In hot waters

A couple of days before going you have to buy tickets for the train to Macchu Picchu. This is really the only feasible ways of getting there when not doing the 4 day Inca Trek. That in itself is between $300-400. I didn't fancy it. Most people who do it don't even walk to the pub so why they feel the need to do this I don't know. Yes I do. It's because it sounds good. Balls to that, I'll get the train. Still, not easy. I did ask at the tourist office if it was possible to ride there on a hired motorbike, this would be considerably cheaper. They laughed.
There are no roads into the last town at the foot of Macchu Picchu so you have to take the tourist train. It's pretty expensive too and only an hour and half from the small village of Ollantaytambo. We wanted to take the train from there because it was considerably cheaper and we heard the village is worth a visit due to it's large Inca ruins. Ok.
To see Macchu Picchu before all the tourists arrive along with the walkers on the Inca trail you have to stop overnight at Aguas Calientes, the last town, to get an early bus to the top of the mountain. Again ok.
Right let's go. We take a taxi for half an hour to get to the bus station. Once the confusion of ticket buying is over we get on a bus to Urambamba for 2 hours. This stops randomly all over the middle of no-where to let people on an off on the rutted dirt road. Arriving in Urambamba we change immediately into a small combi mini-van with 18 other passengers crammed in. 30 more minutes on rough roads to get to Ollantaytambo. And still we've a way to go yet.
The village of Ollantaytambo is tiny but has a huge terraced set of walls rising above it in the mountainside. This is the site of an Inca victory over the Spanish. The Incas stood atop the terracing raining rocks, fire sticks and flooding the plateau below. It's an intricately carved set of terraces, mainly to enable the growing of crops on the steep cliffside, and walls which included houses and storage buildings as well as the obligatory temple thingy. A narrow path cut into the mountainside meanders precariously to a couple more huts before we take the steep steps down to the exit. It's hard work scaling hugely steep areas like this normally but we keep having to remind ourselves that it's much harder at this altitude.


You can see other buildings on an opposite mountain that have been built right on the edge of the steep cliff. It's insane that they even wanted to build this high up let alone actually achieving it.
After an excellent traditional wood-burning oven baked pizza we head to the train station. Our train is the cheaper night train so views are out of the question. We did see the incredibly expensive Hiram Bingham train, named after the first non-South American to discover Macchu Picchu as guided by a local boy in 1920 or there abouts. It's a very flash train and clearly not for the likes of us!
We also saw the comical sight of a Volkswagon campervan converted into a mini-train roll by. It seems this acts as a line clearer, a large v-shaped metal guard on front to shift debris.
Our train arrives in Aguas Calientes(Spanish for hot waters) an hour and a half later. It arrives right in the middle of a street too. People eat in restaraunts either side, it seems the main road is also the train stop. Odd.
After avoiding the typical hostel sellers trying to get you into their flea ridden hovels we end up in a nice hostel on the main plaza. Aguas Calientes gets a complete slating in Lonely Planet for being overpriced and ugly but it didn't seem too bad.
It's pitch black away from the main streets, of which there's about 3, but we walk over a footbridge arched over very loud gushing water. It's at this moment we notice we're stood at the foot of two very large dome shadows, aka mountains. One of them is Macchu Picchu mountain itself, I reckon.
Two very early starts follow, a 5am wake-up to buy entrance tickets and catch one of the first buses up the winding dirt road to Macchu Picchu through a tropical setting. Aguas Calientes in daylight was completley different. The main square is ok but with mainly unfinished rough looking buildings. Still, there are huge lush green mountains towering over the place with a smouldering early morning mist clinging to the trees as it climbs up them. It does look magical up there.
Shall we get to what we came for?

