Tuesday morning. Up, breakfast, stash bags, out the door, into a minivan with one seat and some sort of fake foldaway thing for my bum for the next five hours. In goes my black shoulder bag with a change of clothes, the tablet, toothbrush and mouthguard, deoderant, towel and notebook. Sarah has her beige handbag stuffed to the max. No one else in the colectivo speaks English. The French girl in the front spends the whole journey talking to the driver. At the back are a few young German kids, a mother and daughter from Barcelona via Brazil, and there's some random folk who say nothing the whole way there.
Not that conversation is essential. The view is incredible. You ease up the side of mountains, creeping higher and higher, watching the base of the valley shrink away to a collection of lines and green patches. Suddenly you curve round the top and you're staring down the Sacred Valley, probably the most beautiful thing I've ever seen. Imagine the Scottish Highlands, but spliced with the Alps, and Fermanagh, and its still better than that. Then you realise the clouds are closing in around you. You are very very high. Visibility reduces to about 100m, then 50m, and you can no longer worry about seeing the bottom of the valley, but instead about not seeing the road ahead. Fortunately the driver of the mini van has done this a thousand times before and its very safe.
You stop at the top of the hill and have a Number One in a toilet that, somehow, flushes. There are stray dogs mooching around the top of the mountain but they aren't interested in you, and a young child is bathed in a basin. On we go.
Yes, that is the road right there.
Next stop is in Santa Teresa, a sleepy town, two golden statues in the Plaza de Armas and a few restaurants catering to the colectivos which stop here to feed their passengers. We assume its a con, like every other country in the world. We have Sopa de Quinoa, the rest have the Menu del Dia, which actually looked ok. I help the son of the owner work out what his favourite food is on the menu and used all my Spanish words all in one go. I feel like a good person. On we go.
No longer do we curve around nice big green mountains. Now we edge up a dirt track, brown hills all around, the Rio Urubamba below, the water running down the sides of the mountains and over the corners which, blessedly, we take slowly. There are scary bridges, other buses, up up up, down down down, and suddenly we pull into a little carpark where we all sign into the Protected Park of Machu Picchu, drive on for another five minutes, then there they are: all the other colectivos dropping backpackers off, picking them up, idiots carrying guitars and men and women who have forgotten how to dress themselves in a way that isn't utterly offensive to the eyes. Backpacker heaven. Some man addresses all the other people from our mini-van except us and the French couple, who all march off up the path.
This is the back of the great mountain Machu Picchu. Very excited at this moment.
"Follow the train tracks" is the single instruction, except that you don't just follow the tracks, you have to ascend a couple of flights of stairs where a roughly written sign says "Aguas Calientes ->". We didn't trust the sign, and five minutes later got turned around by a security guard. Lesson number one of dealing with things in Peru - assume it isn't dishonest, unlike every other country in the world.
So after your five hour mini-van journey there's a three hour, 11km walk, along the train tracks and beside the Rio Urubamba, which is throws itself over rocks all the way. You have plenty of company all the way, some going to the town, some coming back, all the while the sun is slowly descending, some people seem to be walking really slowly, and we are bombing along. At the final corner some people are taking out their head torches, but suddenly you can see the lights of Aguas Calientes lingering ahead of us. Another five minutes we walk through the bus terminal on the edge of town, up past all the very fancy hotels, hit the crossroads where the train tracks pass over the river, and find ourselves in a pizza place with cheap litres of beer (which is not something you should take for granted) and surprisingly good pizzas. We book a hostel round the corner, I entertain some local kids, and late on we roll into Viajeros Bed / Breakfast where we have a nice private room for US$50 a night, half-board, the first time on this entire trip. Our room is atmospheric, not in a bad way, and with the sound of a volleyball tournament breaking through our windows we crawl into bed and pass out.
Not that conversation is essential. The view is incredible. You ease up the side of mountains, creeping higher and higher, watching the base of the valley shrink away to a collection of lines and green patches. Suddenly you curve round the top and you're staring down the Sacred Valley, probably the most beautiful thing I've ever seen. Imagine the Scottish Highlands, but spliced with the Alps, and Fermanagh, and its still better than that. Then you realise the clouds are closing in around you. You are very very high. Visibility reduces to about 100m, then 50m, and you can no longer worry about seeing the bottom of the valley, but instead about not seeing the road ahead. Fortunately the driver of the mini van has done this a thousand times before and its very safe.
You stop at the top of the hill and have a Number One in a toilet that, somehow, flushes. There are stray dogs mooching around the top of the mountain but they aren't interested in you, and a young child is bathed in a basin. On we go.
Next stop is in Santa Teresa, a sleepy town, two golden statues in the Plaza de Armas and a few restaurants catering to the colectivos which stop here to feed their passengers. We assume its a con, like every other country in the world. We have Sopa de Quinoa, the rest have the Menu del Dia, which actually looked ok. I help the son of the owner work out what his favourite food is on the menu and used all my Spanish words all in one go. I feel like a good person. On we go.
No longer do we curve around nice big green mountains. Now we edge up a dirt track, brown hills all around, the Rio Urubamba below, the water running down the sides of the mountains and over the corners which, blessedly, we take slowly. There are scary bridges, other buses, up up up, down down down, and suddenly we pull into a little carpark where we all sign into the Protected Park of Machu Picchu, drive on for another five minutes, then there they are: all the other colectivos dropping backpackers off, picking them up, idiots carrying guitars and men and women who have forgotten how to dress themselves in a way that isn't utterly offensive to the eyes. Backpacker heaven. Some man addresses all the other people from our mini-van except us and the French couple, who all march off up the path.
This is the back of the great mountain Machu Picchu. Very excited at this moment.
"Follow the train tracks" is the single instruction, except that you don't just follow the tracks, you have to ascend a couple of flights of stairs where a roughly written sign says "Aguas Calientes ->". We didn't trust the sign, and five minutes later got turned around by a security guard. Lesson number one of dealing with things in Peru - assume it isn't dishonest, unlike every other country in the world.
So after your five hour mini-van journey there's a three hour, 11km walk, along the train tracks and beside the Rio Urubamba, which is throws itself over rocks all the way. You have plenty of company all the way, some going to the town, some coming back, all the while the sun is slowly descending, some people seem to be walking really slowly, and we are bombing along. At the final corner some people are taking out their head torches, but suddenly you can see the lights of Aguas Calientes lingering ahead of us. Another five minutes we walk through the bus terminal on the edge of town, up past all the very fancy hotels, hit the crossroads where the train tracks pass over the river, and find ourselves in a pizza place with cheap litres of beer (which is not something you should take for granted) and surprisingly good pizzas. We book a hostel round the corner, I entertain some local kids, and late on we roll into Viajeros Bed / Breakfast where we have a nice private room for US$50 a night, half-board, the first time on this entire trip. Our room is atmospheric, not in a bad way, and with the sound of a volleyball tournament breaking through our windows we crawl into bed and pass out.
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