Machu Picchu!!!

Doesn´t even need a title.

Having said that, I did something AMAZING this Saturday! After lusting over the idea for a very long time, Amy and I finally saw Machu Picchu! We weren´t planning on doing it this weekend originally...Amy´s mom is coming at the end of our time here and we wanted to go with her. But then a girl from Fairplay, Katie, asked us if we would like to go with her coz she didn´t want to go by herself. She is nice/seemed a bit lonely/it was her last weekend here/she provided us an opportunity to indulge in our lust so we said "Sure!" This was Thursday and we decided the best time to leave for our trip would be the next day.

Funnily enough (but not surprisingly), it takes a bit of planning to go to Machu Picchu. Whoops. But in proper Whirlwind-Kirsten fashion, Katie, Amy, and I were able to pull everything together at the last minute. We bought online train tickets from Ollantaytombo to Aguas Calientes, the town one must go to in order to catch a bus to Machu Picchu, on Friday morning during our Gramatica classes (ooops but Mariluz didn´t seem to mind). Then during Practica class, Amy and I got Carmen and Eliana (our respective profesoras who teach us how to do useful, practical things in Spanish) to show us where to find the bus terminal so we could catch a bus to Ollantaytombo that afternoon...apparently you can grab a combi to Ollantaytombo for only 5 soles...the only problem is that you have to survive a two hour bus ride on a combi. Once we knew where the terminal was, we met Katie at the school, raced home in a cab (well kinda...there was a parade blocking traffic...there´s always a fucking parade, haha), inhaled a quick lunch, threw our things into our backpacks (for some reason both Amy and Katie managed to put everything in their small bags while I needed my entire huge backpacker´s bag...I am a pathologically heavy traveler, even for weekend trips) and took another cab to the bus terminal. From there we caught more of a taxi/minivan than a combi (thank god...it had seatbelts!) and spent the next couple hours winding through the hills surrounding Cusco, which was beautiful...the Andes/the more rural towns we passed through all seemed very refreshing after a week in dirty Cusco. Around 4 we reached Ollantaytombo, a small Andean town with a set of ruins itself. There we went to the Heart Cafe, an awesome little cafe in the Plaza that was founded by a British woman who was appalled by the poor living conditions those living in rural Andean towns had to face. She started the cafe to raise money for more nutritious food, water purification systems, birth control, antibiotics, and a shelter for battered women and children. Check it out at www.livingheartperu.org. Anyhoo, Amy got to have a salad there, which was her first salad in a week...here is Peru most people subsist off of rice, potatoes and other starches and Amy´s salad had lettuce, beets, carrots, avacado, tomato, onions, scallions, and potatoes, all washed in disinfected water...I swear, the girl almost had an orgasm. :P

Anyhoo, back to our journey...after our dinner, we walked to the train station in Ollantaytombo. Usually at this point, tourists get onto a train. Unfortunately, part of the train tracks washed out in a flood earlier this year so part of our journey had to be undertaken via bus on the dirt backroads of several Andean mountain towns...we drove through so much brush that I felt like I was on the Indiana Jones ride at Disneyland, haha. It was cool, albeit slightly nauseating. I was glad when we finally got onto the train. There I had a Spanglish conversation with a man from Spain...he told me my Spanish was excellent for only knowing Spanish for a week. I felt all warm and fuzzy inside. Thanks Mariluz and Eliana!

After another hour and a half, Katie, Amy, and I arrived at Aguas Calientes, a small touristy town that feels a lot like Disneyland (touristy and slightly contrived but without the magic feeling and rides) and even has the same disturbingly high prices for food. The three of us checked into a hostel and went out for food. I got ice cream and a Pisco sour, the national Peruvian mixed drink. It consists of Pisco (liquor from fermented grapes), two egg whites, cinnamon, and something else I can´t remember blended into foamy, alchoholic goodness. Amy got some nachos, which was basically warm chips with cold, shredded goat cheese on top...she was not amused. Apparently nachos are actually an American food, not Latin American. Then we went to bed around 12, knowing we would have to be up again in about 5 hours in order to beat the crowds. At about this time, construction work began roaring outside our window, haha.

At 4:30 am, our alarm went off. Amy, the champ that she is, went to buy bus tickets for the ride up the mountain to Machu Picchu while Katie and I moaned and groaned and tried to force ourselves out of bed. Upon arriving at the buses, we realized we had to also buy an entrance ticket for Machu Picchu and spent a bit of time wandering around trying to find where we could do that. After paying 126 soles each (which seems like a lot but actually only adds up to about 40 US dollars) we found the buses again, hopped on one, and stared in awe as the bus switchbacked up the mountain. The further up we went, the more we could see the mountains surrounding us...they were INCREDIBLE. I´ve been to the Sierra Nevada and the Rockie and even the Swiss Alps, but in my opinion, the Andes dwarfed them all. This is just a guess based on past geology field trips I have gone on with my father, but the Andes were so sheer, each mountain a sharp peak that only connected with the other mountains at the very base...I think that means they are fairly new mountains that have not had as much time to erode as other mountain ranges have. And Machu Picchu is right smack in the middle of all of them...it feels like a very tall island surrounded by a sea of air and clouds (the Incas called it the Cloud Forest) and off in the distance you can see other mountainous islands but between you and those islands there are steep 1,000 foot drops with rivers the size of your pinky finger snaking along the bottom...it´s BREATHTAKING and enough to make anyone with a fear of heights pee their pants.

Poo...as usual, I have to go again before I can finish...Fairplay´s Peruvian cooking class is about to start! :D I´ll finish my Machu Picchu story soon.

written by  kfox on June 16, 2010 from Cusco, Peru
from the travel blog: Peru Adventure!
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