Firstly : MACHU PICCHU THE EXPENSIVE WAY
Machu Picchu is not a suburb of Cusco city. Machu Picchu is a mountain located at the far end of the Sacred Valley, and its name means 'old peak'. It is far, far away from Cusco, and you have a number of options to get there to visit the ruins. The most simplistic is to arrange an organised tour in Cusco. There are a hundred (at least) companies running tours to MP, all with differing prices, most starting around $100 for 2 days / 1 night. This article won't deal with the Inka Trail, as we didnt do it, but I'll pass on useful info later.
The problem you have here is a logistical one. The little town of Aguas Calientes (now also known as Machu Picchu Pueblo) hides out at the bottom of the mountain, more or less two main streets, a square, a few side streets, and an awful lot of accomodation geared to very short stays. It has, however, no access by road.
This makes more sense when you've been to this part of the Sacred Valley and understoof just how remote a location Machu Picchu is in. Its not a massive problem though, because you have two routes in to the town. The EXPENSIVE way is by train.
Have a look at inkarail.com and perurail.com - marvel at the prices. When you start dealing with a trip to Machu Picchu everything is suddenly in US Dollars. There's a reason. Some clever sod found out that the train companies are not Peruvian-owned, hence the prices or tourists not even vaguely resembling anything a local could afford. There are trains that the locals take, at a fraction of the price (around PNS$4 a journey instead of US$70, about PNS$195, for us tourists), but you'll get shot (more or less) for trying to get on the local ticket.
So for utter convenience, that's your price. About US$70 each way, and thats the CHEAP train. Prices rise exponentially after that, and should you choose to take the Hiram Bingham train, which admitted looks very nice and gets you dinner and other stuff, you could be dropping a couple of hundred dollars each way. From Cusco its about 3.5 hours to Aguas Calientes, from Ollantaytambo its about 2.
That's the expensive way to get there. It also means you can leave Cusco in the morning, arrive in Aguas Calientes a few hours later, walk five minutes from the train station to the ticket office to MP (although you can also buy the entry ticket in Cusco, PNS$126 for the most basic entry ticket, more if you want to explore the mountains but you wouldn't have time to do that this way), back to the buses that escort you to the ruins (the kiosk there will charge you US$19 for a return ticket on the bus, about a half hour journey each way), you could head up to the ruins, mooch about for a bit, come back down, get on your train and be back in Cusco for a late dinner. If you wanted to. You could also stay in the town and any number of very fancy hotels, including the Machu Picchu Sanctuary which is actually at the gates to the ruins (still cheaper than staying on Manhatten Island though!).
This is NOT how we did it. We did it the cheap way.
MACHU PICCHU THE CHEAP WAY
We awoke in Olantaytambo at 8.30am. Breakfast, bags stored away at the hostel, with our journey ahead we could only take the minimum (although I will say a backpack would have been more convenient than taking my shoulder bag). Around 10am a mini-van colectivo pulls into the Plaza de Armas and Dante points us in its direction.
The contemporary version of this journey involves taking a colectivo from Cusco or Ollantaytambo to Santa Maria, a little town 2.5 hours away, from which you take another colectivo to the hydroelectric plant, another 2.5 hours away, from which you walk to Aguas Calientes along the train track there which ferries workers to and from the site. You can, if you can't hack it, pay US$25 to ride this train to the town. It's about 11km away.
Anyway, that's the old and more complicated version. It seems now that everyone knows exactly what backpackers want, so all the colectivos go directly to the hydroelectic plant, although they do stop off for toilet breaks and lunch in Santa Maria. We jumped on in Ollantaytambo and, for PNS$35 got our direct journey. Rest assured, having seem the towns through which you pass, travelling direct is definitely the prefered option. It would be a pain to try and sort out transport in each of these places individually.
Our only problem was there was only one seat on the mini van. Cue a small foldaway seat being installed in the gap between the chairs and the sliding door. It would do for me. It might not do for you!
The train journey is rumoured to have great views. They could be nothing like the journey that we took. Although Aguas Calientes is 45km as the crow flies from Ollantaytambo, you have to wind up and down mountainsides to get to the hydroelectric plant. This is not a journey for the faint-hearted. It is safe but you are driving at some silly heights and have a very clear view of the bottom of the valley, about two feet away from the side of the van. Having said that, Sarah did it, and that's impressive enough.
