Hiking to Machu Picchu
Trip Start
Jan 24, 2005
1
33
Trip End
Apr 2007
Cuzco, Peru
Tuesday, May 8, 2007
The next day, the tour guide showed up on time (miraculously), but on foot. So we followed her to the bus station where she bought us bus tickets. We were on the trip with two Israelis, and the bike day, there was and Australian, and a French speaking couple, he from England, she from Chile (French was their best common language, they live in Paris). We have met a lot of interesting people here. We got to be pretty good friends with the Israelis by the end of the four days, and the guide, too. She said whe is the only woman guide for the route we took. After five hours on the bus, we got out and ate cheese sandwiches and oreo cookies and then we got on our bikes. Mical's chain casing was bent, so they bent it back. My seat broke off so they tied it on, and the guide switched bikes with me. A few miles down the road, Mical's chain stopped working again and another guide switched with her. That guide had to have someone hold on to his bike and pedal them both up the slopes. Fortunately, it was almost entirely downhill. But towards evening, there started to be more uphill. We ended up walking our bike for the last half hour because the sun went down. We stayed in a hostal up on a hill that had decent rooms, but very simple, shared bath, no hot water. My body was super achy.
The biking was lots of fun. It is hard not to get going too fast, but if you sit the right way, it's really relaxing, just cruising downhill. And the views were pretty amazing. We went through a few streams that cross the road. And we went through a town where they were having a party and Simon went up to take pictures and the Peruvians asked them to dance.
The second day was a nine hour hike. I can still hardly believe it. First we hiked down the road, then we came to a cable cart to cross the river. We crossed the river five times on one of these contraptions. At about nine in the morning we started to seriously climb. And I mean steep stairway like climbing. At about eleven we came to the part of the trail that was originally constructed by the Inkas (down here they write it with a K, I don't know why). At that point, there were huge drop offs and narrow paths. Yikes! After another half hour, it ceased to be all up hill, and was more up and down, but steep either way. At about five thirty, we got to the hot springs. What a relief! It was wonderful. If the sun hadn't gone down, I could have stayed for hours. As it was, we stayed about an hour and showered and took a truck cab (crammed full with about 20 people in the bed, Simon, me and the driver in the front) to the hostal. About the same as the night before. I had no idea how I was going to get up and hike again the next day, but the guide said it was flat.
Well, aparently by flat, she meant no stairs, not no uphills. There were a lot of uphills. Then we started walking on the railroad tracks. If you have ever done this, you know how dificult it is. Either you have to measure your steps to the uneven ties, or wlak on the rough rock between ties. Then it started to rain. Simon said he had a good time, but this was my least favorite day. No soaring sights to make up for the dificulty. We arrived in town about 2:30 and ate lunch. I had great trout. Everyone else had mediocre chicken or spaghetti. We went to our hostal. It was awful. Smelled like wet paint and mold. No TP, no towels, the shower curtain came down to my knees. The hot water went out in the middle of everyone's shower. The bed felt like more holes than matress. We were so tired and just wanted to nap, but it was so bad, I couldn't. I decided to find a new hostal and just pay for it out of pocket. I asked all up and down the street, but the best was right next door. It had everything the other didn't, plus TV. And they anly charged us 40 soles ($14), and the guide said the other had charged 60 ($20). So Simon and I had a restful night.
The next morning, everyone in the group got up a 4:30 to hike the last hour and a half up to Machu Picchu. I stayed in bed for another hour and took the bus. I had had enough hiking. We all got up there about the same time, before sunrise. But when we got to the top, the sun rose behind the clouds, so we missed the dramatic shadows. Oh well. It was still amazing. I spent the whole day wondering what it would have been like to live there, in this religious village with thick stone walls on all of the buildings, surrounded by green mountain peaks.
The whole place is full of temples. At the summer and winter solstices, light comes through certain windows and forms the Inka cross, representing the underworld of death, the present world, and the higher world of the gods. They had centers for astronomical observacion, and experimented with new crops in the surrounding terraces. All of the doors and windows are shaped like trapezoids to resist earthquakes. They built with huge multisided stones for the same reason, and some of the construction is built with stones projecting from the mountain itself. Our guide said that in the huge earthquake that happened 50 (?) years ago, all of the churches that had been built on Inka foundations fell down, but the foundations stayed put. There are buildings all over Cusco where the Inka wall goes halfway up, then the top of the building is modern plaster.
We had a great time on the guided tour, and then spent some time wandering around. It was so easy to get lost. When you aren't following the guide, you try to go up a staircase, and it just gets narrower and narrower until there's nothing left. Or, you go down a staircase, then you go down wall steps, which are stones that just stick out of the wall farther and are staggered, then to get to the next level, there's nothing. We took lots of pictures. 200 over the four days. I will post some as soon as I get the opportunity.
The next day, we went shopping with Mical in Cusco, and she took a bus to Lake Titicaca, and then to fly out of La Paz later this week. We ate gyros for lunch and Indian food for dinner. Yummy! The Indian food restaurant only had chicken and lamb. The owner said that as the only Indian restaurant in miles, you shoot yourself in the foot if you serve beef, the hindus won't come, and if you serve pork, the muslims won't come. We giggled and ordered vegetarian.
The next day we took the bus to Tacna, then crossed to Arica. We couldn't get a bus to Santiago that same day (at least not a nice bus; we're tired of traveling in crummy busses), so we stayed in Arica. Next entry, the charms of that Northern Chilean city!
