Thursday Machu Picchu

Today we are just taking it easy. Yesterday we went to Machu Picchu. We got up at 5am to be picked up at the hotel by 6am. So we dressed, ate a bit and headed out. Sergio, the hotel employee and travel agency on the side picked us up to get us to the bus. We took a fantastic bus ride up and out of Cusco, up, up, up, up we went... over the high pass at 13, 123 feet.... Along the high valley filled with fields of corn, coca, squash... the sun so bright with the peaks so high still surrounding us even at 13,000 ft. Then we dropped down to the sacred valley to the road that runs along the raging river.... with the most incredible mountains all around us. Surrounding us with the sun and clouds playing tag along the granite and the earth all around as the valley got narrower... then a wall of Inca ruins, up a cobblestone small road into the tiny Inca village of Ollantaytambo. (We are going there to stay for a few days starting on Sunday) Through a tiny town square filled with market people. Then down to the train station at the end of the road. Literally the end of the road. From here...the only way to where we are going is by train. No road goes all the way to Machu Picchu. We take the tourist train. The local train is only for locals, and foreigners can not take it because it's cheap. And well because it's stuffed full of local people who have to take it. Also tourism supports 98% of the people here. A lot of the improvements in infrastructure is paid by our tourist dollars. The experience is priceless and if it was Europe or the US the tourist train would be a lot more money! So it's a bargain even if we pay more, and the people so helpful to Mom.

The train ride, one side we are escorted to our destination by the Urubamba River, the rapids are roaring. The drops in the river bed you can see from the train and the river just flows.. faster then the train, faster then any river I have ever seen. On the other side, the canyon at times widens out to small fields, but mostly granite walls with a ever increasing tropical flavor of flowers and plants growing on it's side. We are changing climates, from the high andes to the the beginning of the Peruvian Amazon area. Machu Picchu is the gateway in between, high and hidden in the clouds up on top of the mountains. The rain starts to fall and the we arrive at the end of the line to the town that was built around the train station, Aguas Calientes. We were met by a woman who's job was to get us from the station to the bus and get us in the front of the line. Down through the market in the ever increasing rain. Mom and us decided that we were going to have to take twice as long coming back since it was going to be all up hill on a fairly steep ramp. up over the railroad tracks, across the railroad bridge over the river... water, water, water, became the theme of the day. It was not going to be dry day at all.

To the front of the line for the bus and into the bus we got Mom. Susan and I by the end of the day must have picked Mom up and down a hundred times over steps that reached anywhere from small ones to ones up at mid thigh height. I know Mom was worried if she could do this. I know she was frighten of getting up there and not being able to get to the ruins. But we told her if it took us all day we would get her to the main plaza of the ruins and plop her butt down. There was no way we were not going to get her there to see the splendor that awaited us. The ride up the mountain side in the bus, switchbacks, up and up and up... narrow one lane road so when one bus met another one had to back up either up or down. A ballet with Mercedes Benz tourist buses up along the dirt road in the jungle of the Amazon along cliffs that when you looked down the river was just a strip of white and the clouds were coming in the windows. And rain, rain, rain... arriving at the main gate, with thousand of people in cheap colorful ponchos that you can buy from the women...and you better buy one if you are not prepared. Because it's raining, steady, wet, constant. But who cares the ruins are just up the stairs, oh no, stairs, then a quarter mile walk along a cliff then more stairs down then.......

out into the opening of the site. And you stop and you just stare at the beauty before you. Our guide Ruben talking to us quietly about what was before our eyes. The agriculture section, the urban section, the religious section... and the valley so deep right at your feet, you could tumble off and not hit any thing until you came to the river. The llamas, there are 22 of them, wandering around eating the grass. And all the while Ruben is sharing his knowledge of this place, he's been a guide for 21 years. You can't stop being in awe, of the beauty, the stunning simplicity, the buildings that so blend in with the natural beauty. And still surrounded by even higher peaks of mountains. The clouds and rain changing the landscape from second to second. One moment a huge building or moutain so clear the next totally shrouded in clouds. Small streams of water running around your feet and we are all soaked.. to the core but who cares because it's beautiful and Mom is climbing stairs and walking down into small plazas and peaking out over lips of granite cliffs down into the valley so far below. Mom is hanging on for dear life but she is walking and climbing and being pulled up and lowered down and got all the way across the plaza and over all of the most of the lower area... Susan and I can't believe it. We send Natilee off to explore the higher areas that Mom can not climb, because let me tell you the stairs are amazing. Straight up the mountain... And it keeps raining... water, water, water.... We decide to head back towards the front area... Not having any idea how long or what it will take to get Mom back down and back up over a major staircase. But we do, with a bit of sitting and lots of laughter and humor and letting faster people go by. We get back to the bus much faster then we thought we could. Amazing, but as Mom said, she needed to get there fast before she gave out. Down back the dirt road, repeating the ballet. Then down to the train station. Were we ate our food and tried to dry out. Some with with dry clothes we had in our backpacks, but dry was relative... and warm drinks. Then onto the train back along the river in the dark with the river so white besides us. Sergio met us at the train station with a van to drive just the 4 of us back to our hotel in Cusco. We arrived around 10pm. What a magnificent day.