July 6-7: Machu Picchu

The buses weren’t running to Quillabamba last night so Helen spent the night at my hostel and we both woke up early for the 8am bus. We weren’t actually going all the way to jungle-bound Quillabamba but planned instead to take the bus to Santa Maria, a small town along the way. The woman at the terminal said that although the road was open, there was a big pile of rocks and we would have to walk around. Or at least this is what I understood from the conversation. There was in fact a construction zone dividing the road into two parts and everyone had to get off the bus with their luggage and hike for half an hour through the jungle to meet up with a second set of buses on the other side. Entrepreneurial Peruvians had set up shop at the end of the hike and there were pots of rice and beans and chicken to greet folks emerging from the undergrowth.

It took us about six hours all told to reach Santa Maria. From there Lonely Planet recommends finding Lorenzo’s Lodge, hiring a guide, and catching the 3am collectivo to Santa Teresa. Instead a group of about eight intrepid backpackers had convened on the tiny Plaza De Armas in Santa Maria. We waited for hours for the collectivo to show up. The women in the bodegas across the street kept telling us “Yes, it’s coming. Soon.” Helen and I ate cream crackers and bread (which had pretty much been our diet all day) and drank the ubiquitous San Luis water (bottled by Coca Cola, who else?) that we had brought from Cuzco.

When the collectivo finally showed up at Santa Maria, they didn’t want to take us on the two hour ride up the mountain. It was too late at night, the driver said, and he wouldn’t be able to find a fare who wanted to go back to town. Instead the two Argentines in our little group hired the car for 20 soles apiece and we found three other extremely drunk Peruvian men who were also heading up that way. As sunset descended over quiet little Santa Maria, our Toyota minibus went hurtling up the mountain in what was rapidly becoming pitch blackness.

Any kind of taxi ride in Peru is an adventure of the hair-raising type. Only the especially lucky (or adventurous… or stupid) get ones over unpaved roads along the edges of cliffs. We sped through banana trees and bushy shrubbery covered in road dust, we forged streams fed by cliff waterfalls, and we clung desperately to the backs of the chairs in front of us for fear of going straight over the edge.
By the time we got to Santa Teresa it was only 8:30pm but it felt like midnight. Everyone was dirty and exhausted and starving. The collectivo dropped us off on the main street and we accepted the housing of the first woman who offered up her hostel. It was as basic as basic gets. One cold water shower (no thank you), and dorm beds for three women in a cinderblock room. (Helen, me, and a Korean girl we met at the Cuzco bus station). But it was by far the cheapest accommodation I used in Peru at just 7 soles a night. We immediately went out for a good lomo saltado dinner (beef and potatoes served over rice) with a palta (avocado) salad and limonada. The meal tasted like heaven.

Mario and Valerie (the Argentines we met in Santa Maria) met us at the restaurant and we all hired a cab (who was actually making the rounds at the restaurants in town) for the next morning to pick us up at 5:30am. I crashed out in the hostel immediately and before I knew it, Helen’s alarm was beeping in the morning.

The cab took us to the hydroelectric station where we would begin our walk to Aguas Calientes. It is possible to walk from Santa Teresa to the power station but it seemed a bit dodgy and Helen wanted to get to Machu Picchu as early as possible. So the cab took us through more jungle and over more rivers and eventually dropped us off where the Peru Rail train tracks end and where the six of us headed down the tracks. The instructions aren’t that specific in Lonely Planet for this roundabout way to Machu Picchu. You actually have to exit the train tracks from the power plant. There were some yellow signs that said “Train Exit” and some Peruvians by the railway told us that we had to walk up to a second set of tracks to actually get to Aguas Calientes. After a bit of a climb, we found the right set and headed off.It was actually quite peaceful as we walked along. The jungle surrounded us on all sides and we kept running into small huts and stores set up along the train tracks, even though the train doesn’t stop between the power plant and Aguas Calientes. At some point a dog rushed at us from someone’s house and growled menacingly. That felt like the most dangerous thing that happened to me in Peru, other than wandering around Lima. Finally we saw a tiny ruin up in the mountains and knew we must be getting close.

A little yellow train car, probably for maintenance or for track switching or something, passed us on its way to the power plant and a few hours later, on its return trip, the engineer stopped and offered us a ride to Aguas Calientes. Although it would probably only have taken another half hour of walking, we all jumped at the chance to ride this weird little car into town. He dropped us off a few hundred feet from the train station so he wouldn’t get in trouble for giving illegal rides.

