Firstly let me start off by apologising for the super-cheesy
and supremely average post-title. My
only defence is that I’ve been up since 5am having not really slept well from
noisy dorm buddies, and I’m a bit bunged up cold-wise, so it’s fair to say I’m
not feeling at my creative best! Anyway,
I’ve got another 24 hours of bus ahead of me heading from near the bottom of
Peru all the way up the coast through Lima and to the very North to a little
surfy beach town called Mancora near the border of Ecuador, and I’ve a lot to
update you on, so onwards I plod.
So having made it back to Cuzco in my last post, the
following morning I was of the hope that I would be able to wing my way up to
Ollyantambo and onwards to Aguaalientes so that I could conquer the tourist
must tick of the Mighty Machu Picchu. A
few tourists had told me it was unlikely as the US$100 1.5 hour return train
from from Ollyantambo to Aguaalientes was usually booked up in advance, and the
train was the only way to get there, hence their ability to charge their
exorbitant fee. It seemed that everyone
I spoke to had done or was about to do the trip on a tour, which I looked into
but couldn’t go that day, so I crossed my fingers and decided I’d give it a go
winging it with nothing booked, nothing planned, and not really much clue what
I was doing. Turns out luck was on my
side and I managed to get one of the few seats left on the trains both there
the same day as I was hoping, and the following day at 2pm. So I jumped on bus to Ollyantambo where I
needed to get to in order to catch the train, and was mildly concerned when I
asked in my broken Spanish how long until we would arrive at our destination
thinking I knew the answer but just double-checking, that the answer was ‘no
se’, meaning they didn’t know. Through a
girl sitting next to me translating, it turned out that a truck that was too
heavy for a bridge that we needed to use had tried to go across and
consequently broken the bridge, so we were having to take a detour in order to
get there. Excellent!! Nothing to do but
sit there with my fingers crossed and hope I hadn’t just wasted 100 bucks! Maybe I should have waited the extra day and
gone with a tour group?!
But we did manage to get to Ollyantambo in enough time for
me to have a about an hour to have a little nose around, and then jump on Inca
Rail to Aguaalientes, the launch pad for Machu Picchu. My next mission was to find a hostel with
absolutely no clue where I was or where I was supposed to get to. Apparently my face conveyed I had no idea
what I was doing, as I was standing there looking confused a lovely Brazilian
guy asked if he could help me – yes please!
Poor guy traipsed around with me for over half an hour trying to find a
hostel that wasn’t going to charge me huge amounts because I was on my own, and
eventually we found Inca House, and the best internet I had had in months (bar
London). Sadly he had to catch his train
so I couldn’t buy him a beer for his help (doubly sadly because he was
super-HOT!).
Once I was settled my kindly hostel owner showed me where I
could buy my ticket for the following day for buses and entrance, and I was
lucky enough to get a ticket to hike up Maccu Picchu Manana (mountain) of which
there are only 400 issued per day (and higher than Wayna Picchu, for anyone
that knows their Picchu’s). Then after
some tasty street food it was back to the hostel for an early night in
anticipation of my 5am alarm. Of course,
that was when I realised that I didn’t actually have an alarm, and after
failing miserably at asking for a wake-up call in terrible Spanish and
charades, I set out to try and find an alarm at 9pm at night. My second charade attempt worked at a
pharmacy – “ahhh, alarme?”… “si, alarme!” (why hadn’t I tried that at the
hostel?!), and I am now the proud owner of the loudest ticking, loudest ringing
square wind-up alarm clock you’ve ever heard.
Wrapped up in my hoodie and in the middle of my pack you can still hear
it ticking – it sounds like a bomb – it’s awful, but it works!
So Bing did his job and the following day I was up bright
and sparkling early and full of eager anticipation of the marvels that lay
ahead. I was blessed by a relatively
clear day – a lot clearer than it had been in the past week or so apparently –
and a 30 minute bus ride later one of the great Wonders of the World lay before
my eyes. My plan was to first climb the
mountain before it got too hot, and given there were very mixed opinions as to
how long it would take to get to get up and down varying from 1-3 hours. It look me about half an hour of walking
around in circles before actually finding the entrance to the mountain, and off
I set up what looked like an exceptionally tall order of a walk. About 5 minutes in I was lucky enough to meet
an English speaking Brazilian girl (sadly not from Rio PandA) and her Peruvian
friend, who about half an hour in retreated back down suffering from vertigo,
the poor guy! So it was myself and
Fabiana trooping up the increasingly steep terrain, and an hour and 45 minutes
later with plenty of “photo” stops, we finally reached the top to be rewarded
with the Machu Picchu money shot from above – at least it would have been if it
hadn’t been completely cloudy!! Thankfully,
and it was amazing to watch, when you’re up that high the clouds move pretty
quickly, and we were able to get some decent shots in-between the moving
haze. All in all I have to say I’m
disappointed with all my photos from the day, I found it really difficult to
capture and I’m blaming the weather, but nonetheless it was a once in a
lifetime experience, one never to be
forgotten.
