Epic Feats and whatnot

Man oh man, where to start. I´ve been out of the reach of broadband for the past few days again, and for a good reason again. I´ll start at the beginning, I guess, as most stories tend to do.

Tuesday we took a bus about 8 km out from Cuzco and walked through a bunch of archeological sites on the way back. It was really cool, a nice day with perfect weather for walking. Along the way, we met a dog friend and named him Brahma. Brahma´s the beer I drank all through Brazil and Argentina, and the slogan is ´Brahma, Buena Onda´ which basically translates to good vibes, but not quite. I don´t know exactly how to say it but anyway. So this dog was a goofball and I shared my lunch with him, he led us along a horse path to some ruins, then we followed him along this other path trying to find another site. We ran into some mean dogs going that way, and Brahma was just really chill, and basically let us know it wasn´t worth it to pass because those dogs were nasty. He just turned and walked away. But he stayed with us all day until the last ruin, and he was dead tired. Every time we stopped, he would lay down and fall asleep. Every time we left though, he would come chasing after us, to the point that I was worried he´d lose his way home. Finally he realized he had to leave, and it was a sad goodbye, but he was a great companion for the day. Everyone else loved him too. He came and saw all the ruins with us, bounding around old Inca rocks and trying to get other people to feed him... too cute. He did try to bite me though, when I tried to pull some spikey things out of his leg, but I didn´t blame him, he didn´t know any better.


So then we went out on Tuesday night, had an awesome dinner and looked into how exactly we were to get to Machu Picchu. Turned out to be a LOT more complicated than I had thought. First of all, the prices to enter have doubled since whatever we read was researched. Then even getting there is a disaster. It´s insanely expensive to take the advertised transportation to the stupid town of Aguas Calientes, the place you have to go to get to MP. But when something sounds ridiculous, sometimes it is. We paid the equivalent of a couple dollars (rather than around $40) to get to the halfway point. After a little talking with locals, we were told that from there, you can walk along the train tracks no problem. So that´s what we did. That saved us about $75. We started walking from the town, Ollantaytambo, first through some farmland, past bulls, through grain, across irrigation ditches, etc. The scenery, first off, is stunning. The valley is really deep, and the mountains surrounding us were just... monumental, amazingly huge and beautiful. We eventually made our way to the tracks, snapped a few pictures to document our excitement, and carried on because we knew we had about 30 kilometers to walk, and didn´t want to be doing so in the dark. So we walked and walked, along the tracks, and after about an hour, my feet felt pretty hammered thanks to the pebbles that line train tracks. And to give you an idea of my hiking gear, I have one of those silly llama backpacks I bought in Bolivia for a couple bucks, shoes with the Adidas label, but they´re actually called Adalid because they´re knockoffs from Argentina, then jeans and a wool sweater... and it was raining. I´m a huge baby about the rain, then the fact that I was wearing wool made me even more of a baby. The walk was really easy anyway though, mostly flat, and the scenery, breathtaking to the point that it made me stop a few times just to stare. After a while, it looked like scenes from Jurassic Park-huge mountains covered with brilliantly green trees, cacti, sheer rock faces, and the rushing water of the Rio Urubamba hundreds of feet below us. At the start, we passed the KM 68 marker and were a little apprehensive considering Aguas Calientes was at KM 104 or something like that. No one gives you a real map because I think they want to keep it a secret how you get to the town in order to keep the ridiculously high prices. So we set off with a good idea of what we were getting ourselves into.

Around KM 78 we got pretty hungry and stopped for lunch. At that point, we went over what we had been told the day before, and that was to make sure to take the bus to KM82, then walk. So we had added about 13 extra kilometers to the walk at that point. We got to the provisional train station at KM82, which was built recently since the mudslide of a few months ago literaly wiped the tracks into the river. We got to see that first hand on the first 13km of our walk. We were worried that the train people would tell us we weren´t allowed to walk along the tracks, so we tried to sneak around the train station, but the geographic setting sort of makes that impossible unless you can fly. We tried anyway, by scaling this massive mountain side, passing more bulls again, and barely stopping to appreciate how amazingly beautiful everything around us was. But in the end, we just walked back down, I asked the guard if we could walk along the tracks a little bit, and he said of course. So then we kept on trucking. After a certain point, my joints started hurting like crazy and every time we stopped for a rest, it got worse. So Kenj and I both agreed, without actually speaking it, to stop resting. Around KM 90 I think I had thoughts of death running through my mind. I don´t think it would have been quite so bad if we hadn´t been walking on slippery pebbles, but it was rough! Totally worth it though, we just kept thinking about how much money we were saving. Then around km99 we saw some guys with some 2x4s nailed on top of some train wheels, trying to get enough momentum to carry them down the slight descent in the same direction we were trying to go. They told us to hop on. They had a machete and a smaller knife because they appeared to have been cutting some weedy stuff in the jungle beyond the tracks. Despite the tools/weapons, I didn´t care if they killed me, I just wanted to get on some wheels and give my legs a rest, but they didn´t really build their little mobile thing well and we kept derailing. From them, we learned that we had about 2 hours more to Aguas Calientes, and it was already getting dark. When they couldn´t get us anywhere fast, we decided to just walk, FAST. The guys were really nice anyway though.

