The Journey to Machu Picchu

As I'm writing this now, I've only been awake for about 16 hours, but my family and I are more tired then we've ever been. Our journey to Machu Picchu, while very enjoyable, really pushed our bodies (my mother's especially) to the limit.

For the third day in a row, we woke up in our hotel at 5AM and after a short breakfast, got a taxi ride to the Poroy train station. Poroy is a small village about 15 minutes outside of Cusco and serves as Cusco's rail link to the rest of Peru. On the taxi ride to the station, we got our first beautiful views of the Peruvian countryside, as well as a nice vista of a snow-capped mountain surrounded by clouds in the distance that created a scene almost identical to the Paramount Pictures logo.

The first thing I noticed when arriving at the train station was how differently trains are operated here from the US or Europe. Right away, you could see how the unelectrified tracks ran right through the village, with donkeys roaming around, needing to be escorted by their owners to safety. On the platform, which was closed when we first arrived, we could see workers with ladders on top of the train cleaning the windows and performing maintenance. You could also see some of the train stewards/stewardesses preparing the interior of the train for the meal service they would eventually provide. It was quite a sight, especially since I've never seen such a large crowd of people working to get a train ready (there were at least a dozen cleaners, three stewards for each of the eight passenger cars, and two engineers at the front).

Once we boarded this "Vistadome train", I was immediately surprised at the size, comfort, and amenities of the train. I've ridden in the cramped MBTA double-decker trains a great deal in the last few weeks, so I was very pleased to sit in this train with its spacious cabin, reclining seats, and even ceiling windows (that would later help in providing great views of the surrounding landscape.

The three hour train ride that brought us to the village of Aguas Calientes was definitely the most fascinating one I've been on in my life. For the first hour and a half of the ride, we rode right through a very rural region of Peru. In addition to farms, large hills, and small villages, we saw many people working near the tracks on farms, road infrastructure, and even the railroad we were riding on. Because the tracks are not protected by a fence guardrail, the engineer had to use the horn almost at least once a minute. At one point, the tracks went literally right through the streets of a small village bustling with morning commotion, so we could see people running away from the tracks, and plugging their ears from the loud sound of the train's horn.

After we passed through the small city of Ollanta (which we are staying at tonight), the scenery was dramatically transformed. Instead of rural fields and villages, we were now riding through the middle of a valley between two large mountains, on the high banks of the very rough Urabamba river. The scenery that we saw, which included lush evergreen forests, rocky hills, riverside villages, whitewater rapids, snow-capped mountains, and even small stretches of jungle, was the most beautiful I've ever witnessed. I took dozens of pictures, but they don't come close to producing the pure awe that we experienced in looking out the windows of our train. If you ever get a chance to visit Peru, travelling to Machu Picchu on the Vistadome train is an absolute must.

As we started to descend to a lower altitude, we also witnessed a very fascinating and unique aspect of Peruvian rail. To descend 400 meters in one area, we had to move in a zigzag motion for 5 kilometers. For example, after the train stopped at a zigzag start, the engineer would jump out of the front, make a track direction switch, and then send the train backwards for the next stretch of track, until another zigzag vertex was reached. This process would be repeated until we reached the bottom of the mountainous area we were descending.

In addition to the beautiful scenery, we were given a very formal breakfast service. The three stewards on our car carefully prepared our tables with a small tablecloth, silverware, and finally plates with the meal. Although the food (a small ham sandwich, two fruits, some small pancakes, and some rice popped like popcorn) was mediocre, the service was exceptional and it made the whole journey feel more luxurious.

After about three and half hours, we arrived at the train station in Aguas Calientes, a riverside resort village at the base of the mountain Machu Picchu. Before we made the ascent to the Incan ruins at Machu Picchu, we spent about a half hour in the village buying some water, sunscreen, and tickets for the ascent bus.

To ascend to the ruins, we had to ride on a bus through some very fear-inducing dirt roads. As with any mountainous ascent by road, we were making zigzags after every few hundred meters, but the fact that there were almost no guardrails on the road as it went higher made us all very nervous. At the edge of the very narrow road (where two buses would sometimes pass next to each other), there was almost constantly a drop of about 50 ft to the next narrow road below. After about 15 minutes of this seemingly high speed, back-and-forth driving, we were safely at the settlement before the entrance to the ruins. At this point, my mother was starting to feel slightly ill from the rough ascent and altitude of the ruins, but we couldn't stop the trip at this point. To allow my mother to rest, we had a small lunch at the overpriced restaurant in front of the ruins while she sat down in some shade.

