The road to Machu Picchu began at 7:30am-ish at the Poroy train station. Poroy is located just outside Cusco city limits. We boarded Peru Rail’s Expedition car. A high-end coach with nice reclining seats, tables, snack service, and a windowed roof for an almost unobstructed view of our surroundings. A pretty nice train car in almost every way.
Our three hour journey from Poroy to Aguas Calientes was spectacular. Carving it’s way through the Andean valley, the sights were unparalleled. Snow capped peaks dusted with clouds, horses sipping from the river, Andean herders shepherding their flock, alpacas grazing on what appeared to be 60 degree slopes, and sparsely populated towns constructed from adobe were just some of the visual treats along the way. It’s no secret I’m a huge fan of trains. In fact, my dream trip is the Trans-Manchurian or Trans-Siberian railway journey going from Moscow to Beijing by way of Mongolia or St. Petersburg to the eastern coast of Russia respectively. I’ve done Durango to Silverton, the Skunk Train, Verde Canyon, various California coastal Amtrak journeys, and all of western Europe via various railways. Traveling by train, in my opinion, is the best way to travel and a train journey to one of the most wondrous places on earth was no exception.
We arrives in Aguas Calientes, aka Banos Calientes, and had to board a local bus which actually took you up to the Machu Picchu ruins. The bus costs an additional $20 USD on top of the $69 Machu Picchu entry, on top of the $169 round-trip train ride. That’s a cost of over $250 just to _see_ the historic site with your own eyes. It’s kind of sad to me that in order to even see this wondrous site, you've got to be “wealthy” by world standards. Sure, we could have taken a bus from Cusco to Aguas Calientes, but the cost still would have been over $100 USD. If you take the number of tourists that visit Machu Picchu annually, just on ticket prices alone, they're making a killing.
Anyway, back to the bus ride. The road up to the site is a sort-of-paved, narrow set of switchbacks that’s traversed by medium-sized tourist busses holding approximately 40 people at a time. The busses run within about a minute of each other, regardless of occupancy, constantly. The road itself is only really wide enough to allow one bus, which makes approaching busses passing each other a harrowing event often preceded by one bus driver slamming on the brakes and sliding to a stop to avoid collision. I am not exaggerating. The busses are driving much too fast for the dangerous roads, taking seemingly blind turns with what appears to be reckless abandon, but I've got to think there’s some method to the madness. Or, perhaps, that’s what my brain told me in order to remain calm enough not to freak the fuck out. The bus ride can be summed up in three words: HOLY FUCKING SHIT.
We finally made it, 25mins later, to the site. Tourists everywhere. The place was packed and there was a long line of tired looking adventurers waiting for a return bus back down the hill. We presented our documentation and our passports (thank god Ludwig told us our original passports were required) and entered the site. We climbed the first set of many stairs and followed the arrow and suddenly…… “Oh. My. God.”, I said out loud as my eyes first saw the site. I really couldn't believe it. I was in awe. Speechless. Really. The hundreds of pictures I'd seen previously meant nothing and I assure you, mean nothing to you until you actually feast your eyes upon it in real life. It’s impossible to describe and impossible to capture in a picture or video the sheer size, scale, and beauty of it all. Surrounded by pointy, heavily vegetative peaks with fluffy, puffy clouds, Machu Picchu was awe inspiring.
We spent the next couple of hours walking, climbing, and scaling the ruins. It’s rough and definitely not easy, but so very worth it. The heat, or perhaps the sheer vigor of the experience, got the best of one visitor who had to be carried out, very slowly and carefully, on a stretcher. I remember feeling bad for the guy, but very thankful at the same time that, despite my limitations, I’m otherwise healthy enough and strong enough to push through and conquer such things.
The energy felt at the site was undeniable. Anyone who has been to other sites situated along energy grid lines such as Sedona, AZ or Stonehenge will know what I'm talking about. A very calming, introspective, energy was present and I made sure at points to just simply sit and be, or stand silently and ponder.
We returned to the shitshow that was the return bus queue with what we thought would be plenty of time to stand in line, bus down, and walk to the train station for our train. Can you guess how this portion of story is going to end? As it turns out, the gigantic line I saw upon arrival was a dwarf in comparison to the line in it’s current state. We walked, and walked, and walked downhill until we finally encountered the back of the line. About a minute later, it started to rain. Slowly at first, then harder as time went on. The steady flow of busses continued up the hill, dropping people off, loading return passengers, then heading back down the hill, but their pace had slowed, presumably due to the rain. Slowly we advanced through the line, constantly checking our clocks.
“Ok, dude, if we're on in 15 mins we’ll be fine. We have plenty of time.”
* 20 mins passess *
“Fuck, dude, this line’s moving slowly.”
* 10 more minutes pass *
“Ok… we MUST be on a bus in 10 mins or we’re seriously fucked.”
Five mins passes and, FINALLY, we’re on the bus! We board and get comfy for the 25 minutes hell-ride we know we're about to experience, only now with 100% more rain! Sweet. So about two minutes into the ride I glance up and see a big digital clock at the front of the bus… and it’s reading 15 minutes faster than I thought it was. “OMG, did I lose track of time?”, I thought. “Did the last part of the line and boarding take way longer than I thought?”, I questioned. “We're totally going to miss our train”, I said to myself. We arrived at the bus stop with just five minutes until the train was supposed to depart.
We jumped off the bus, rushing through an endless maze of vendors toward the train depot as quickly as physically possible. I felt like I was in Amazing Race. No time to think, just instinct. If we missed the train we were screwed. We turned the corner and tried to enter the train complex, but were stopped by guards!
“Botelos”, they requested.
Fuck. We frantically dug through our backpacks to produce the train tickets and were allowed to pass. We continued, rounded the corner and stopped dead in our tracks looking at a packed train depot. “Did we miss our train, what’s going on? Is this the waiting group for another train? Surely our train has boarded, the trains board thirty minutes in advance! We're fucked.”
I walked to the lady behind the information booth with ticket in hand and asked, “has this train left?”.
“No, it hasn’t boarded yet.”, she replied.
I ripped my phone out of my pocket and it became clear… the fucking clock in the bus was like a half an hour fast!! LOL. It never even occurred to me, while on the bus, to confirm the times. I just assumed it was right. Also, Bill never thought to question or confirm the times either. Sometimes I'm surprised we're still alive and have made it this far in life. heh
We weren't able to get a return train to Poroy, so we had to get a return train to Ollantay (CHECK SPELLING) which is about a 1.5 hour drive from Cusco. Taxis are so cheap we just figured we'd pay a taxi to take us back to Cusco, a fairly typical venture. We ended up meeting a really cool Colombian couple named Andreas and Juanita on the train ride back. They were seated across from us and we ended up chatting with them the entire ride back. They were both from Bogota, but came to the United States ten years ago in search of a better life. They're currently living in Indiana (and claim to actually like it), but planning on moving to Tampa and buying a house within the next year. They seemed impressed with our choice of Medellin as a vacation destination and both proclaimed it was their favorite and most beautiful city in all of Colombia. We ended up splitting a taxi back to Cusco with them and chatted the entire ride home. It was really interesting hearing their stories about moving to America, their experiences with the immigration process, and getting to pick their brains about what exactly they love about the USA vs. their homeland of Colombia. It opened my eyes to a lot of things and I feel very grateful and fortunate to have been able to spend that time with them.
We basically got back to Cusco around 9pm, ate, and passed out. What a day!
