The Sacred Valley and Machu Pichu

Aug 24

After a few days in Cusco, we took busses and trains thru the Sacred valley stopping to hike the ruins in Pisac, and spending the night in Ollantaytambo. All I can say about the Sacred Valley is WOW... neither words nor photographs could possibly do it justice. 

 

Aug 25-26

After a semi restful night, we battled the locals for a spot on the local train to Kilometer 104 of the Inca trail. There was not actually a stop for K104, but the train sort of slowed down and several other hikers informed us that this was the place and that we just had to jump off the *moving train* train into the jungle.

Heh, I'm very, very lucky that I did not destroy both of my knees (they are not very stable, and it was a fairly long drop). Michael jumped first, I threw my bag after him and then jumped and rolled myself. Fortunately, we were not the only hikers, and the group of us somehow managed to stumble around the area until we found the trail. Surreal. We spent the day hiking to the base of the climb and camped with all the other hikers.

The next day we started climbing, mostly straight up on the Inca trail heading for Macchu Pichu. There were many large organized tours hiking the trail more or less with us. Most of them were French and were the rudest people I have ever met. They left a trail of garbage, foul language and bad attitude behind them. We won the crazy gringo award for the day by carrying our own packs the whole way. Apparently, we were some of the last people to get by on our own. They have tripled the price to hike the trail and now have a rule REQUIRING a tour guide and a porter. Being young and healthy and having been in shape recently enough that we remember being fit, we didn't see the need for porters (nor could we afford it). After getting on the trail we did see why they recommend it, it is very steep and narrow. Not to mention that when you get to the hostel/camp area at the top, you have to fight for a space between all the tour groups and the restaurant at the hostel only serves individuals not on tours for a window of about 1 hour....

Do I want to mention the dodgy food I ate before the climb, and being saved by curing pills from having diarrhea on a steep narrow mountain trail with a rock wall on one side and a sheer drop on the other and zippo places to stop and squat?

 
At 3:30 the next morning we broke camp with about 50 others and literally sprinted up and down the remaining 2 hours of the trail (hundreds of stone steps) to make it to the sun gate above Macchu Pichu to watch the sun rise...it was really magical except for all the other tourists (unfortunately including the French group, several of whom body checked us to get past us on the trail, and who were smoking and talking really loudly during the whole sunrise)... it was not exactly a quiet moment of spiritual solitude, but it was beautiful. 

 



After the sun was up, we hiked down 1000 steps into Macchu Pichu and spent the morning giving ourselves the tour out of Peter Frost's book. After overhearing some of the other guides, I was glad we were going by our own book. It was a really neat place, but we were so exhausted that we left as soon as we found everything listed in our book. 

We took the bus down to the town of Aguas Callientes, where we stayed at a funky hostel called "Gringo Bills" off the town square. We hiked what felt like another 1000 steps up the valley to a late lunch and then to the sulfur hot springs at the end of town. We soaked there till well after sunset, and returned to our hostel and tried to pass out in spite of the fact that there was a concert going on in the town square (directly under our balcony). The view of the concert was perfect and the music was wonderful "contemporary Andean" although it was a little loud for sleeping....


Aug 26
Aguas Callientes. The next day we kicked around town with a few people we had met at the hostel, and then took the train back into Cusco.