MACHU PICCHU, PERU

I had a 5 a.m. wake up call and, as usual, I was so panicked about oversleeping that I didn’t sleep well at all and kept waking up. I felt okay at 5 though, so I got dressed and went down for breakfast and to wait for my ride to the train. It turned out I was on a slightly later train than I thought, so I was ready about 45 minutes earlier than I needed to be. Right on time, the girl who sold me the package pulled up in a taxi out front and drove me to the train station. It was a confusing scene but she told me how to avoid the crowd and introduced me to Julio, my tour guide. Julio told me I would be in Grupo Julio all day and to remember that. The train was boarding by then so I showed my ticket and went to my reserved seat in the front most car. I wasn’t sure what to expect with this train. It was very expensive compared to everything else in the country, but would it be a nice tourist class train? It turned out it was very nice, up to European 2nd class standards with two individual seats on each side of a center table on both sides of the cabin. My section of 4 was full, but I noticed the section behind me was completely empty so I excused myself and jumped into one of those seats where I would be able to stretch out for the entire 4.5-hour ride. That’s right, it’s about 70 miles each way and it takes 4.5 hours each way. The train rocks pretty badly side-to-side most of the trip and rarely goes above 30 mph.

The scenery was very nice however, and unless you want to walk a minimum of two days on the Inca trail the train is the only way to get there. We stopped a few times on the way, but fortunately no one sat in my section. The weather went from slightly drizzly to sunny and perfect a few times during the journey, until about 3 miles from the final stop in the town of Aguas Calientas. It started to pour like crazy and everyone had to scramble to suit up in our cheap plastic ponchos that we already had purchased for about $1 or bought on the spot right there. We marched off the train in the pouring rain and soon arrived at the chaotic scene were people meet their groups and board the buses to Machu Picchu.

After a few minutes I found where Grupo Julio was assembling and it turned out to be a much larger Grupo than I expected. There were about 30 people there as he called off names in a thick accent and passed out bus vouchers to the people who recognized his version of their names, then the rest of us went to his clipboard and pointed out our names to receive our vouchers. He said you could board any bus, because evidently the same company runs them all. The buses were in a line and we all filed aboard and started the winding trip up the road. Shortly after we started up the bus stopped and a young boy of about 8 flagged us down and the bus driver stopped to pick him up. I thought it was strange at the time, but I soon forgot about it.

The trip up the hill takes about 25 minutes by bus, and when we got to the top it was still pouring. We had to wait another 20 minutes or so there until Julio would arrive. At that point the whole thing seemed like Disneyland instead of the spiritual trek that Machu Picchu is supposed to be. Julio then started calling off names again to hand out our passes to get inside, which seemed incredibly inefficient, especially since our time there was limited. After getting my pass I was unsure where to go so I just slinked inside and waited partially up the hill looking for other people in my grupo.

Another grupo called Grupo Cosme was mingling with my grupo and I eventually figured out that they were the other half of one giant grupo. After more confusion it was determined that Cosme would give the tour in English and Julio would give his tour in Espanol. This was a relief because the bilingual tours seem to move exactly half as fast as monolingual ones, which already move pretty slowly. I was now officially in Grupo Cosme. Once assembled, the grupo was told to walk up these ancient looking stairs and for what seemed like the hundredth time in the last few days I had to walk up about 10 flights worth of dangerous stairs cut into the side of a mountain with no guardrail. Fortunately, I still wasn’t feeling much effect from the altitude and Machu Picchu is actually a couple thousand feet lower than Cusco anyway. It was still pretty exhausting, but once we got to that peak it almost seemed worthwhile as you suddenly arrive at the most famous and complete view of the lost city of the Incas.

It was still raining pretty hard and many of the clouds were actually below us in the valley. A foggy cloud cover would come and go for the rest of the day. The tour started and Cosme, again, spoke with a very thick accent. It amazes me how even people giving tours in English struggle so much with the language. The explanations were interesting so I decided not to skip out on the tour group like a few other people already had. I was tempted a few other times because the grupo moved pretty slowly, but I figured I would get less out of it and regret it later if I did. I’m glad I stuck with it as we ended up going to every place in the city, which isn’t nearly as large as it looks like in photos. The buildings are made differently in different parts so each camera angle looks unique even though they are all tightly grouped.

I was expecting to be disappointed in Machu Picchu with all the expense, time, and hype that went into it, but it really is an amazing thing to see in person. The rain eventually subsided and the clouds would come and go making for some very interesting scenery in themselves. Every photo of Machu Picchu I’ve ever seen has clouds in it and my day there lived up to that. As usual, most of the people on the tour were in groups and they would take turns photographing each other in the foreground with various buildings and vistas in the backgrounds. I always think it’s a bit silly, as if people need photographic evidence that they were actually there. Just after the tour ended, a beautiful young American girl in our grupo approached me and offered to take a photo for me, so naturally I said yes.