Aguas Calientes is quite a shock to folks who have been bussing it through South America for the last one, six, or nine months. The town is set up as a vehicle for the thousands of people who come to see Machu Picchu and is named after the unappetizingly brown hot springs at the northern end of town. The infamous ruins themselves are but a short bus ride up the mountain, much to the chagrin of folks who spend four days walking the Inca Trail. I somehow expected the ruins to be remote and difficult to reach, like an actual Lost City of the Incas. Instead a tourist bus complete with plush seats and air-conditioning drives up the mountain where it drops you off at a Disneyland entrance complete with overpriced food and drinks.

Although we had woken up early and sped through Aguas Calientes as fast as we could, it was 10:30am by the time Helen and I reached Machu Picchu. The weather luckily was gorgeous. The sun beat down brutally on the mountaintop broken by puffy clouds in the blue sky. The guard at the gate told us that Wayna Picchu, a smaller mountain than Machu Picchu at the back end of the ruins with a good uphill hike and gorgeous panoramas, had already met its quota of 400 people for the day. But as we started wandering around the ruins we ran into a tour guide who told us that the gate guards always tell tourists that the mountain is closed, even if it’s not necessarily true. After a speed walk through the ruins, we reached the far end in about twenty minutes to discover that the guards actually let 430 people up in the high season. Unfotunately, they had already let 434 people up that day. It took a little bit of begging and pleading but Helen and I managed to be Number 435 and 436. It’s right there in the registry, under July 7, 2007. It was hot and sweaty work climbing up the mountain with its very steep stairs, but the views from the top were spectacular. We could see the Rio Urubamba and the train tracks we followed into town, along with the ruins themselves (supposedly in the shape of a condor, though I don’t see it at all).Speaking of 7/7/07, there was a worldwide internet vote for the New Seven Wonders of the World that day. While the voting practice itself might be a little suspect (think HotOrNot.com for the world traveler), Machu Picchu was officially voted in the day that I was on top of the mountain. We saw some newscast people at the ruins but the real party was down in Aguas Calientes, where we heard there was a big celebration in the Plaza with music and dancing. Back in Cuzco they put up giant paper mache statues and had newscasts declaring Peru’s great triumph.

The ruins themselves were lovely. Much of it was reconstruction, but there was plenty to explore. There was a large industrial/ residential sector, lots of agricultural terracing, and the more famous Sacred Plaza with several temples and an astronomical tower with an Intihuatana on top. The Intihuatana is a distinctive Incan stone carved a certain way with strange protrusions found in Incan temples. The Peruvians I met attributed a variety of magical powers to these odd stones, whose name translates to ‘Hitching Post of the Sun.’ One told me that on the equinoxes, the sun bounces off the stone is such a way that it casts three spots of light in the form of a triangle on the ground. When someone kneels in the triangle, a spot of light shines on his forehead and gives him great strength. Supposedly.

In the temple section the huge cut stones fit together with typically amazing masonry.There was also an Incan fountain, still running fresh water from an underground spring, and some rather frightening steps made of flagstones sticking straight out of a wall. Incans used this type of construction particularly in agricultural terracing to curtail erosion. When you use them you feel like you're stepping onto thin air.We also hiked out to the Incan Bridge (about twenty minutes away). Although you can’t actually cross the bridge because some tourist fell off it years ago, the walk was nice and took us through some agricultural terracing where llamas were grazing in the middle of the ruins. We tried to watch the sunset from the Intihuatana, but sunset happens too quickly in the mountains and doesn’t compare to the blaze of glory on Lake Titicaca.

We decided that after splurging on the bus ride up the mountain and the Peru Rail train ride to take us back to Ollanytambo, we should walk down to town. A steep and long set of stairs wends its way through the bus switchbacks from the entrance back to the museum at the base of the mountain. In the increasing darkness, we walked downhill until our feet ached and our knees shook while two Peruvian boys dressed as Incas raced down the steps to meet the tourist bus, letting out huge yells at each switchback and hoping for a few tourists to throw some soles out the window. By the time we limped to the line of buses sleeping at the bottom of the mountain, the boys had changed back into normal clothes and were waiting for someone with backpacks on their backs.

It was another twenty minute walk to town and when we got there, Helen and I were desperately ready for a dip in the thermal baths. Despite the unattractive brown stirred up from the gravel beds at the bottom of the pools, we found one with a bit of space to squeeze in between the locals and the other tourists fresh off the Inca Trail. Jesse from the Colca Canyon trek told us that they were pretty stingy with the alcohol in the drinks at the bar, so we left the hot springs for a proper dinner in town with Mario and Valerie and the two Koreans, who decided they were going to do Machu Picchu the next day. We split a big bottle of Cusqueña Negra and I slept incredibly well that night.