The machu Picchu adventure begins in cusco. In cusco, you walk down this street and duck into an alley where folks are taking collective groups to ollyanta, where we stayed last night, to catch a train to Aguas calientes from where you catch another bus to the top of the mountain. Now you can hike up the mountain, but you are just walking along side the road. What fun is that?
I think the most comical parts of our trip has centered around the public transportation. I suppose it is because so often we are doing the tourist thing and are staying at hostels where there are only travelers. But the bus rides are truly a trip. So we jump in this 'colectivo' kept in this alleyway for a ride to ollantaytambo. We load our things in and the guys tells us we have to wait for 2 more. Those peruvians, they will shove as many in as they can. So this older lady gets in, and she has her son, Alberto, coming also, but he's not here yet. Oh but we can meet him down the street. The driver starts to pull out and in typical Peruvian sense, blocks all lanes of traffic for a few minutes ( ya know, he was trying to make his own lane). So we start down and she spots Alberto walking. So she tells the driver who in turn honks the horn and she's just kind of getting flustered and telling Alberto to hurry, but I doubt he can here her. Oh and mind you, that she has also now opened her lunch in the cab, and were not tAlking a sandwich; it is a full on bowl of rice and meat and some other stuff which of course is filling the taxi with it's scent. So Alberto starts running down the road, and albertos not a little guy, jumps in the cab out of breath and were off. We drive through this one part of cusco, that i didn't know, where the people are selling food left and right on the street. And by food I don't mean street vendors; I mean men with whole dead pigs on there backs just takin it home for dinner.
So the whole ride is filled with la señora talking on the phone (and being very opinionated on the phone), Latino radio, little Convo between Alberto and his mom, and the mom forcing the food towards Alberto "come más Alberto. Come más!" which Alberto keeps trying to refuse but mom is not allowing. I think the topper of the ride was when her phone went off again and the ring is this dreadful, screeching noise, to which she responds "¡O mi cuy!". Cuy is guinea pig, a fine delicacy that you find all over peru. And that was what the ring was: a screech of a cuy; at this point the whole taxi burst into laughter.
We stayed the night in ollantaytambo in a very nice hostel filled with cats, which of course Megs loved and I hated; but other than that it was a pretty nice hostel complete with hammocks on their rooftop. It was actually a pretty ideal hostel except for the fact that it is in Ollantaytambo which has nothing going on.
We are catching the train at 8:30 the next morning, a train that we cannot miss. So what do we do? The fearless leader, that would be me, turns on an old alarm setting from school for 6:30. Problem is this alarm is set for weekdays and it's Sunday. Yep we oversleep. Yes, I know, good job kaelyn. I wake up at like 7:50 and wake Megs up. We scramble and throw all of our stuff in our packs, pay the doña downstairs and speed walk to the train station. We arrive at 8:20. Nice. Just enough time to grab an empanada and a café para llevar from a nearby café. Packs loaded, empanadas eaten, coffee sufficiently eaten and we are on our way again. About 2 hours later, after a very scenic bus ride, we get off at Aguas calientes And make our way to the cultural center to buy tix to enter mp.
At the center, I was once again thankful that my spanish is so good. I get up to the counter, ask the man for a ticket, hand him my passport, and now he's just staring at me. So I ask him how much for a ticket.
"ciento sesenta soles(160)"
"¿Ciento qué?"
"¡SESENTA! Ciento sesenta soles"
So I'm standing there thinking to myself, I knew mp was expensive but I thought it was around 120 soles, not 160 soles. So I fumble with my wallet and look around. There's a sign that says adult 126 soles. So I look at the man behind the counter and ask why it was not 126 soles. Oh yes thats what I said 126 soles... Right buddy.
So almost there at this point. Now just to buy the bus tickets, which we don't know where the station is. Awesome. Another 10 minutes of wandering and asking we get to the ticket booth. $15 ... Wait ... You want me to pay in dollars? I only have soles! Aren't we in Peru? I look in my wallet. Phew....I have a 20 and a handful of ones. I hand the teller the 20; she looks at it and points to a minuscule tear in the corner, shaking her head. Crap! No one will take this flipping 20 due to that tear. So I look at her and ask if I can pay in soles. ¡Claro que sí! Well how would I know that?? All of your signs are in English and are presented in dollars.
Oh life on a bus...
So bus tickets in hand, we load up, packs in lap and ride the hour long, bumpy, windy road to mp.
Shockingly it has been raining and super foggy in cusco these past few days. I had high hopes that we would climb high enough and surpass all the gnarliness. I was wrong. My trip to mp was encased in fog. Though it gave it a pretty awesome eerie effect. But it definitely limited my photo ops. I still got some awesome shots and Megs and I walked this trail that was absolutely amazing. What I love about this country is that their sense of protection for dangerous situations is so lax. For example we are walking this tiny windy trail, a couple thousand feet up, and there's just the edge. No guard rail; no blockade. It's as if they are saying if your dumb enough to get that close to fall, you're dumb enough to die. There are rooftop terraces in all the hostels with again no wall to secure anyone. But who cares? if you fall, it's your own dumb-ass fault. They are not out to protect those with a lack of common sense. And I love it.
—La gringuita
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