Just after the official tour ended (about two hours) we had about 90 minutes before we had to be at the train down the hill. We could spend that time anyway we wanted, climbing around Machu Picchu on our own or whatever. I felt I had gotten my fill of the place so I headed toward the buses and many people in my grupo were right behind me.

I walked back out to the entrance and climbed aboard the first bus sitting there. We were quickly underway down the switchback roads descending the mountain. Only one turn down though, and we saw a group of young boys in bright yellow and orange traditional Inca costumes. It was obvious they were there to be photographed and tipped by tourists, but surprisingly, one of the boys came up to the driver of the bus, handed him a large shoulder bag, then started running along side the bus. He dropped out of sight as the bus sped toward the next corner, but after we rounded the corner the same boy was there on a staircase that evidently goes all the way down the mountain. The boy waived at the bus and yelled something that sounded like KuuuKoooo as the bus passed. That seemed friendly enough and the bus barreled along the mountain road to the next corner a few hundred yards away to make the turn and head back in the other direction.

Not long after the turn we saw the same boy who waived and shouted the same thing. It was obvious suddenly that this was all a show for the bus passengers, and it also occurred to me the boy on the bus on the way up was one of these same kids. Over and over this happened, the bus would round the corner and the boy would appear somewhere along the road and yell and waive at the bus. People on the bus started applauding every time he did this so it was an effective trick. The boy was running down the stairs just as quickly as a big, slow bus could drive a quarter mile and then take a sharp turn. I’m sure I could have done it too. It would have been impressive if they ran UP the stairs, but we already knew they take the bus back up with their costume in a bag, then change, and run down the stairs, one boy per bus. The driver must get a portion of the tips or something because when we finally got to the bottom of the mountain the bus stopped to let the boy on board. The bus drives over a bridge back into the town of Aguas Calientes and the boy hops off first and is there to greet each passenger as we get off, with his hand out, of course.

I bought a small pizza and a bottle of beer at one of the restaurants that line the train track. The town consists of about 30 restaurants and almost all of them serve pizza along side other dishes. After a leisurely lunch I walked back to the train and got on board. I was sitting in a different assigned seat, but with the exact same group of people all around me from the ride there. We chatted for a while, but when some people got off at the first stop about an hour later, I again took over a whole section behind us so I could stretch out. The scenery is great, but it was starting to get dark and the trip takes 4.5 hours! I read my book, but I was over the whole train thing. I asked an attendant how much longer and he said about an hour and fifteen minutes more, but there was another option. We would stop in fifteen minutes and buses would be waiting that would take us to the plaza in Cusco in fifteen minutes instead of the final hour on the train. I thought about it and decided it was worth the $1.70 for the bus and so did about half the people on the train because the two buses waiting at the train stop filled up.

As promised, we were at the plaza in fifteen minutes. I did some writing work at an Internet café, then met a few of my train friends (all from Seattle) at a gringo bar a few blocks away. They stayed on the train so they didn’t get there for a while. A few beers later and left and had some dinner close to my hotel and then went to bed.

It was nice that for the first time in several days I didn’t have to wake up early for something and could sleep in. I woke up early anyway and started to realize the sunburn that I started two days earlier had gotten pretty bad on my face. I had a leisurely morning and finally was able to hook my laptop up at an Internet place so I could transmit the article I had written for my last deadline of the bunch. I checked out of the hotel, had lunch, and got a taxi to the airport. By the time I got there I was starting to feel not so well. My face was hot and I might even have been running a fever. I was also a bit achy and tired. Oh no.

I rested and waited for my flight. I was very worried that I might get nauseous or get diarrhea on the plane. I had a 7-hour stopover in the Lima airport scheduled so as long as I got there I figured I would be okay by the next flight I had at midnight. I felt pretty bad, but fortunately I didn’t get any worse. The flight to Lima went by pretty quickly then I fetched my suitcase and tried to find a place to sit down and relax, hoping I would feel better. About half the airport was under construction and the only seat I could find was at an upstairs Dunkin Donuts. I was still feeling a bit feverish and I was worried that it was the beginning of something much worse. I read the health section of my travel book and discovered I couldn’t rule out Dengue Fever, which is very bad, or Malaria, which is far worse. There were some mosquitoes after the rain at Machu Picchu and I suddenly remembered I had forgotten to get the Malaria pills I wanted to get.

After a while I went down to check in for my midnight flight, six hours early. The guy at the counter was very nice and asked if I wanted a seat on the 9 p.m. flight instead. I thought about it for a few seconds because that would probably mean paying for a hotel room in Buenos Aires arriving at 4 a.m. instead of probably not having to pay for the night and checking in at 7 a.m. Since I wasn’t feeling well I decided to go for the earlier flight. I went to the gate area, which had no air conditioning, was hot, and had some mosquitoes flying around too. I stretched out and didn’t really feel any better and eventually boarded the plane. I had a window seat in an exit row with no one else in my row, which was nice for an overnight flight. I managed to sleep for about an hour of the 3.5-hour flight and we touched down at 3:20, but with the two-hour time difference it was only 1:20 to me. I was actually feeling better and not feverish, but now pretty tired.