Getting to Machu Picchu
The Inca site par excellence, the place that every tourist to Peru just has to visit, is Machu Picchu. An enormous infrastructure has developed in a somewhat slapdash fashion around this place, and every visitor who wants to get to this remote site has to take the extortionately high-priced and ridiculously over-hyped tourist train. Well, almost everybody, that is.
There was something about the tourist train that was just too, uh... comfortable for our taste. It is not that we mind paying $2 per kilometer on an 80 kilometer ride, it's just that taking it is just a little too far removed from reality (and, actually, we did mind the price).
So, we decided to bus it, although with some apprehension because our travel guide strongly suggested that such a bus ride would take us through hell and back, and was only for the "die-hard traveler," whatever that should mean. However, the bus really was the right decision. We caught the daily 9:00AM out of Ollantaytambo to a two horse town called Santa Maria. The bus had no more seats, but the driver was gracious enough to let us ride in the cab, which allowed us to appreciate some really great views of the Andes as we worked our way over the last chain before the Amazon.
From Santa Maria, it was another hour in the trunk of a station wagon combi along a narrow dirt road clinging to the side of a cliff to the one-horse town of Santa Theresa. From there, we caught another combi (with seats, this time) up the river to a hydro-electric project, which was also the end of the road. This was also where we caught our first glimpse of the ruins, on the top of a mountain overlooking the canyon.
At the hydroelectric project, we followed the same tracks that the tourist train runs on for five miles or so through the cloud forest, with lots of pretty flowers, butterflies and a friendly little dog that befriended us for the walk. This stretch took us directly into the town of Aguas Calientes, a miserable little tourist trap below Machu Picchu where you are pretty much obliged to spend a night or two in order to visit the ruins. We found a decent little room with hot-ish water and settled in.
The trip was easy and beautiful, far from the god-awful slog that everybody makes it out to be. And, it was only $11.
We took a few snaps of the day, check them out!
September 8th, 2010 - 09:11
So that”s where my summer terrace flowers all grow! And that’s the cutest little doggy by your side, although there’s a ressemblence with Roni, don’t you think?