Machu Pichu

The train station at Ollantaytanbo resembles nothing so much as the concentration camp at the end of Children of Men, only instead of ethnic minorities being forcibly rounded up and deported from the UK, the station is full of gringos clamoring to get on a train to Aguas Calientes, a town notable for little more than being located at the base of Maccu Piccu.

It´s after dark when we arrive having (barely) survived a 1.5 hour cab ride from Cuzco to Ollantaytanbo, where our train is departing from. Apparently, when it´s both the high tourist season in Peru and Peruvian school vacation week, then it behooves the individual to make reservations for one of the most visited archeological sites in the world, Maccu Piccu, more than 24 hours in advance. We can be accused of a lot of things, but consistent forethought is certainly not one of them. After a day of scrambling and plan changing, we finally came up with an itinerary that allowed us to visit Maccu Piccu and a bit of the Sacred Valley as well before we need to return to Lima (via 19 hour bus...awesome!) and eventually the states. Unfortunately, said itinerary involved us catching a train in Ollantaytanbo, not Cuzco...

Which brings me back to the cab ride introduced way back at the begining of the last paragraph. Actually, the email started with the train and the train station which I´m currently laboriously trying to wind my way back to, via cab ride anecdote, and events that happened even earlier. The fact that I´m actually paid to teach children to write makes me shudder a bit. Fractured narratives are all well and good for David Foster Wallace or Dave Eggers, but I´m trying to convey information here.

Anyway, the cab driver, I´m pretty sure hopped up on something, drives like a maniac the whole way, flashing his brights, honking incessantly, and passing on the outside, even on blind turns, but we make our destination a solid half hour earlier than our travel agent estimated. Driving into Urabambo, we almost hit a mule crossing the road, and ás we zoom on, I´m begging children and old ladies to not try to cross in front of us because I don´t think this guy is going to stop.

Ok, we´re back at the train station. It´s the constant jostling of many people in a confined space combined with harsh halogen lights and chainlink fences that put me in the mind of Children of Men, as opposed to random beatings, torture, and squalid living conditions. However...

I have seen the lowest circle of hell and it is the 8:15 Ollantaytanbo-Aguas Calientes train. Initially on boarding you find that a group of American college students have taken your seat in order for them to sit together. They tell you it´s fine, you can have theirs, even though their seats are apart from each other and you are traveling with a friend who you´d like to sit with. You and your friend at least had enough forthought to book seats together. The students are part of a larger group of 12 who seem to be terribly excited by the prospect of the train ride. You are once again reminded that you´re not as young as you used to be, but for one of the first times ever you realize that this might not be a bad thing. The train lurches into motion only to suddenly stop, seemingly at random, multiple times, and for varying lengths of time. You´ve been up for close to 20 hours, but you can´t sleep. You´re pretty sure you can smell the socks you´ve inexplicably been wearing for the last three days, even though you´ve got a bag full of freshly laundered pirs back in Cuzco. When the train finally pulls into Aguas Calientes, the disembrking is only slighly less chaotic than the (?) embarking. Exhausted, you shuffle off, carried along by the crowd, and realize that one thing has gone right this day as you see a young woman holding a sign reading ¨Bwem Brinkop Cfris Willar¨. She will take you to your hotel and blissful, blissful sleep...

Augas Calientes is a nice little town built lmost entirely out of the profits from tourism to Maccu Piccu. Laid out along the Rio Urabamba and the train tracks, it serves little purpose beyond getting people in and out of Maccu Piccu. We collapse for the night at the Payacha Hostal, literally the nicest place we´ve stayed ll trip. Highly reccomended, even though we only slept there for about 4 hours before waking up the next day to hit the site.

Up at 4:30 to catch the first bus. We´ve heard that if you miss the 5:30 bus, then they only run every subsequent hour. After queueing up patiently we watch group after group of tourists arrive after us, balk at the ever growing line, and then trudge dejectedly towards the back. It´s early enough to still be dark, but we are comforted by the knowledge that we got there erly enough to be on the first bus. We chuckle at everyone else´s misfortune, and, with a little bit of preliminary stretching and some light calesthenics, give ourselves a congrgulatory pat on the back.

Around 5:30 we hear the rumble of diesel engines. Chugging up the hill comes our bus!, but it is followed by at least nine more. As we begin to board, I am literally the first person not allowed on the first bus. My heart falls, all of our diligence for nothing! However, 30 seconds after the first bus leaves, the second pulls up and I am sheparded aboard. It takes about three minutes to pack it full nd then we are off. On one hand, I´m happy to have the opportunity to get there early, but on the other, I´m livid that people who slept an hour later than me will still arrive at roughly the same time. After 30 minutes of tortuous, winding switchbacks we arrive at the park, only to immediately get into another line waiting to enter the site proper. We are informed that we can bring in none of the food we have rought, nd Chris is forced to check his backpack stuffed full of delicous sandwich fixings.

