Tuesday, July 24: Machu Picchu Day 1
THE JOURNEY TO AGUAS CALIENTES
The taxi came for Kitty and me at 8:00 a.m. at Hosteria Rumichaca, a guesthouse in a small town of a 100 people (Rumichaca) where we had been staying. Our driver was taking us on a 20-minute drive to Ollantaytambo. We would catch our train there for the one-and-a-half-hour train ride to Aguas Calientes, the public transportation gateway to Machu Picchu. The only other way to get to Machu Picchu is by walking on the Inca Trail for 1-4 days depending on the starting point.
There are three classes of train service to Aguas Calientes. The highest class is the Hiram Bingham train, named after the Latin American history professor who accidentally discovered Machu Picchu when he was looking for other ruins in the area. The train is decorated inside in turn-of-the century luxury and passengers are waited on hand and foot. It costs about $500 from Cusco.
The second class of service is the Vistadome train. Kitty and I thought we were going on this train, but Jose, the manager of the Hosteria, booked us on the 3rd class of service, the Backpacker train.
Because the Vistadome train arrived at the time the Backpacker should have arrived (making the Backpacker train late), we had a chance to see the two trains and compare. The trains looked identical on the outside—interestingly enough, they had a similar design and colors as trains in Ukraine. Inside, the Vistadome had bucket seats with nicer-looking upholstery than the seats on the Backpacker trains. More importantly, the Vistadome train has a glass roof (the Vista Dome) so that you can lean back and see more of the mountains as you go by. I’m not sure if this feature is worth paying double the price of the Backpacker train. Kitty later heard that the Vistadome train also has a fashion show. I didn’t feel I had missed that, either.
When we arrived at the Aguas Calientes train station, we went to the exit and found the man holding a sign for our hotel, the Machu Picchu Inn. He loaded our luggage with that of several other people onto a mule cart and pulled it through the Indian market, over a pedestrian bridge, and down a short but steep hill to the hotel.
THE TICKETS TO MACHU PICCHU
We checked in, freshened up, and followed the hotel clerk’s directions down the hill to the Machu Picchu ticket office. We learned that since Kitty works in Lima, she gets the national rate for the ticket (61 soles/20 dollars) instead of the foreign rate (120 soles/40 dollars). If only I had gotten my student ID or ISIC card before leaving the States, I too could have paid the discounted rate.
We had heard from the desk clerk that a ticket was good for three days. This was good news because we wanted to go on two different days. However, when I got my ticket printout, I noticed it said in Spanish “only for one entry.” I asked the ticket clerk about it; she said the ticket was good for unlimited entry ON ONE DAY WITHIN THREE DAYS. If we wanted to go a second day, we would have to pay again. Kitty suggested that we go up there, walk around, and then decide if it was worth the extra cost to go again a second day.
From the Machu Picchu ticket office, we walked through the main plaza to the street where the tickets for the bus to Machu Picchu were sold. Unlike the tickets for entry in Machu Picchu, which can only be paid for with Peruvian soles, the bus tickets are paid for only in dollars. Kitty paid $9 for a round trip ticket, and I paid $12.
THE FIRST VISIT TO MACHU PICCHU
Kitty and I waited in line and got on a bus pretty quickly. By the time the ride was over, I was thinking I should have paid $40 for the bus ride and $12 dollars for the entrance to the sanctuary. The driver spent 15 minutes taking us in a medium-sized Mercedes Benz tour bus up the highest, most winding, narrowest dirt road I’ve ever been on in my life. There were several sheer drops without guardrails protecting us from them. I was clinging to the two straps on the seat in back of me and thanking God my parents didn’t know where I was at that exact moment. When I got off the bus, I thanked the driver profusely for his good work.
When we arrived at the entrance to Machu Picchu, it was close to 2:00 pm. We wrote our names on our entry tickets and had them stamped at the entrance. A woman offered to be our tour guide through the park (for a fee of course), but we had been paying so much for tours and services already that we decided to explore the park on our own first.
We followed the signs for the “long walk” and took about 15 minutes walking up a dirt and stone switchback road until we got to the point where we got our first glimpse of the Machu Picchu complex with the big mountain behind it. This is the view you may have seen in pictures and which some of you will be seeing on postcards in the mail to you. Words can’t do justice to the view of stone and grass terraces, stone houses with the straw roofs missing, and mountains thousands of feet high rising up dramatically around it all. Perhaps Kitty summed it up best: “Oh my God!”
