Venture to Machu Picchu's Foot

PeruRail to Aguas Calientes.

Arriving at Machu Picchu was it's own adventure. First you have to take a bus from Cusco to a city called Ollantaytambo, which is about an hour and a half. Next you have to take a train to Aguas Calientes, which is the city right at the foot of Machu Picchu. You can actually only get there by walking or by train--there are no roads that lead to Aguas Calientes. The train only takes about 2 hours from Ollantaytambo.

Our trip was pretty interesting. First the bus to take us to Ollantaytambo was late by more than an hour, which was further complicated by the parade that blocked the road. There's always a saint being carried somewhere.

Some saint parade.

It was a big deal that the bus was late. Our train was going to leave Ollantaytambo at 7:00 pm and we were still a city away from that destination at 6:35. I asked another passenger how long to Ollantaytambo and they said (in Spanish) "Close to 25 minutes." Great... That really rose my blood pressure and added to how anxious I already was. If we would have missed that train we would have had to buy a whole new ticket--and who knows if there were even any more trains that night.

But we made it. We stepped on the train with about 10 minutes to spare before the train left the station. Pretty lucky.

The train was an interesting time as well. People just breast feed wherever they want down here, and of course one such mother and her crying baby sat right across from Brandon and I. To our left was a girl whose laugh had a knack for driving you crazy and her friend who was making her laugh the whole trip. But, the train had coffee and that really helped the situation a lot.

At the end of this trip, we arrived in the gloriously warm and humid Aguas Calientes at about 9:00 pm. There was a man from our hotel holding a sign reading "MAX" and he led us to our hotel. We stayed at a place called Margarita's House, and I'd recommend it. It was a little taste of home. The beds were so comfortable and the toilet had a toilet seat.

Toilet seats are pretty rare down here for some reason.