The sexywoman of Peru

In between gourmet meals and fine wines we did manage to sneak in the odd bit of sight-seeing too. Many tourists come to Cusco for a couple of reasons. The main one is the ancient Inka site of Macchu Picchu. It's close by, sort of. The other is because there's many an Inka site a lot nearer the city. On the outskirts of town there are 4 Inka sites to visit. We got dropped off at the farthest one and walked the 8km back to town taking in the other 3 on the way.
The first was at Tambomachay. This is basically a ceremonial bathing site for the Inkas. The Inkas actually only reigned for about 200 years but what they did leave behind was quite substantial and has definitley left it's mark on the landscape and villages of Peru. Excellent stonework here also and an expert water channelling system for freshwater baths straight from the mountains. It's a shame Peruvian tap water isn't as fresh nowadays.
Nearby was another site, Q'engo. This is speculated to have been a fortress but others have said it was a rest stop for weary travellers. Either way it gives great views looking back over Cusco. Not much to it other than numurous small unroofed rooms.
It was quite a distance to the next 2 sites and not using suncream was a great error, I never seem to learn. I got absolutely frazzled. Typically.
After about 45 minutes of tramping down a hill past tourists on horseback going the other way we arrive at the 3rd and slightly more impressive site. This is largely a huge rock that has been cut into and under, producing many carved steps, altars and pitch black networks of tunnels. There's also a large round ceremonial area. It's said that many a sacrifice to the gods took place here. I was also in a photo with more Peruvians here. Another tourist sacrifice.
Last and by far the best site is Sacsayhuman, known to many tourists as 'sexywoman' as the pronunciation is quite similar. This is a huge site overlooking Cusco and is also the spot where a huge battle between the Spanish and the Inkas took place. Mammoth stones are placed and carved here forming a large jagged effect that is supposed to represent the teeth of a puma. Some of the rocks are 3 times the height of me so it must've taken some serious shifting to get them here. Without the aid of any modern machinery this is extremely impressive. There's also a large round terraced area that possibly could've been a fortress. The Inkas terraced lots of steep land areas to improve irrigation for crop growing also. Although Sacsayhuman is a massive site now it's only 20% of it's original size, the Spanish destroyed the rest. Cusco was clearly a very important place for the Inkas and therefore the Spanish needed to clearly make their mark here too. Which is probably why there's a large Christ figure right by the Inka site.
We walk back down to the city along the steep cobbled streets looking forward to the big one. These Inka sites are merely a warm up to the most famous of them all, as well as one of the most famous sights of the whole continent of South America and the world, Macchu Picchu.
But getting there isn't straight forward.

The Navel of the world

We heard a lot about Cusco, all good, but where we'd been dropped off by the bus looked much like the tumbledown buildings of Puno.
Once in a taxi and off toward a few hostels, to see if they had vacancies, we soon discover this is very different from Puno. In fact it's very different from most places we've been on this trip. In a good way.
The main square, the Plaza de Armas, is a picturesque affair with two large cathedrals and a central fountain. Wooden and and stone constructed buildings containing cafes, restaurants and shops line the other sides of the square. We've not seen soo many tourists in one place for a long time, well since Iquazu Falls.
The streets leading off the Plaza are narrow and cobbled. One car at a time mainly, I think a lot were one-way but sometimes you can't tell.
The street leading to our hostel is a steep cobbled affair. Not great at still a fairly high altitude. It doesn't get easier no matter how many times we climb it. At the top there's great views over the city and down onto the square.
Cusco is the old capital of the Inca empire and many Inca related things still remain, many have also been destroyed by the Spanish or built over which is why there's soo many churches here. It's a beautiful city either way. There are still many intact Inka walls and narrow streets lined with huge angled stones perfectly married together without the need for mortar. Some parts seem like they haven't changed for centuries.
We'd heard from a couple we'd met in Puno that there's an English cafe here that does classic English food. By this point I was missing some home fair and this place gave it to me. We ate a great Sunday roast, with vegatable bake, roast potatoes and Yorkshire puddings(although these weren't up to my standard of course). Lovely stuff. I know it's not exactly getting into the flavours of the country but I didn't care.
Not all of Cusco is beautiful of course, Avenida del Sol is one example. A long commercial street that's constantly full of noisy traffic and people trying to get you to exchange dollars. Still, we've seen worse. Along with this there's an everyday hassle of saying, 'No, gracias' to about 20 people trying to get you in restaurants, give you massages, sell you paintings, sunglasses, jewellery, hats, clothes and marijuana. I can get past that just to be here. At night the place is lit up and looks just as good. It's also a safe place to walk around at any time. The tourist police prescense see to that. We decide to stay a while. Peru has suddenly got much better.
We gorge ourselves on great food almost every night too. There's soo many good looking places to choose from that you could eat at a different place every night for a year and it'll mainly be good. Many restaurants look rustic or arty and have gone to the effort to try and get the tourists more than any other place we've seen. We also watch a couple of live bands in a strange art bar that has weird masks coming out of the walls and crazy art scattered around. I'd be happy just to be here and eat and drink for a week or so but there's plenty of sights to see damn it!
First up was the central Inka Museum. Not a bad place, set in a Spanish Colonial mansion, with someinteresting stuff inside including a dark room filled with sacrificed mummies in frightening positions. I'm not that into looking at dead bodies tied up with their hands up to their face screaming. Well not much anyway.
We seem to round off most days here in some flash funky restaurant that's pretty cheap and has outstanding food, did I say I liked this place?