According to a guidebook for Machu Picchu that Kitty bought at the end of the day, we continued on the path through the Main Gate and saw the rock quarry and then the Sacred Square. In the Sacred Square we saw the Main Temple and the Temple of the Three Windows. The windows represent the world above, the world we live in, and the underworld. We stopped in the Chamber of Ornaments, a storehouse for religious objects. A guide talking with another group explained that the walls of the chamber lean inward, but the individual stones that were used as shelves lean backward. He demonstrated by putting a Coke bottle on the shelf as we all watched it roll to the back of the wall.
Near the Main Temple was the Southern Cross, a diamond-shaped rock. Another tour guide demonstrated with a compass how the rock pointed due south exactly.
We walked up a set of steps near the Southern Cross to Intihuatana (the place to catch the sun). It is the highest point in the Machu Picchu sanctuary. It has a large sundial in the shape of a guinea pig. The steps down the other side of Intihuatana seemed to lead off the face of the earth. Just looking at them gave me vertigo. We didn’t want to turn around and go the same way we had come, though. Fortunately, a nice tour guide named German gave Kitty and me a hand getting down the first few steps.
Our next stop was the main square, a large grass field with nature’s lawnmowers, llamas. (I’m not being ironic here—the llamas are kept there to eat the grass). Kitty and I had not only seen llamas in the Sacred Valley, we had fed them and petted them. Seeing them here again was anti-climatic. The Sacred Stone on the other side of the square was more interesting. It is said if you stand against this large rock and stretch out your arms, you can absorb energy from the rock. It worked for me. (The next day we learned that the rock has crystals in it which absorb the sun’s rays, and the energy comes from those crystals).
To the left of the Sacred Stone, we saw the entrance to the trail to Huayna Picchu—the Temple of the Moon. The entrance to this very steep trail is limited to 400 people per day, and it is advised that only people who are fit and healthy attempt it. We weren’t sorry we couldn’t go up.
Our next major stop was the Temple of the Condor. German was there again, explaining the temple in Spanish. Apparently the smooth rock was cut in the shape of a condor’s wings. Sacrifices were made in front (on a rock which we later learned was cut in the shape of a beak with eyes). We also later learned that the condor represents the world above.
We followed German’s group through a space in the rock which represented the “stomach” of the bird. The path out also had some narrow paths with drops on the sides I didn’t want to fall into.
After the Temple of the Condor, we walked past what I later learned were colcas, storage areas for food. Then we finally found signs for the exit. It was now after 4:00 and we hadn’t had lunch. But the famous Sanctuary Lodge was already closed, and the snack bar was charging more for a sandwich then the high-end sandwich shop in Kitty’s neighborhood. We decided to skip lunch and get on a bus back to Aguas Calientes for an early dinner. We also agreed we would go back the next day to see more of Machu Picchu with a guide, as well as eat lunch at the Sanctuary Lodge.
EVENING IN AGUAS CALIENTES
We got off the bus and walked around the main square until we settled on a restaurant serving Mexican as well as Peruvian food. I ordered Chicharron de Cerdo (pork cracklings). It was all right. Kitty ordered a chicken quesadilla, but it was more like a pancake with marinated chicken inside. At least the guacamole with nachos (the word here for tortilla chips, not tortilla chips and melted cheese) was really good, as was the chicken and avocado salad. I also tried Cusqueno beer since it was cheaper than a soda, but I ordered two so I think the restaurant came out ahead on that one.
After dinner, we decided to go to the hot springs, from which Aguas Calientes gets its name. We gathered our swimsuits and money and got towels from the hotel. We walked up one of the two main roads of Aguas Calientes—a hilly, narrow, cobblestoned street lined with hotels, tourist restaurants, and souvenir shops.
After about 15 minutes, we made it to the entrance of the Hot Springs. Kitty paid 5 soles and I paid 10 to enter. The man at the entrance told us the lockers were ahead. After ten minutes of walking on a long hilly, stone path, we started to wonder. We saw some people coming down and asked if we were close. Not really, they replied.
Despite the fatigue of walking forever to those lockers, I tried to enjoy the view of the trees reflected in the orange lamps (it was already dark outside) and the sound of running water. We finally made it around 7:45. The entrance to the springs closes at 8:30 p.m., and the springs themselves are closed at 9:00 p.m. So at least we still had a decent amount of time.
The springs themselves were more like a series of small baths or swimming pools. Each section was made of concrete covered in light blue tiles. The only difference was that the bottom of each pool was made of silt. Nevertheless, the warm water refreshed our senses and got us physically and mentally ready for our return to Machu Picchu.
Tags: machu picchu, Peru, Train, Travel
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