Machu Pichu
Trip Start
Jan 25, 2007
1
114
Trip End
Jan 25, 2008
Cusco, Peru
Saturday, December 22, 2007
As it was coming up to Christmas time, the hostel was preparing for the festivities with a proper Christmas dinner promised. The town of Cusco was also preparing for Christmas with a large Christmas market in the main square as well as a lifesize crib with real people in it just standing there all day. The night clubs around the main square seemed to be doing a good trade too, anyone who has been to Cusco will remember such names as Mama Africas and Uptown.
The Christmas dinner in the hostel turned out to be a huge affair with over one hundred and fifty people there. Not quite the same as the home cooked variety but we did manage to get a bit of turkey for Christmas after all. Not that it really felt like Christmas, more like a Sunday. There were still plenty of shops and restaurants open around town and the streets weren't as quiet as you would normally assoctate with Christmas.
With Christmas over it was time to get down to the business of what makes Cusco the number one tourist attraction in South America, Machu Pichu. Rather than do the traditional Inca trail which is overpriced, overcrowded and overbooked I opted for one of the alternative hikes.I signed up for what I though would be a five day hike through the Salkantay pass which rises to about 4500m.
Apart from lots of tourists in Cusco, there are also a lot of people tryng to get money out of the tourists. Here you will here every sob story and see every scam imaginable and is the worst side of Peruvian culture. When I though I had signed up for a five day trip it turned out that they had blatantly lied to me and the hike was only four days. Of course that wasn't as bad as the group of Americans with us who had paid one hundred dollars mor ethan the rest of us and had been promised a private group. I guess these days a private group comes with an extra four people! But that's Peru and especially Cusco for you, people will tell you whatever they think you want to hear in order to try and get money from you. Kinda reminded me of Vietnam although the scams weren't nearly as clever, mostly just lying really.
The actual hike itself was great. Needless to say the photos don't really do it justice. We were also pretty lucky with the weather, although it was the rainy season we only got absolutely soaked onece. And of course the poncho which I had bought in Cusco wasn't water proof so I really got soaked. But once the rain cleared away we had spectacular views and the rain did bring some great rainbows.
The scenery may have been spectacular but the organisation of the hike certainly wasn't. The guide didn't really know what he was doing and the two guys who had the donkeys were just downright lazy, turing up late every night. It was supposed to be there job to cook for us and look after the donkeys which carried all the gear. Those donkeys worked hard but they didn't.
Once again the Americans were bearing the brunt of this bad planning. A number of them were vegan which is clearly not a concept well understood in Peru. Dinner on the first night was the unfortunate chicken that we had seen running around the place half an hour ago.We didn't see them do it but it certainly answered the question of how they would keep the meat fresh!
The toughest part of the hike was going through the Salkantay pass which is at 4500m. This was lower than we had slept on Cotapaxi and the altitude didn't affect me too much although I did have to take it slow. Some of the others in the group who were less used to the altitude were more affected but everyone made it through in one piece.
On the third day of the hike we discovered that the final part of our hike would be along a railway track. No one really wanted to do this so we were told we could get the train for the final leg of the journey. Of course the donkey men seemed to have other ideas. They were supposed to prepare out lunch before we got the train but they set off so late that by the time the caught up with us it was too late and we had to skip lunch and catch the train. They came up with some b*ullshit story about a landslide but the reality was they had been too lazy to get up early and leave whe we did and didn't care if we got our lunch or not.
The train ride into Agua Calientes, the small town by Machu Pichu was pretty uneventful although everyone was glad to be off there feet. Once we arrived there we found that the tour company had not bothered to book our accommodation so our guide had to frantically go off and find some. As for lunch? We were told it would take three hours. As you can imagine things were starting to get emotional at this stage with the lack of food, no accommodation, few days hard hike and oh yeah, we haven't got your train tickets out yet! We decided the best thing to do was buy our own lunch in one of the overpriced restaurants. So my tip money went on lunch instead of going to the guides, maybe next time they'll actually try and do some work.
The guide did eventually sort out accommodation for us although we were scattered all over town. The train tickets turned up eventually too which was lucky for him as really I don't think he would have gotten out of there alive if he hadn't gotten those all important tickets back to Cusco (for New years eve). We even got a good dinner that evening, the guys obviously saving the best meal for tip night. After dinner they stood at the end of the table with their hands out looking for tips. I gave them nothing, lucky for them they didn't question that! Some of the others gave them money, I suppose out of sypmpathy, they only earn a few dollars a week, blah, blah, blah. As far as I'm concerned the service was terrible and they didn't deserve a tip at all. Maybe if no one tipped them they would learn that but it seems they can make enough out of a collective guilt of western tourists to not bother with any decent service. This seems to be a common enough atttitude amongst Peruvians in tourist areas, foreigners are seen as nothing more than big white cash machines.
Whatever about the problems we had had, the important thing was not to let that overshadow the reason for being there. The plan was to get up at 4.30am for breakfast and then walk up to the main gates of Machu Pichu in time for their opening at 6am. So we had an early night in Agua Calientes, after a quick visit to the local hot springs. Agua Calientes means hot water in Spanish but judging by the hot springs I would say tepid water was a better description. Aside from this the pools were also very crowded so we didn't spend too long there.
Having gotten so used to early starts, the 4.30am start wasn't too bad. The walk up to the mains gates wasn't too bad either after all the hardcore hiking of the last few days and the lower altitude (about 2200m) made breathing a breeze. Rather than walking to the main gate we could have gotten a bus up but most of us even managed to make it before the bus arrived to get almost to the front of the queue. There are so many stories of how crowded Machu Pichu can get once the trains arrive in later on that we were determined to see as much as we could before the hordes arrived.
Once inside we had a guided tour arranged for us. This was quite interesting although it mainly consisted of a very dubious version of history. For instance the guide was convinced that before the Spanish arrived the Incas had no poverty or disease and everyone lived to be at least one hundred. He flatly denied any human sacrifices had ever taken place insisted that although the Incas were colonisers themselves all the other peoples they conquered were happy to become Incas. These kind of stories got a bit tiring and it would have been nice to have had a real historian guiding us but this is Peru where nothing is as it seems.
Later, after the tour we hiked up the big hill called Huayna Pichu where we could get panoramic views of the entire site. Walking up the steps of Huayna Pichu was pretty treacherous, especially when it started raining and some lady obviously slipped and had to be stretchered down. The steps were the original Inca ones and some of them were quite big and difficult to climb.
Walking around the ruins was impressive, especially when you imagine how much work it must have taken to carry all those rocks up there and all this without the wheel.Although obviously it wasn't the idylic paradise that the guide made it out to be the Incas were clearly a smart bunch of people they were just unlucky to come up against the Spanish with their vast technological advantage.
The train ride back to Cusco passed through some spectacular scenery but of course being Peru the train ride was only halfway back and then we had to change to bus. The train between Machu Pichu and Cusco must be one of the most expensive trains in the world. There's no road in so you either get the train or walk it and a one way ticket for an hour and a half journey costs $45. The train is owned by a private company and they're clearlt raking it in. So what most tour companies do is get the train as far as the first stop with a road and bus it the rest of the way back to Cusco.
That's what we did and we were back just in time for New Years Eve. We all went down to the main square for midnight where everything was going a bit crazy. Everyone was firing off rockets and other fireworks and not always up in the air. Of course I managed to but some dud ones but par for the course here really. At midnight everyone started to run around the square. The tradition is to run around the square twelve times. We did it once and figured that would be enough.
And so after almost two weeks in and around the Cusco area it was the end of 2007, almost the end of my trip and time to move on to somewhere new.
