Returning from Machu Picchu

Hola todos,

I´m back in Cusco, and had a sweet trip to Machu Picchu with some great new friends.

Yesterday was some kind of day, such that I don´t think I´ll forget it anytime soon. After 3 days of biking and hiking we got up at 4 in the morning to put on our headlamps and hike up to Machu Picchu. You need to get there early to hike the peak above it, Wayna Picchu, which they´ll only allow 400 people a day to hike. Steps, steps, and more steps, not to mention all the steps we´d need to go up and down walking around the city afterwards; the Incans had no need for stairmasters. We got up to Machu Picchu, went through the security checkpoint, and just got a glimpse of the city as we speedwalked through the streets to get in line for Wayna Picchu. From the top, Machu Picchu looks very small (it isn´t the iconic view you´re used to seeing - that one is from the guardtower on the other side of the city), but we had fun taking goofball pictures of us doing things like holding up or stepping on the city.

Once we climbed back down to Macchu Picchu, we were taken on an hour long tour of the city which explained things like it´s possible significance, possible reasons that the city was abandoned, the interpreted purpose of different buildings or things within the city. And, of course, the city is most famous for how remarkably well preserved and free from outside influence it is. No Spanish architecture here, but rather a mysterious place with a bunch of rocks that were remarkably well crafted and put together. Of course you can do your own research, or make your own trip sometime. A lot of the history was probably wasted on me. Ancient history to me isn´t usually something I´m too interested in digging up. Truth be told, I was more just interested in taking in the place that was still there today. Some of my friends in the group talked about having a sense in being in a place that was holy in some way. I didn´t feel that way, but thought it was definitely neat, and had a great time taking pictures.

After hiking back down from the city, we waited in town for our evening train. The Irish and the Brits had a rousing debate during a meal we shared. I couldn´t for the life of me understand what it was about, but just listening to it was very entertaining. The evening would be prove to be even moreso. The Irish blokes decided that we should sing songs enthusiastically from our section of the train, at the expense or enjoyment of everyone else aboard. They also talked me into playing my harmonica. While we were singing Queen´s Bohemian Rhapsody some bizarre music started playing. Thinking they were trying to shut us out, we sang even louder. The reason for the music became apparent, however, when a clown burst into the cabin and started dancing around. After some bewildered comments we took this in stride and clapped to the beat, and I played my harmonica some more while the clown danced to it. Once he was gone, things got even weirder. New music played, and a fashion show started up. Various models walked through the isle displaying some fancy outfits. I got a little carried away by the energy of the whole thing, and walked down the row myself displaying my grungy backpacker clothing, but it was all in good fun, and the train staff didn´t seem too put off by the antics of our group. They didn´t kick us off the train at least.

Once we did get off, it was nighttime, in a stopover town where we were to catch a bus that would take us to Cusco. Someone was supposed to be waiting for us with a sign that had some of our names on it and a sweatshirt with the tour agency´s logo on it. We walked around a bit and saw nobody. A guy approached us, and claimed that he was supposed to take us to our bus. We were hesitant, however, when he put our group size at 13 (it was 10) and didn´t know any of our names. He said he was with our agency, but we had given him our agency´s name first, and he didn´t have any kind of identification. Initially we told him that we wouldn´t go with him unless he could produce our names, but eventually we said that we´d get on a bus to Cusco if he agreed that we had already paid for it. When he kept saying ¨no pay¨to us, we took it that he was trying to tell us that we hadn´t paid, and that he was trying to scam us. A couple people in our group started getting very angry with this guy, and the positive energy from the train quickly turned negative. Personally I think both came from being exhausted after the trip, and from what had already been a long day (it started at 4am). I tried talking to the guy in Spanish, but the situation was a bit tense and it wasn´t until backed into a corner he said ¨you no pay, no es una problema¨that we realized we´d been misunderstanding him all along. It probably would have been easy to work that out if we hadn´t come at him like he was trying to cheat us. He hadn´t been. We got on our bus to Cusco, and didn´t have to pay. We apologized to the man. You have to be careful sometimes, but we´d jumped on him before we´d really tried to talk to him.

The night still wasn´t over, however. While we were resting on the bus, it suddenly swerved and crashed into a large boulder. The front end of the bus was damaged and one of the tires was flattened; the rim mangled. We got out of the bus and had to wait outside for them to try and replace the tire. We made light of the situation (one of our group picked up a piece of the bus that had fallen off to take with him as a souveneir), but were really all very tense and exhausted. Eventually (I think after about an hour) they did manage to replace it, and get us back to Cusco. We wouldn´t get home until shortly before midnight. It had been a long and somewhat crazy day. And that was just one day out of 4. :)

The first day had been all downhill mountain biking, and I enjoyed it, but the road was very bumpy, and we had to cross a lot of fjords. These were exciting when we had to hit them with speed, and hope that they wouldn´t sweep us off the road. One of our party had part of her bike fall off. Another had a tire pop, and crashed. Another crashed into another rider. Three of them had to be taken in the van to our first destination. The rest of us were just sore from all of the bumps. We hadn´t been able to look around much at the beautiful scenery, as we had to focus on the bikes and the road most of the time. I´d say it was an adventure in itself.

The other two days hiking, we crossed over some beautiful mountain and jungle scenery, commiserated over how much we were getting eaten alive by mosquitos, crossed over a river canyon by being pulled across in a cage on a rope, met a woman who fed candy to her monkey, ate mangos from the trees, relaxed at some hot springs, played a card game popular among travellers which was fun but which has a name I can´t say, and all the while I enjoyed the company of some fun, good hearted people. It´s hard to capture the impact of an experience. I´m just glad that some of you back at home are interested in listening to me ramble on about it!

Now since I´ve talked so much about my pictures from Machu Picchu, I´m sharing them on my facebook, and you can find them here: http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=85826&l=c50fd&id=591556557

Tomorrow I´ll be taking a day trip with the same group to The Sacred Valley, which has some more ruins, and then tomorrow night I´ll be travelling to Arequipa where I´ll probably do a few things before crossing the border south into Chile. I´ll save the emotional leaving Peru post until then.

God bless all of you,
Stephen