Coli’s Parents Visit Peru – Part 2
Tuesday, May 5th
After a few hours of sleep, we were up at 4:00 a.m. to head to the Lima airport for a 5:40 departure. Nicole bade us farewell as we sped off in a taxi. We wished her well in D.C. Cyndee did a fantastic job of packing her stuff for our upcoming excursion. Everything had to be carried on our backs for four days, plus a hip bag.
Check-in went very smoothly. We got through security and arrived at the gate to find out what? It couldn’t be…fog in Lima? Imagine that!!! I thought that the challenge of our trip to Peru would be to climb Machu Picchu. Little did we know that an even bigger challenge was the journey to get to the base of Machu Picchu (Aguas Caliente) by the end of the day. Already, we had a tight schedule in Cusco for visiting the sites and then make all of our transportation connections. At first, the delay was one hour. Then another announcement – another 3 hour delay. They speak good English at the airport, so I asked them “Is that three hours from now? Or three hours from the original time?” They told me “from now” which would make it 9:40 a.m. That was quite a while, so we decided to sleep for a bit. I set my travel alarm for 9:00, in plenty of time for boarding. I don’t know how, but at 8:30 something subconscious made me wake up to find one of the four gates with people lining up. That was our flight! I ran into line and whistled three times to awaken Cyndee. Our van transport left 10 minutes later with all of us aboard. I don’t know about other sleepers and those that went upstairs to cushier places to recline and eat. They said since the sun burned the fog off sooner, the plane leaves soon to alleviate the backlog of flights. I can’t imagine what impact missing that flight would’ve been.
One note for any of you planning on visiting Machu Picchu – don’t miss it! But be aware that the demand and pricing has risen tremendously the past two years. For two weeks I tried to get a decent price on a flight from Lima to Cusco. The cost for the one hour flight was in the range of $460 to $590 U.S. dollars per person. Occasionally a deal would pop up for a few minutes that was in the $260-$280 range. Both times, Nicole and I went back a few minutes later and the deal was gone. I scoured internet travel sites to get some feedback and advice. I saw a number of people saying “What’s up with these absurd prices?” One advice was to look on Spanish websites – that that was were the better prices were…that the English speaking sites had higher prices listed. After hours of searching the internet (I didn’t want to pay $1,000 for a one-hour flight for two people), I got lucky when I noticed some paid advertising sites in the right margin. By the way, there are essentially only two airlines that make this trip – the big one Air Peru and a smaller one – Taca Airlines. Anyway, I clicked on eDreams.com. I found a roundtrip price for $161 per person. I grabbed them. Guess what – it was a website from Spain, with the monies booked in Britain, to fly on Taca Airlines in Peru. I checked the Taca Airlines website directly then and other times and the cheapest was $460 each! Wow!!! The new global world of business J
We get a taxi, outside the airport gates, where the fares are in half, to get to the heart of the most visited tourist area of Peru – Cusco at 12,000 feet above sea level. As you know, we were shorter on time. We met Nicole’s ISA travel agent connection to get our train tickets for our final leg of the day’s trip and the following days return to another city. He preferred the money in U.S. dollars. We walked to an ATM and our card kept getting rejected. Finally we went to another bank and everything worked fine. We took Nicole’s advice and got the combo ticket for many highlites of Cusco and the Sacred Valley region. We went to the Plaza de Armas (main square) and toured the cathedral. Then on to a number of diverse and interesting museums. We didn’t have time to stop to eat, so we munched on granola bars and cheese crackers that we brought with us. We had train tickets for a 7:00 p.m. departure in a city that was two hours away, so we had to find a special local bus location called a “colectivo”. It was very unique because they had three buses sitting there for three destinations mostly for locals. We said we were going to Ollantaytambo which was bus #2. We paid 5 soles each ($1.70 U.S.) to go two hours through the Andes Mountains! The unique thing though is that the bus doesn’t leave until it is full. Then we take off and another empty bus will take its place. We had to have some faith that the bus would fill soon enough to get us to the train on time. The trip was scenic through the Andes, but quite curvy as the bus would ascend and descend the mountain passes. Oh, the drivers like to be fast and aggressive. Yee-haaaaa!!!
We made it to Ollantaytambo with a half hour to spare. On the platforms of the train station there were a number of women cooking a variety of foods in these portable charcoal grills – like camping sized. I had the most delicious fried egg sandwich and Cyndee had a bowl of chicken and spaghetti. It warmed the body because the temperature dives into the 40’s after the sun disappears. It was usually sunny and very warm during the sunlit hours. We had reservations at a nice hotel (Thanks Nicole!). The owner took us at 9 p.m. to the ticket office for Machu Picchu (“MP”) so we were set for the morning.