Five hours goes in ok. There's lots to see, so long as you are impressed by incredible vistas, particularly the moments when you are so high you drive through the clouds, visibility down to 50m or so, and there's an average lunch in a sleepy town (which was surprisingly not just a crap rip-off as you'd expect. The Peruanos will always surprise you that way), then a further jaunt around some mountainsides before you pull up in the middle of nowhere. Except here are lots of minivans all waiting to take people back to Cusco, seven hours away. This is the hydro plant. You are still not there yet.
I'm not entirely sure whom I'm writing this for, as its clear that most people who have booked a cheap tour in Cusco are all doing it this way (except they have paid substantially more for it than we have - you will discover people are reticent to discuss their MP tour too much as they would have to admit they are paying about twice as much as you are because someone else organised it). So you get off your minivan and the tour guide points everyone (not us) in the direction of the path to the Aguas Calientes. At this point its 3.30pm and you've 11km to walk. Its a flat walk, which is nice, but its still along the side of a train track, so its not a paved walkway. We pounded along the path and just about arrived at sundown, around 6pm. Some folk were putting their head-torches on. We rounded a corner and there were the lights of Aguas Calientes about ten minutes away. It looks like an Ewok village at night.
As I said, the town is geared towards people staying a night, maybe two, then getting the hell out again. It's a little more expensive than the rest of Peru (though you don't have to spend US$25 on a lunchtime buffet, you just have to go looking for the cheaper options), but not utterly ridiculous. We paid US$25 each a night to stay in a pretty decent hostel, private room, hot water, and that included breakfast and dinner (which was NOT typical! but very edible). That's all bonus information though.
You can opt to walk up the ruins instead of taking the bus. That saves you US$19 but I'm unsure if this is a false economy after visiting the ruins. Its a seriously steep walk, all steps (not following the bus route, which would take even longer than the hour required to ascend on foot) and the ruins are a pretty intense experience too - if you want to head out to any of the remote sites like the Sun Gate or up Wayna Picchu you will be physically pushed anyway. Not to mention that the morning we left Aguas Calientes it had been raining all night, so those stone steps would have been wet and risky. Not that the bus is cheap, but it might be worth it for most people.
Final word of notice : as I have said, Machu Picchu is much bigger than you imagine, and more physically enduring if you don't just visit the main (much photographed) area. We are well acclimatised to the altitude by now (more than two weeks over 2500m) and do more than our fair share of walking - after 7 hours at the ruins I never wanted to walk again. There is a hell of a lot to see up there. Truth be told, you could go up over two days if you wanted to really see everything. So don't scrimp on time or preparation.
We paid:
Cusco to Ollantaytambo local colectivo : PNS$10
Ollantaytambo to Hydroelectric plant : PNS$35
Each night in Aguas Calientes : US$25 / PNS$70
Bus (return) to the ruins : US$19 / PNS$54
Entrance to the site : PNS$126
If we had only stayed one night in Aguas Calientes, excluding food and drink, we would have paid PNS$295, or GBP63, to travel to the town and see the ruins. Had we travelled back along the train tracks the following day and taken a colectivo back to Ollantaytambo, I suspect we would have paid marginally more than our journey there, about PNS$40, plus a further PNS$10 to get back to Cusco. Which we didn't. We took the train.
There were good reasons for this. Number one; the walk back is three hours, and you need to be back at the hydro plant for 2pm to guarantee getting onto a colectivo, which is then another 5 hours back. Travelling those roads is fun in the daytime. Two or three hours on them after dark might not be so much fun. The train takes 2 hours to get to Ollantaytambo. So it's 8 hours travelling versus 2 hours. Number two; we've done a lot of walking now. That 3 hour walk is not inviting. The US$25 fee for the train out to the hydro plant is not inviting either. Number three; after some negotiating, we discovered there was a train back to Ollantaytambo at 5.30am on Friday morning that would cost us US$56, or PNS$155. Taking off our costs, that was a difference of about PNS$110, or just over GBP20, to save our feet and about 6 hours of our time. And we are in a rush now, so we could justify it.
On Thursday night, all night, as the storm raged outside our window, we were very glad not to be walking back along those tracks.
What have I missed? You can sneak in food and water to the ruins, especially as the prices up there are double those in the town, but beware! There are no toilets within the ruins, you have to exit to go for a wee (and its PNS$1 a time). There are also no bins, so bring your rubbish back out with you. There are lots of logistical issues regarding the ruins, but I'll put them in the next blog bit. If you want a guide at the site, I think they were about PNS$50 for a two hour tour. Without one, you better have a good book, as there are no signs explaning anything (much like all ruins in Peru). Otherwise you will be walking around blind and you'll learn nothing. And what was the point of going there to know nothing, unless you're one of the hundreds of people every day who are only there to have your picture taken? Grrrr.
