…Do you remember when Dorothy and her friends were playing in amongst the flowers? They all fall asleep and the Wicked Witch of the East sends out those ugly flying monkey things to capture her? Total downer, aye. Well, that’s how I felt when I discovered there was a landslide on the railway tracks and I discovered my Inca journey wasn’t going to be so stress-free. Yes, everyone was fine. No one hurt, but this isn´t about the people on the train. This is about me! And not catching my train till 1am in the morning. As you can imagine it was chaotic, supposedly this is a regular occurrence. Even so, no one knew what was going on and in the end anyone was just pushing on to any train they could, seat or none. It's a bit of a dog eat dog world
I´ve come to learn I would make a great hobo. I´m resourceful, ruthless, easy-going and while these are great skills to possess while traveling alone at times I did feel guilty. I managed to make myself a lil bed out of a wooden crate and thin foam in an area that was under construction. Others were spreading sheets on the ground and looking at me with hungry eyes. Anyway by this time I had come to grips with the idea that no one was picking us up on the other side at the train station to take us to our hostel. So at 2.30am I found myself walking down a long dirt path to the bus station not knowing whether I could catch a bus or not. I hate the taxi drivers around here. You may have already read the story about the taxi driver that followed me around the airport and ripped me off. Well, this experience was twice as bad. 2.30am and these guys were literally trying to grab my stuff and pull me to their cars. I felt so helpless. Lucky for me there was a courtesy bus from the train station offering a ride to Cusco. Thank my lucky stars. I was beginning to think I would have to take a taxi. I had the whole back row to myself and managed to get a few hours sleep, arriving at my hostel at 6am…
