s easy to assume that people from way back when were less smart than people today, I’m pretty sure it’s actually the other way around. To see what they created, the ingenuity they showed with such basic means is actually mind-blowing.

 

We figured that while it was hazy, we would go around and learn things about the different areas and then by the time we were done with that, it would have cleared up and we could take our magnificent, postcard-worthy pictures we had come here for. We waited all morning… and then the haze finally lifted and we could see such amazing things!…. and then it started to rain. A lot. We tried to wait it out over coffee, but no. The ONE day that it has rained steadily here… doh!! But I decided that I was soldiering on and was going to get the most out of my one day at Machu Picchu. So we walked around in the rain and took pictures in the rain and never really got THAT amazing view of Machu Picchu that I had hoped for. And yet I can’t complain because I was still standing in one of the most awesome places that I have ever been in my whole life.

 

We decided that on the way back, we were going to hike down instead of take the bus. So we walked down 2,000 feet and thousands of stairs through the jungle path back down to Aguas Calientes. Despite the points where my legs actually felt like Jello, it was an awesome way to descend from the mountain and something I’m so glad we did.

So while our fellow Americans were back home electing a president, we were hiking Inca trails and exploring the ruins of their amazing ancient city. If you have to miss an election, can’t think of a much better reason to do so!

  

 

 

On the long, beautiful hike down

 

It's preeeetty hard to see, but on the
bottom left, you can just make out the little
town of Aguas Calientes set right smack in the
middle of gigantic and supremely towering mountains