Well, after our delayed border crossing it made for a late
night arrival into Cusco. We were glad we had pre-booked a hostel room as we
were feeling pretty exhausted. Our hostel was on the outskirts of town but the
room was nice and they made us fresh pancakes for breakfast. That’s always a
bonus.
But of course our main reason for being in Cusco was to
visit Machu Picchu. After much advice from fellow travellers throughout South
America we decided that the best way to do it was to take a Jungle Trekking tour.
This tour was a combination of some downhill bike riding, trekking, rafting and
zip-lining along with accommodation in comfortable guesthouses on the way. So
our first morning in Cusco was spent scouting out the cheapest possible tour.
Pretty much all the tours offered the same thing so it was simply a matter of
finding the price we liked. It didn’t take us too long and we had booked and
paid for a tour to leave the following day. So that left us with only a little
time to enjoy the sites of Cusco.
Cusco is a really beautiful city nestled amongst surrounding
mountains and with some gorgeous buildings to explore. It is of course also a
tourist town with pretty much every visitor to South America using it as a
stepping off point to see Machu Picchu. But still to us, it really didn’t feel
that bad. Often those really touristy cities turn us off as we don’t like to be
constantly badgered by people wanting your business however there were plenty
of areas in Cusco where we could just wander freely and enjoy the architecture
and some local food without all the tourist hoards around us. That first day we
even managed to find a small local festival happening with some live music and
dancing on stage. But with an early start in the morning it was a reasonably
quiet day for us and we cooked a low key dinner in the hostel before getting
some sleep.
Firstly let me just give you a quick overview of the tour we
were about to begin. The entire tour goes for four days. The first day was a
three hour drive and a three to four hour downhill bike ride. We then had the option for white water
rafting in the evening. Our second day was an 8-10 hour trek and the third day
was two hours of zip-lining in the morning followed by a three hour trek in the
afternoon. The fourth and final day was the trek up to Machu Picchu then back
down and the train & bus back to Cusco. We were in for a busy few days.
We were packed into the minibus with 15 people in our group
and only 15 seats available. In fact our guide, Guido ended up sitting on a
little stool he picked up along the way. So most people had to nurse their
luggage. We were however once again so happy to quickly realise we had scored a
great group of people for our tour. We were a mixed bunch from Australia,
France, Israel, Germany, South Africa, USA & Sweden.
Our first adventure for the trip was downhill biking. You
can just imagine how thrilled we were to arrive at the starting point to find
the weather cold and wet. So it was on with the jumpers, gloves and ponchos
before jumping on our bikes. Not the most pleasant beginning to our trip. But
hey, a bit of rain never hurt anyone so we went on our way down the
mountainside. The bikes weren’t the most modern things and certainly weren’t as
good as those we had used on Death Road in Bolivia but still, they at least had
some suspension and most had decent brakes. Although poor Tegan got stuck with
a real dud because he was such a gentlemen and agreed to swap with one of the
other girls in the group who was having trouble with the bike. He then ended up
with a sore arse for the next week. But he looked amusing trying to pick up
speed down the mountain. His poor bike required a lot more effort than anyone
else’s to actually gain some speed. Halfway down we were happy the rain stopped
and off came the jumpers and ponchos. Although unhappily we soon all found out
that there were many huge puddles/mini rivers we had to ride through and by the
end of the afternoon we all had soaking wet shoes. Luckily for us there was a
family with a knack for money making. They had a wood-fired oven and knew that
the tourists always had wet shoes when they arrived so for three pesos ($1) we
could hand our shoes to them to dry overnight and then pick them up before our
trek the following morning. About half the group, Tegan included, tried their
hand at white water rafting that afternoon. The rapids were class 3 and the
river had actually only reopened that very same day after a tree had taken out
a bridge earlier in the year and the debris had only just been cleared away.
The group managed to all stay in their boat and had a good couple of hours on
the water. That night, after dinner we
all pretty much went straight to bed after a pretty exhausting day. I, however, had some very bad luck and
contracted food poisoning. I won’t go into details but I’ll just say that I
didn’t get any sleep between midnight and 5am due to running to the bathroom.
It was probably one of the worst nights I have ever had in my life. I felt
absolutely rotten and was trying so hard the whole time not to keep Tegan awake
because of the big trek happening first thing in the morning. Needless to say
when morning did eventually come my entire body was so drained that I was not
trekking anywhere so I had to be put in a taxi to the next town whilst the rest
of the group had a gruelling day ahead of them.
But before we get to the day of trekking a little note about
the shoes…We all got our shoes back as promised the following morning and were
very happy to find them dried as promised. However, when Tegan went to put his
shoe on he found a screw in the back of one of the soles. We worked out that
they must have put the shoe too close to the oven and the whole sole had
actually melted off the shoe! Their way of fixing it was a screw in the back
and they didn’t even say a word when they gave it to us. Needless to say Tegan
was quick to get our guide, Guido’s, attention and his help in explaining to
the shop owners that he couldn’t trek in the shoes like that and we needed to
fix them another way. Sure enough, there was a cobbler down the street who
could fix the shoes in half an hour. Tegan’s shoe came through the surgery with
flying colours and he was ready to go.
So whilst I suffered an unpleasant day of lying in a room
trying to make myself feel a little better the rest of the group hiked across
rivers, down roads and small paths and even a small part of one of the original
trails used by Incans on the side of a massive cliff. The plus side for them
was at the end of the day they got to enjoy some thermal baths to soothe those
tired muscles. That night was a bit of a party, with lots of cocktails enjoyed
with dinner and some dancing at a local club afterwards where one of our new
friends Joe gave Tegan his first ever break dancing lesson.
