Today we're finally taking our first steps towards Machu Picchu. This has been our promised land for quite a while now - one of the major highlights of the trip. I'm still a bit fragile from the food poisoning but I'll be ok - I'm British.
Now Machu Picchu is a complicated one. You'd think it was straightforward to get to, but oh no no! You must be joking. Now we're lazy backpackers - so that takes away the Inca Trail* option. Also, we're poor so that makes taking the train a challenge. The train is ex-spen-siv! And just to make things a little more confusing - you can't actually buy the tickets from Cusco's Machu Picchu train station. Why not? Who knows.
We discover there is an option of a (significantly) cheaper train ride, and although you buy the tickets in Cusco, the train picks you up in Ollantaytambo.
Ollantaytambo is actually one of the towns we visited on the Sacred Valley Tour so if we'd known this a few days ago, we could have just got off the bus there and waited for the train - you live and learn.
So we need a taxi to take us to Ollantaytambo. There's certainly no shortage of them - it's just the price we need to settle on. We want to factor in a side trip to Moray along the way and eventually find a driver willing to accept our price.
Things are coming together nicely.
As agreed, our driver take us out to the lesser known site of Moray. This is believed to be an Inca agricultural experiment for testing the effect of different conditions on growing crops. Whatever the purpose, it's an amazing place - just check out the pictures. When we're done there, it's onwards to Ollantaytambo.
The train arrives as planned and gets us up to Aguas Calientes, our resting spot for tonight. Wait, the train doesn't take you to Machu Picchu? Of course not, that would be much too easy. Aguas Calientes is a town not far from our end goal, and tomorrow morning at 5am we'll take one of the first buses of the day up the final leg of this marathon journey. The promised land awaits...
*The Inca Trail is a 4 day hike to Machu Picchu.