Machu Picchu is not a suburb of Cusco city. Machu Picchu is a mountain located at the far end of the Sacred Valley, and its name means 'old peak'. It is far, far away from Cusco, and you have a number of options to get there to visit the ruins. The most simplistic is to arrange an organised tour in Cusco. There are a hundred (at least) companies running tours to MP, all with differing prices, most starting around $100 for 2 days / 1 night. This article won't deal with the Inka Trail, as we didnt do it, but I'll pass on useful info later.
The problem you have here is a logistical one. The little town of Aguas Calientes (now also known as Machu Picchu Pueblo) hides out at the bottom of the mountain, more or less two main streets, a square, a few side streets, and an awful lot of accomodation geared to very short stays. It has, however, no access by road.
This makes more sense when you've been to this part of the Sacred Valley and understoof just how remote a location Machu Picchu is in. Its not a massive problem though, because you have two routes in to the town. The EXPENSIVE way is by train.
Have a look at inkarail.com and perurail.com - marvel at the prices. When you start dealing with a trip to Machu Picchu everything is suddenly in US Dollars. There's a reason. Some clever sod found out that the train companies are not Peruvian-owned, hence the prices or tourists not even vaguely resembling anything a local could afford. There are trains that the locals take, at a fraction of the price (around PNS$4 a journey instead of US$70, about PNS$195, for us tourists), but you'll get shot (more or less) for trying to get on the local ticket.
So for utter convenience, that's your price. About US$70 each way, and thats the CHEAP train. Prices rise exponentially after that, and should you choose to take the Hiram Bingham train, which admitted looks very nice and gets you dinner and other stuff, you could be dropping a couple of hundred dollars each way. From Cusco its about 3.5 hours to Aguas Calientes, from Ollantaytambo its about 2.
That's the expensive way to get there. It also means you can leave Cusco in the morning, arrive in Aguas Calientes a few hours later, walk five minutes from the train station to the ticket office to MP (although you can also buy the entry ticket in Cusco, PNS$126 for the most basic entry ticket, more if you want to explore the mountains but you wouldn't have time to do that this way), back to the buses that escort you to the ruins (the kiosk there will charge you US$19 for a return ticket on the bus, about a half hour journey each way), you could head up to the ruins, mooch about for a bit, come back down, get on your train and be back in Cusco for a late dinner. If you wanted to. You could also stay in the town and any number of very fancy hotels, including the Machu Picchu Sanctuary which is actually at the gates to the ruins (still cheaper than staying on Manhatten Island though!).
This is NOT how we did it. We did it the cheap way.
MACHU PICCHU THE CHEAP WAY
We awoke in Olantaytambo at 8.30am. Breakfast, bags stored away at the hostel, with our journey ahead we could only take the minimum (although I will say a backpack would have been more convenient than taking my shoulder bag). Around 10am a mini-van colectivo pulls into the Plaza de Armas and Dante points us in its direction.
The contemporary version of this journey involves taking a colectivo from Cusco or Ollantaytambo to Santa Maria, a little town 2.5 hours away, from which you take another colectivo to the hydroelectric plant, another 2.5 hours away, from which you walk to Aguas Calientes along the train track there which ferries workers to and from the site. You can, if you can't hack it, pay US$25 to ride this train to the town. It's about 11km away.
Anyway, that's the old and more complicated version. It seems now that everyone knows exactly what backpackers want, so all the colectivos go directly to the hydroelectic plant, although they do stop off for toilet breaks and lunch in Santa Maria. We jumped on in Ollantaytambo and, for PNS$35 got our direct journey. Rest assured, having seem the towns through which you pass, travelling direct is definitely the prefered option. It would be a pain to try and sort out transport in each of these places individually.
Our only problem was there was only one seat on the mini van. Cue a small foldaway seat being installed in the gap between the chairs and the sliding door. It would do for me. It might not do for you!
The train journey is rumoured to have great views. They could be nothing like the journey that we took. Although Aguas Calientes is 45km as the crow flies from Ollantaytambo, you have to wind up and down mountainsides to get to the hydroelectric plant. This is not a journey for the faint-hearted. It is safe but you are driving at some silly heights and have a very clear view of the bottom of the valley, about two feet away from the side of the van. Having said that, Sarah did it, and that's impressive enough.
Five hours goes in ok. There's lots to see, so long as you are impressed by incredible vistas, particularly the moments when you are so high you drive through the clouds, visibility down to 50m or so, and there's an average lunch in a sleepy town (which was surprisingly not just a crap rip-off as you'd expect. The Peruanos will always surprise you that way), then a further jaunt around some mountainsides before you pull up in the middle of nowhere. Except here are lots of minivans all waiting to take people back to Cusco, seven hours away. This is the hydro plant. You are still not there yet.