None of these minor inconveniences mtters in the least once we enter the park. We are among the first 100 people in and are able to to glimpse it in relative solitude. By midday, there will be better than 1500 people crawling about its various temples, dwellings, and complexes. We immeditely climb up towards the guardian hut and the sun gate (entrance from the Inca Trail) so we can view the entire site from the terraces above it. It´s even more brethtking than we anticipated being. There are certain places you can visit (Mt. Rushmore springs immediately to mind) where you think ÿep, just like it looks in all the pictures I´ve seen of it.

Maccu Piccu does look like pictures you´ve seen of it, but these pictures can´t begin to do it justice. The scale is unbelievable. Maccu Piccu is 1000 meters lower than Cuzco, but it seems infinitely higher. As you gaze down from the terraces you see: To the west, cliffs plunge straight down to the Rio Urabamba far below. To the east, it is surrounded by dozens of different, jagged individual peaks, all covered in cloud forest all they way to their summits. To the north looms Huayna Piccu, the guardian mountain of the city. Later that day, I would wait in line for over an hour to climb it, as if it was a roller coaster ride.

As we pose for pictures and just marvel of the realization of mutual childhood dream, the sun comes up over the mountains and bathes the buildings in that special kind of early morning sunlight, the kind that makes everything seem fresher, more distinct. The kind that reminds you that there is a huge difference between daylight and sunlight. Grinning like children, we turn down to begin to explore the buildings.

Like Sacsayhuaman above Cuzco, Maccu Piccu was built with out mortar. The buildings, displaying different styles in different areas, are all composed of perfectly shaped and positioned stones that hold together as well today as when they were first laid over 500 years ago.

By 10:00 we´re ready to try our hands at Huayna Piccu. By this point of the trip we´ve survived El Choro and Choqequirao, so we´re supremely confident we can handle on last 600 m ascent. There was one thing we didn´t count on: steps. It´s not trail up the mountain, it´s a series of stone steps. Hundreds and hundreds of stone steps. Some close together, some fr apart, some so far apart that I literlly have to crawl up them. Halfway up I´m cursing the superior Incan stoneworking that I´ve been so impressed with this entire trip. Three quarters of the way up, I´m only still going because I saw a 60 year old lady come down from the mountin earlier that day. Nine tenths of the way up I encounter my finl obstacle. The pth winds through a cave that I literally have to get down on my belly and wiggle through to make it.

Once at the top, however, the pain and the sweat, and the aches drop away as if they´d never existed. Maccu Piccu, so sprawling and enormous from ground level, seems tiny from up here. I´m eye level with many f the peks of the surrounding valley, and actually above many others. This is easily one of the coolest things I´ve ever done. Maccu Piccu lived up to and vstly exceeded every expectation I had of it. No wonder it is one of the new 7 Wonders of the World. The descent from the summit, was less tiring, but more terryfying. Some of the stairs going down had an incline of close to 70 degrees, and most of them weren´t much more than six inches wide. The image of me missteping, pitching frward, and tumbling right off over the side was not a hrd one to conjure up. Thankfully, we both made it down unhurt.

9 hours after arriving, we headed back for Aguas Calientes, exhausted, but giddy with accomplishment and wonder. As prone to jadedness and sarcasm as I am, it felt really good to be passionately enthusiastic bout something. Such is the majesty of Maccu Piccu, it managed to puncture the ice-encrusted piece of coal that shudders arythmically within my chest.

The next day, we headed back to Cuzco via a couple of other stoips in the Sacred Valley. Now, if you are ever visiting Peru, I reccomend that you do the Sacred Valley on your way out to Maccu Piccu. This is what we had intended to do before circumstances went beyond our control. Ollantaytanbo was a series of terraces and buildings built into the side of a cliff literlly right next to the town of the same name. We hadcome down in altitude by now, and the terrin was very deserty. Reminded me a lot of Jabba´s palace from Return of the Jedi, but then again, I´m a huge nerd, and comparing things to Star Wars comes as easy to me as brething does to other people. Moray was slightly more interesting. A site of both agricultural and ritual significance, many believe that it´s design was experimental in nature. Indeed, the terrces here are circular, and descend concentrically down seven levels. When we visited, there was some sort of Incan preharvest ritual going on (Apparently happens all of August) and for the first time Peru felt similar to Boliviva in terms of its pride in its indigenous heritage.

After that it was back to Lima vi 19 hour bus where I currently type this email. Visited the Museum of the Inquisition today, and despite reding all about the horrors and injustices, the scariest thing I saw was that we´re (The U.S.) still using some of these techniques today. Lima in the winter is super depressing, consistently grat and overcast for all of June, July, and August. As we left the torture museum (which it might as well be called) we were greeted with gry skies, and a buncj of enormous crows perched in a dead tree cross from the museum. I don´t know how people do it. The 12 hours or so I´ve spent in this city are have already been much worse than the entire winter I lived in Washington. Anyway, sorry about the length, but it´s the last rambling email you´ll get from me this trip. We leave late tomorrow night. Haven´t driven a car in 6 weeks (longest ever since I was legally able to) and I can´t wait to se a movie and eat some ice cream. This trip has ben amazing on so many levels, but I´m also ready to get back to the states. Travel is great for opening your eyes to the world, but it´s also great for making you appreciate your home.