By noon, we were ready to finally enter the ruins, the pinnacle of our trip to Peru. We decided to hire a tour guide at the entrance who offered us a two hour tour of the basics for a reasonable price. Our first actual view of the beautiful ruins came a few minutes after passing through the main entrance. The ancient city on Machu Picchu (the actual name of the historic Incan city is not known) was built on a mountain, so the Incans who built it had to carve dozens of terraces in the mountains to provide an area for agriculture, as well as sites to build homes and communal buildings. From a distance, the farm teraces look almost like rice fields.

The tour guide took us through some of the homes, Incan religious temples, community centers, and also showed us some views of the nearby mountains. The most famous mountain, that can be seen in almost any overview picture of the ruins is known as Huayna Picchu (double check this) and can actually be hiked in two hours. The next mountain to the right, whose name I forget, sits at the center of Aguas Calientes at the base of Machu Picchu below. The last mountain, Machu Picchu, is the one that we were on (exploring the ruins), but the actual peak could be seen in the distance if you looked away from the ruins. I never realized until now that Machu Picchu is the name of the mountain while the ruins themselves really have no known official name.

The ruins and their narrow cobblestone streets, primitive doorways and windows, and steep/uneven staircases felt somewhat like the ancient Celtic ruins of Glendalough in Ireland except supersized and 8,000 ft higher. Unfortunately, climbing up and down the steep stairs of the ruins was too much for my mother so quickly, so she had to sit out for the latter half of the tour. Once we were actually finished with this tour of the basics we still had three hours to explore the ruins on our own.

Our first destination, after retrieving my mother (who was feeling better) from her shaded resting area, was the guardhouse at the top of the farm terraces. This building and the surrounding flat areas provided us with the famous postcard views of the Machu Picchu ruins, but it was quite a chore to get to it. We had to a little bit exploration and getting lost in the city (which wasn't too bad, since every little corner and nook had an interesting sight), as well as climb about 150 ft of stairs. This left my parents exhausted and made me start to feel a bit tired. While my parents got some rest. I decided to explore the rest of the area to see where we could go next. What I found was a path toward the famous Inca bridge, located on the other side of the Machu Picchu peak, but supposedly only 25 minutes away by walking. As we regrouped and started walking this trail (which required us to sign in at the front in case we got lost), we noticed that it looked very dangerous. We could see in the distance that there were certain narrow dirt paths with a 50 ft drop cliff on one side (with no guardrail). We decided that this was too unsafe for my nine year old brother, so we unfortunately had to turn back.

I was starting to get slightly tired at this point, but my parents were exhausted to the point that we could walk no more than 100ft without having to take a break. The Incans who lived here 500 years ago must have had two very important physical traits: a lack of the fear of heights, and a stamina that could handle a great deal of vertical travel at these low-oxygen altitudes. For the last hour we had at the ruins, we decided to (very slowly) revisit through some of the highlights of the tour that my mother missed while she was resting.

By the time we reached the exit, even I was starting to feel slightly exhausted. We took a huge amount of pictures and immersed ourselves in this Incan architecture, but at a huge toll to our bodies. I must say, however, that it was most definitely worth it. I now understand that the Incan society that lived at Macchu Pichu was quite smart and had a very engineering/architecture focused culture, but simply could not keep up with the far more technologically advanced Spaniards that were invading the land. Luckily, the Spanish never found the ruins at Macchu Pichu, so the ruins were preserved almost completely until explorer Hiram Bingham found them and announced his discovery to the world in the middle of the 20th century.

The descent from the ruins was not as nerve-wracking as the ascent, since we were driving much more slowly, but it still took a half-hour to get back to Aguas Calientes. There, we decided to stroll down the main area for about thirty minutes to get a glimpse at all of the hotels and restaurants in the riverside village. By 5:45, we were back at the train station, after passing through a confusing maze of traditional marketplace vendors selling all sorts of souvenirs and traditional Incan products.

At exactly 6:45, our train to Ollanta departed and we had a nice two hours to relax after the incredibly tiring day. Because it was so dark and there was nothing to see outside, I wrote most of this entry on the bumpy two hour ride. In Ollanto, we had to weave through a huge sea of people at the train station, and then take a ten minute walk to the downtown area of the small village. From there, we found our hotel in a remote area of the town after asking several people for directions

Tomorrow, we'll spend most of our day exploring the interesting but largely unappreciated city of Ollanta, but then we'll get some form of transporation, most likely a taxi, back to our hotel in Cusco so we can catch our Wednesday afternoon flight back to Lima

Luckilly I was able to get internet access today (although very slow) to post this entry, so I hope you enjoyed it. Hopefully, the rest of our trip will go smoothly and we'll see plenty of more fascinating things. As I've said again and again, I don't have the time or internet connection to post my own pictures until after we return to the US, but I'll keep my blog entries as detailed and in depth as possible!