Wednesday, May 6th
The only other thing we needed was to purchase the bus tickets that took us up to the entrance gates (which they wanted in US dollars only ($14 each) – strange!) The hotel owner had told us that people line up at 5 a.m. and the first bus leaves at 5:30. Both Fodors and Fromers said the first bus left at 6:30 a.m. Visiting Machu Picchu is a rare experience. The only thing rarer there are passes to climb the adjacent mountain (Wayna Picchu) to get the best views down onto the Machu Picchu site. Only four hundred distributed per day…first come, first served. We got on the fourth bus, so I figured that’s about 200 people, but I didn’t know if tour guides get to reserve some ahead of time. So I thought we might be okay. When we got through the entrance gate, we had to sprint across the whole span of the Machu Picchu site to get the Wayna Picchu (“WP”) passes. We got there at 6:15 and they said they have a few left for the 7:00 or we could wait till the 10:00 gates opened. We opted for 7:00 before the heat of the day was too intense. We registered at the gate and began our trek. Only 100 are let in for the four time periods. Sadly we had to walk down MP before we could ascend WP. It took us 1.5 hours to get to the top of WP. We hovered at the top for 30 minutes and the descent took one hour – 3 hours in total. I have found that at 9 to 10,000 above sea level incapacitates me pretty quickly when I climb. Cyndee and I took a very measured approach – we climbed a ways, then paused till our heart stopped racing. We saw snow-capped mountains, various birds and flora. But the most spectacular experience was the various views down onto Machu Picchu. We did a lot of photos and video all along the way. One thing that was very bizarre is that I only drank one inch of water, two mouthfuls for the whole climb up WP.
Then the real purpose for being there – Machu Picchu. It was hard to imagine the effort to build such immense agricultural terraces and houses and religious structures out of stone that fit together so snuggly that it was waterproof. How fortunate we are that Hiram Bingham (from U.S.) revealed the hidden site to the world in 1911. From 1912 to 1916, the National Geographic and Yale University worked to uncover and secure the site. It was built between 1460 and 1540. Also, that the Spanish conquerors hadn’t found out about MP, since they destroyed or dismantled many of the other religious sites throughout the Sacred Valley of the Andes. What a glorious day we had exploring the site from 10 until 1:30 p.m. We took the bus down to pick up our belongings and headed to the train station.
We noticed a communication error. Our agent had our train returning to Cusco tonight instead of our plans to visit three more sites first. We went to the train station to see if I could change the ticket and maybe get an earlier departure. NO changes within 24 hours. After multiple attempts at broken Spanish, I found out that they stop to pick up passengers in Ollantaytambo (“Ollanty”) where we wanted to stay overnight. We boarded. For numerous reasons the train would stop on the tracks and resume. At one point it hit me. I yelled to Cyndee “Get your stuff and get off the train NOW!!!” We ran to the steps and the conductor kept saying “no salida” (no departure). I said ‘Si para nuestro hotel aqui esta noche’ (Yes, for our hotel here tonight), so they let us pass. Wow!
Thursday, May 7th
Ollanty is the only Inca-designed town that is still inhabited. In fact our hostel was right in the heart of it all. The next morning we got up early to climb the architectural ruins. There were amazing storehouses way up in the cliffs. Then we did another ‘colectivo’ bus to Pisak and climbed another breathtaking (literally and figuratively) archeological site. In town is the immensely famous Pisak market – hundreds of vendors with everything imaginable, as well as a fresh fruit, vegetable, and meat section. Another colectivo to Saqsayhuaman one hour before sunset. We walked those ruins – the most sacred of all the Inca locations. Taxi to Cusco and we attended a cultural folk-music and dance show. After that, we had a delicious meal – an eight inch cordon bleu with a large plate of fries, a salad and soda for $4.00 each! Of course, I got my aji fix there too.
One last thing…I’m a little hesitant to share this, but it was a big part of my three days experience. I think I was on an Andes Mountain high (you’ve heard of Rocky Mountain highs (John Denver)). I don’t believe I slept for three days. I laid in bed for four hours each night but wide awake with the noggin reflecting on the past day and planning the upcoming one. I climbed mountains and major archeological sites but I never had a sore muscle. I was energetic and alert and ready to go…and go…and go…the whole time.
It never caught up with me either. That was the Twilight Zone experience of my life.
Mom and Dad (Cyndee and Rand)…to be continued
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