Day 3—Saturday, July 23—Ollantaytambo→Aguas Calientes→Machu Picchu→Cuzco

llama and machu picchu
Originally uploaded by rswells.

I woke up at 5.42. Hit the snooze button. Woke up again at 5.47. After washing my face, organizing my bags, and dressing, I heard a knocking on my chamber door at 6.10. It was the doorman from the night before: “You’re still going to eat breakfast at 6am, right?” “Yeah, yeah. I’m coming.” The breakfast consisted of tea, juice, coffee, and one pancake. On my way down the road, i witnessed the moonset. I arrived back at the ticket booth by 6.45, but the lady told me that the next available train would leave at 9.05 and that the roundtrip would cost about $80 or 260 soles. I only had about 260 soles total in my wallet and I couldn’t pay with a credit card. Since there’s no ATM in Ollanta, I rapidly left the line and hired a taxi driver to take me to the nearest ATM in nearby Urubamba. I gave him one of my chewy bars along the way. This roundtrip took about 40 minutes to complete, and I returned in time to buy a ticket for the 9.05. After paying 1 sol to take a crisp, mountain piss in a restaurant’s bathroom, I entered the waiting room at 8.00.

The train departed on time and wasn’t too crowded. I opened my window and snapped a few eager photos of the scenery afforded by the ride. When I arrived at Aguas Calientes, I felt as confused as everyone else looked regarding how one would get a bus to get up to MP, so I asked someone from the bus company. He pointed me in the right direction and I found my way to a bus that immediately began to ascend up a winding dirt road. I arrived at the entrance twenty minutes later, checked in my backpack, bought a student ticket, and passed through the gates by about 11.20. Luckily, the sun was shining.

I’m not sure what to say about my time around the ruins. Maybe whatever I would have to say could be best explained through my pictures. I felt pretty low on energy for all four of my hours at the site, though, for sure, especially because the chewy bars and sour gummy worms weren’t really filling me up too well. I talked to a few people. An Aussie tried to convince me that the structure was built, at least in part, through “levitation.” “Human levitation?” I asked. “Oh yeah,” he responded. A dude with a Stereolab t-shirt took a photo of me. I’d stand in on explanations provided by guides once in a while and ended up wishing I would I have studied up some more before trying to comprehend what I was seeing.

I left the site around 2.45 in the afternoon with dusty nostrils, having to catch a 3.30 train back to Cuzco from Aguas Calientes. I bought a Tropical Fruit Gatorade for the road. While on the train, the steward and stewardess served us brownies and beverages…And then put on a fashion show—all sweaters, scarves, and shawls being made from only the finest alpaca wool. They would take turns walking up and down the aisle and changing in the bathroom. The musical accompaniment included Kylie Minogue, Madonna, and The Bee Gees.

Arriving back at the albergue around 7.30 in the evening, I took a quick shower and then went out to dinner with Adam. I ordered an alpaca steak. As Adam keenly noted, alpaca thus makes for a both fine pullover and a fine piece of meant as well. After dinner, we made our way to one of Cuzco’s Irish pubs for a Guinness and then played the wall for a while at a disco. When we got back to the albergue, however, we were locked out and no one responded to our knockings and doorbell ringings. We realized that our only way in would be to scale the 12-foot walls next to the door, and that’s exactly what we did. Once in, a neighbor asked us what we were doing. We explained the situation, he easily understood, and then he told us to be careful with the dogs—they might bite us. Then, the door to my room was locked as well and we couldn’t find the keys. I was poised to sleep in one of the student’s beds (they were all back at their homes for the weekend) when Carlota’s daughter, Lucía, woke up and helped me get into my room.