The following day I woke up to be feeling much better and
ready for the day. I actually managed to eat my breakfast and decided to
participate in the zip-lining. We got to do 6 zip-lines across the valleys
before we headed off to lunch. After lunch we started our afternoon of walking.
This walk was just 10 minutes uphill and then the rest was following the
railway tracks all the way to the town of Aguas Calientes at the base of Machu
Picchu. It was a beautiful walk with magnificent views of the sides of Machu
Picchu, Huayna Picchu and some other great ruins along the way.
The next morning was an early morning get up of 4am so that
we were ready at the entrance gate for the trail up the mountain at 5am when it
opened. There were probably 50 people waiting at the bottom of the mountain
ready for an early morning climb to reach the top by sunrise. Tegan and a few
of the boys went racing off ahead and actually managed to get to the top in
about 40 minutes. Tegan said when he got up to the top there were only about 11
people who had already arrived so he did pretty well. On the other hand myself
and my new Swedish buddy Ines decided to take it a little easier and in fact
managed to also get ourselves lost. You see, when we started out it was
completely pitch black and the staircase up the mountain crosses over the main
road in places. So at one stage we missed the staircase in the dark and then it
took us three turns in the road before we actually managed to spot it again. We
were not happy as we had to be at the top by 6am or our tour group was leaving
without us. Needless to say at about 1
minute to 6 we finally hit the top and were so happy to be there. I had asked Guido the day before how many
steps there were to get to the top and he had told us 700. I was like, oh well
that’s pretty easy then. Ines and I were not impressed when we were counting
and reached 700 and looked up to see we only looked around half way. I asked a
couple of people once we reached the top and found out that actually there are
1772 steps… Thanks Guido, you were out by 1000!
But it is completely worth the tiring climb when you finally
get inside those entrance gates. Wow, what a site. It is just so hard to
describe. We arrived just after the sun had come up and the whole site was
completely fog free. It just looked magical. There was fog hanging below in the
trees and above us on the mountain tops but right in the middle where Machu
Picchu sat there was just nothing. And as we were some of the first people to
enter there was also no one around. It was completely quiet. So beautiful.
However all that quickly changed. Within just 15 minutes of our arrival the fog
rolled in and it stayed that way for the next hour or so. We were so glad we
had arrived when we did to see the whole site in the first light of day. Guido
took us on a guided tour of the site, sharing the history and stories of how it
was first found in the early 1900’s. Our tour lasted around 2 1/2 – 3 hours, at
which time Guido bid us farewell and we were on our own for the rest of the day.
Most of us had pre-booked tickets to climb Huayna Picchu at 10am. Huayna Picchu
is the big pointed mountain you see in the background of most postcard pictures
of Machu Picchu. It is supposedly a gruelling climb but personally I found it
easier than the one up to Machu Picchu. Although others said they found it
harder. So maybe I just got my second wind at the right time. One thing that
did confuse us was that we knew Incan people were generally very short and
small however the steps up Huayna Picchu which were built by the Incans were
massive! We were really stretching our legs to climb up them so I am amazed at
how they managed to climb up and down that mountain. We all relaxed and ate
some snacks once we reached the top. That was our time to really take in all
the glory that is Machu Picchu. It is truly an amazing site and the past four
days of effort to get there really makes it all worthwhile just to see that
site. It also makes you feel like you really achieved something. We really felt
for those people who did the gruelling original Inca Trail. You need to book
months in advance and you basically walk 12 hours a day for four days. The few
people we met at Machu Picchu who had completed it were so exhausted that they
could hardly enjoy everything Machu Picchu had to offer as they were just too
tired. After a few more hours we were ready to start our descent and looking
forward to a beer at the bottom. But of course, knowing our luck, we had just
decided to opt for walking back down the steps instead of taking the bus down
the mountain when it started to rain and rain and rain. About half way down my
knees started playing up so I had to slow right down and Tegan, the gentleman,
stayed with me. By the time we got to the bottom we were actually walking down
a fast running river that had drowned the steps below. It was just incredible
how much water built up in such a short timeframe. We were definitely ready for
that beer and some good hearty food when we got to the bottom.
The train and bus back to Cusco that night all went
relatively smoothly other than the fact that our bus driver kept nodding off at
the wheel! I was the only one awake in the whole bus as it was 1am. Everyone
else just fell asleep but I was so damned terrified that I stayed wide awake
the whole 90 minute bus ride back and just kept nudging the driver with my
elbow every time he’d fall asleep. I was so happy to get out of that bus! I
think Tegan wondered why I looked so wide-eyed when we arrived back. That night
was a well needed long sleep.
The following day we enjoyed a relaxing day in Cusco before
having a reunion dinner with those of our group still in town and then a few
drinks at a local bar. The next day it was farewell to Cusco for Tegan and I as
we flew back to Lima for our final two nights in South America.
Tegan managed to catch a cold/flu thing after all the busy
times over the last few days so he wasn’t feeling great whilst we were back in
Lima. We decided not to do a lot and just spent a lot of time in the area of
Miraflores, enjoying the parks and cafes in the area. Then it was time to bid
farewell to South America after almost three months here. It has been such an
amazing three months. We have done so much and our Spanish has definitely
improved a lot. We’ve made some wonderful friends along the way and now looking
forward to the penultimate leg of our round world journey, in Mexico!