Being conscious that I had a 2.30pm train, we paced it back
down the mountain without stopping, leaving me with just enough time to get a
guide to take me around the ruins and explain their stories and significance,
rather than my just taking a pile of photos of various piles of rocks. And I’m so pleased I did - it was fascinating. The Inca’s really were supremely clever in
their sophistication and ingeniousness in the construction of their settlement,
from the way they told the date and time, to their irrigation and water
systems, to their intricate stonework in their places of worship. Testament to this are the fact that the
engineering marvels are still so intact having withstood half a dozen centuries
worth of earthquakes and extreme weather.
And as if all this wasn’t awesome enough, I am now the rpoud owner of a
Machu Picchu stamp in my passport – cool huh?!
Time really was on my side that day, and just as my 2 hour personal tour
ended (which they had given to me super-cheaply!) it started to rain and it was
time to jump back on the bus, run back to my hostel, grab my pack, hustle to
the train station in perfect time to board Inca rail back to Ollayantambo, and
reverse the trip I had taken the day before.
My hope was that my luck continue and on returning to Eco-Packers in
Cuzco to grab my pack that I would be able to go immediately to the bus station
and jump straight on the 19 bus to my next destination – Huacachina – and knock
off 8 hours of the journey overnight whilst I was exhausted and would hopefully
sleep. Disappointingly my timing luck
had run out having been working like clock-work the past few days, and there
weren’t any buses heading my way until the following day, so I bought my ticket
and returned to Eco-Packers for the night.
The following day I returned to the bus depot ticket in
hand, and boarded a relatively in descript 19 hour bus ride. At least that had been what I’d hoped, full
of optimism about the fact that my bus had wi-fi and a power socket and I was
going to get some stuff done.
Unfortunately, of course, the wi-fi didn’t work, but the best part about
the trip was that the roads were an absolute rollercoaster and the two girls
both directly in front and behind me proceeded to throw up the entire ride
complete with all the sound effects! It
wasn’t that I didn’t feel for them, they were obviously having a miserable
time, it’s just I didn’t necessarily enjoy witnessing their suffering
first-hand the entire duration of the trip, and then some, given the bus broke
down for about 2 hours in the middle of the night.
Somewhat tiredly I disembarked from the bus and taxied the
short distance from Ica to Huacachina, to be greeted by a truly amazing and
surprising sight. Not 10 minutes from a
fairly major city, and you become surrounded by towering sand dunes that
encircle a picturesque lake – a tiny postcard perfect oasis. So the mission for the day become choosing a
sandboard tour agency (they were everywhere), deciding my next destination,
booking 2 buses, swimming in the hostel pool, having a beer, reading the Indian
Marie Claire that I’ve been lugging around for about the past month and a half
finally, and get ready for the main event – sandboarding the dunes! Disappointingly our guide was not what you’d
could the most enthusiastic guide in the world, pushing 60 and somewhat passed
the thrill of the dune-buggies which was all a part of the fun. But he did give us a few shrieks, and waxed
the boards up for us to launch ourselves down what seemed very high peaks! So I have to thank Pete and Andy and admit
that it was a hell of a lot of fun. I
was going to skip it but Pete was adamant and told me… well I won’t say exactly
what he said to me as it wasn’t polite, but I’m very pleased I went as I had a
blast! Sadly though, there was another
casualty on the trip L. My little orange Sony point and shoot, which
for those of you that remember it know that it had an exceptionally hard life, I
thought was safely deposited in one of the guys pockets so that he could film
me going down from the bottom, and unfortunately it endured one more grain of
sand than it could handle and will now no longer open the lens. I’m going to have a go cleaning it on my next
bus leg from Lima where I currently sit in the bus terminal cafeteria, to
Mancora – with 19 hours I’ll have plenty of time, but I really think this time
it might be it.
So that again brings us up to current for now. Hopefully the journey will pass relatively
quickly, I’ve a full battery and a lot of photos to sort and a lot of Spanish
to learn, so I shouldn’t be bored. And
really hopefully I’ll stay at a place with wi-fi that actually works so I can
post this, and there’ll be no stories of up-chucks or anything else!!
Until then!
xx
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| See the very top peak? That's what I climbed!! |
Fabiana and myself at the top
Our driver