A history of Coca

We splashed out on a VIP bus to Cusco that had a tour thing thrown in. Meaning that the 8 hour bus ride included 6 stops and a buffet lunch so it wouldn't be too long just sat on our arses.
The next major town North of Puno was Juliaca. This is a large market town, mainly black market, that the government turns a blind eye to. You can get anything here but the main item for sale is Bolivian fuel. It's much cheaper than Peruvian and comes in yellow cans that are outside a fair few houses. The buildings here aren't finished either and in a further tax dodge the flash new bus station is unused due to the departure tax people have to pay. This means that all the buses are crammed on the street opposite. It's crazy really. It's an ugly place in general, dusty streets with flying litter abound.
The first real stop was at a village called Pukura. This is the site of some pre-Inka artifacts and a pyramid, not of the Egyptian scale however. This village was the site of many a sacrifice, all from the village itself and all had to be of pure blood and 'unblemished'. Many young virgins in other words. We saw a frog shaped alter that was thought to be used for chopping off the heads of the sacrifices. These sacrifices took place to get good weather to produce good crops and a harvest. No Micheal Fish on the BBC weather here then! Some of the walls here were built 2000 years ago and still survive today. When the Inkas arrived they continued to use the pyramid until the Spanish came along and built a church, typically.
We went high up onto the Altiplano again and stopped off at the highest point for photos of the surrounding mountains. Up here it's a rural life, but a good one, we are told. I can't quite see it myself but each to their own. People do live longer here than in the city due to less stress, larger lungs(gained due to the thin air up here) and more red blood cells(also a bi-product of living at altitude) that helps stave off infections and diseases. The land is mainly all owned by the farmers who are actually squatters here. They still use the old Inka system of one for all and all for one, sounds familiar. Every year the families of the community club together to build a new house for a selected family. It's mainly potatoes, Alpacas and Llamas up here. Not a lot else. Huge mountains too.
We stop further up the road at a place called Raqchi. This is an old Inka temple and has some unbelievable stonework that has lasted over 500 years with an original mud wall atop. The Inkas are so renound for their excellent stone masonary and you can see why. For the most important buildings, like this one, they didn't use any mortar. Instead they hand polish each stone to fit perfectly with the next, and not in the conventional way you see on modern houses. These huge rocks are carved with many angles and the effect is stunning. An Inka god is supposed to have arrived out of a nearby volcano and this temple is believed to be where that god was worshipped. It's a large site and has straight-as-an-arrow streets still intact. Many an earthquake and eruption rocks this area, as Peru as a whole, but theses mammoth rocks still stand the test of time.
We next stopped at another elaborate church that was full of 24 carot gold. The town surrounding it was very poor and it's annoying to see all that money go to waste in somewhere like this.
The tour guide was keen to stress the importance of Coca leaves. Peru is the biggest producer of Coca in the world. Many people look down on this, especially America, as it is from this plant that cocaine is made. To make it you'd need a hell of a lot and you also need to isolate one of the many alkaloids contained within the plant. You see Coca leaves all the time and their a huge part of the culture and have been well before the Inka times of the 1500's. This is partly due to the benefits you get from chewing coca leaves or having coca tea, of which we had loads. It really helps with altitude sickness, it sorted me out many times, as well as being beneficial for teeth and including many required daily vitamins. The leaf itself is so far away from cocaine, the grape and wine is much closer. The US government has tried to impose trade sanctions and other bribes to Peru to force them to stop producing the leaves. America is the biggest consumer of cocaine and Peru does supply a hell of a lot. But Peruvians are quite offended by this as the average joe on the street uses coca for totally different reasons that don't provide the high of cocaine. Now and again I see local women carrying huge bags of leaves bigger than themselves.
You can chew the leaves but you'll need a catalyst to make them work. This catalyst is a bit of hardened ash. You wrap the leaves around the ash and chew for about 40 minutes without swallowing the leaves. It numbs your mouth briefly but after that it's fine. Once in Cusco we did hear an American girl in a cafe complaing of altitude sickness. She refused coca tea believing it was cocaine, sniggers filtered around the place. If it was cocaine I'm sure there'd be even more tourists here.