I'm not entirely sure whom I'm writing this for, as its clear that most people who have booked a cheap tour in Cusco are all doing it this way (except they have paid substantially more for it than we have - you will discover people are reticent to discuss their MP tour too much as they would have to admit they are paying about twice as much as you are because someone else organised it). So you get off your minivan and the tour guide points everyone (not us) in the direction of the path to the Aguas Calientes. At this point its 3.30pm and you've 11km to walk. Its a flat walk, which is nice, but its still along the side of a train track, so its not a paved walkway. We pounded along the path and just about arrived at sundown, around 6pm. Some folk were putting their head-torches on. We rounded a corner and there were the lights of Aguas Calientes about ten minutes away. It looks like an Ewok village at night.
As I said, the town is geared towards people staying a night, maybe two, then getting the hell out again. It's a little more expensive than the rest of Peru (though you don't have to spend US$25 on a lunchtime buffet, you just have to go looking for the cheaper options), but not utterly ridiculous. We paid US$25 each a night to stay in a pretty decent hostel, private room, hot water, and that included breakfast and dinner (which was NOT typical! but very edible). That's all bonus information though.
You can opt to walk up the ruins instead of taking the bus. That saves you US$19 but I'm unsure if this is a false economy after visiting the ruins. Its a seriously steep walk, all steps (not following the bus route, which would take even longer than the hour required to ascend on foot) and the ruins are a pretty intense experience too - if you want to head out to any of the remote sites like the Sun Gate or up Wayna Picchu you will be physically pushed anyway. Not to mention that the morning we left Aguas Calientes it had been raining all night, so those stone steps would have been wet and risky. Not that the bus is cheap, but it might be worth it for most people.
Final word of notice : as I have said, Machu Picchu is much bigger than you imagine, and more physically enduring if you don't just visit the main (much photographed) area. We are well acclimatised to the altitude by now (more than two weeks over 2500m) and do more than our fair share of walking - after 7 hours at the ruins I never wanted to walk again. There is a hell of a lot to see up there. Truth be told, you could go up over two days if you wanted to really see everything. So don't scrimp on time or preparation.
We paid:
Cusco to Ollantaytambo local colectivo : PNS$10
Ollantaytambo to Hydroelectric plant : PNS$35
Each night in Aguas Calientes : US$25 / PNS$70
Bus (return) to the ruins : US$19 / PNS$54
Entrance to the site : PNS$126
If we had only stayed one night in Aguas Calientes, excluding food and drink, we would have paid PNS$295, or GBP63, to travel to the town and see the ruins. Had we travelled back along the train tracks the following day and taken a colectivo back to Ollantaytambo, I suspect we would have paid marginally more than our journey there, about PNS$40, plus a further PNS$10 to get back to Cusco. Which we didn't. We took the train.
There were good reasons for this. Number one; the walk back is three hours, and you need to be back at the hydro plant for 2pm to guarantee getting onto a colectivo, which is then another 5 hours back. Travelling those roads is fun in the daytime. Two or three hours on them after dark might not be so much fun. The train takes 2 hours to get to Ollantaytambo. So it's 8 hours travelling versus 2 hours. Number two; we've done a lot of walking now. That 3 hour walk is not inviting. The US$25 fee for the train out to the hydro plant is not inviting either. Number three; after some negotiating, we discovered there was a train back to Ollantaytambo at 5.30am on Friday morning that would cost us US$56, or PNS$155. Taking off our costs, that was a difference of about PNS$110, or just over GBP20, to save our feet and about 6 hours of our time. And we are in a rush now, so we could justify it.
On Thursday night, all night, as the storm raged outside our window, we were very glad not to be walking back along those tracks.
What have I missed? You can sneak in food and water to the ruins, especially as the prices up there are double those in the town, but beware! There are no toilets within the ruins, you have to exit to go for a wee (and its PNS$1 a time). There are also no bins, so bring your rubbish back out with you. There are lots of logistical issues regarding the ruins, but I'll put them in the next blog bit. If you want a guide at the site, I think they were about PNS$50 for a two hour tour. Without one, you better have a good book, as there are no signs explaning anything (much like all ruins in Peru). Otherwise you will be walking around blind and you'll learn nothing. And what was the point of going there to know nothing, unless you're one of the hundreds of people every day who are only there to have your picture taken? Grrrr.
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