So then there we were, in the middle of the jungle, in the bottom of a valley, beneath thick clouds, with night tightening its grip on us. Anyone who knows me knows I haven´t really spent too much time in the great outdoors, as great as I think it all is. Not to say I was scared, just saying if something like a Puma or a snake or a nasty spider had jumped out at me, I wouldn´t be sitting here chronicling the story right now. At a point, I was waiting for the joints in my legs to just snap and leave me there stranded. I wondered if anyone ever died from walking at my age, and wondered if, at my age, this feeling was normal. Then it was basically pitch dark and all I could do was keep putting one foot in front of the other. I stumbled, I heard Kendra stumble behind me, and no breath was wasted by talking. For a while we saw some lights illuminating the clouds, and assumed that it must be the town because there is literally nothing else in this valley. Once we actually saw the lights, we got really elated, picked up the pace a little, and came to a bridge! It was a dam. Bummer. Keep going, forget about the pain, forget about dying, hunger, thirst, all that. Just go!

There´s more to tell, but obviously we made it to the town, and suffering is only interesting when you´re in the middle of it, not writing about it. So yeah, we stumbled into the first hostel we found, Kendra sounded like she wanted to shop around for a price, and I wasn´t having it, so we put our bags down, I laid down in bed, and passed out. No dinner, no nothing. Laying down didn´t even feel good, my legs were throbbing! Oh yeah, I fell into an uncovered sewer ditch before that, but it wasn´t deep. Pissed me off a little bit though.

So the next morning, we woke up at 6 and went to the ticket office,  which is where we realized they had doubled the price. I mean, damn Peru. They didn´t even build this thing, it was there before Peru was Peru, but they still charge us so much for it! So we paid for the ticket. Then went to buy bus tickets and for whatever godforsaken reason, the bus station lists prices in dollars instead of the local currency. This is the only place that does this. So we hand over the already expensive 14 soles to the lady, and she looks at us and says ´no, it´s 40 soles, 14 dollars´. Kendra gave her some sass and so did I. We then realized that if we had eaten dinner the night before we wouldn´t have had enough money to make it to Machu Picchu because neither of us could withdraw cash in that town. So I paid 40 soles in as many coins as I could, halfway to be a pain in the ass, but halfway to drop some weight. Got on the bus, then the lady chased me down and said, or yelled rather, to the bus that I short-changed her. Went back, taught her how to count really quick, gave her a really aggravated look with maybe a little too much attitude and threw my hands in the air like a little biatch, then got on the bus. As soon as we got to the top of the hill, the attitude dropped and even though both of us had legs as stiff as a WASP-y dinner party, we enjoyed the hell out of Machu Picchu. How could you not.

First of all, the ruins really are fascinating. No one knows what exactly the purpose of the place was, so it´s all speculation. The town itself is really cool, but there are a ton of hikes around it that you can do, so we climbed around mountains a little bit for some better views. It´s amazing because the place is completely hidden..the way it´s situated on this mountain you would never find it if you were looking for it from below. Maybe that´s why it wasn´t rediscovered until 1911. The huge mountains and deep valley around it make it a truly amazing site to take in even if you aren´t into old archeological stuff, and the plants and animals all around are really incredible too. Big lizards, these things that look like rabbits but have raccoon tails, and llamas/alpacas are everywhere. There are massive orchids growing out of the side of the mountain, humming birds, cactus with fruits, tropical looking trees... amazing. Then  the trails that link all the little sites to each other are amazing, and it´s impressive people don´t die following them because they´re narrow! Even from thousands of feet up, you can still hear the rushing water of the river below, and you´re not really restricted from too many areas within the site so even though there are a lot of other tourists around, you can still find a way to sneak off for some quiet spot to admire from. So that´swhat Kenj and I did after a while, and I took a little nap.

We got back down, decided that it was worth it to pay for a train ticket rather tahn walk again, and crossed or fingers that we could pay with a credit card. We could, so we booked it and were happy happy happy. Then we read about this restaurant in our lonely planet book, which has totally sucked so far, but was finally dead on about something. This place was sooo damn good! A great 3 course dinner, nice bottle of wine, and a few long hours later, we were fat and happy, had seen Machu Picchu, knew we had a train home the next day... it felt really good. We found out this morning, boarding the train, that all in all, we walked 50 km yesterday. That´s 30 miles.

So now we´re back in Cuzco, taking it easy. We´ll chill out and eat tonight, and they have a lot of good happy hours here, so I think it´s time to treat ourselvesa little. Then we´ll go out and see what goes down in Cuzco on Friday night... hopefully I´ll get what I´m looking for. We tried this place that was up my alley on Monday but it was dead, and they told us to come back on a real night and there would be people there. Then we head to Arequipa tomorrow night on an overnight bus, hopefully see some canyons and stuff, then on to my final destination on this continent, Lima. Thanks Pops for helping me out and making it possible to enter my country again without any trouble. Sometimes I feel like an Easter Egg you find in October.... spoiled rotten.