Polly and Toby's Travels

The Beer and Nachos when we arrived were very good – despite the almost comical size of the nacho portion, but oh well, they were free after all. Agua Calientes is a bit of a tourist rip off town, with fake offers like 5 drinks for the price of one… The drinks come in basically shot glasses they are so small! We learnt this after the first lot and managed to avoid too many scammy offers. Our second guide (the rubbish one) walked past us about 3 times in the restraunt before shouting in that everyone was annoyed at us as they wanted to go to the hostel! We found this a bit a odd as we had been told to meet in the square at 5 30 and it was only 5… Turns out no one was annoyed, just henry making a mess of things and not wanting any blame. Our hostel was perfectly ok a nice double room, but tempremental showers which prevented nice long showers, we only just had one before we came out so had been feeling very unclean..

We went for a meal in the evening with the tour people and found out about our 4am leave the next morning and that we wouldn´t be able to get home till saturday now as the strikes had been extended for the friday as well! Had an earlish bed as it had been a long day and also the fact our alarm was set for 3 30am!! Gutted for us! Especially when we found out what the walk was the next morning. Assumed a nice gentle strole up to Macchu Pichu, instead got a 2 hour hike in the dark up about 1000 steps! Was not much fun and aches hadn´t healed from the previous day. I was doing it in flip-flops which was much comfyier than shoes, but I did pay the price by losing the skin off my big toe :s We were about the 10th people to the top and had to wait  30 mins for the gates to open – 30 mins that would have been spent better in bed imo… When we did get in, it was pretty awesome seeing it there on the hill and is a lot better than photos/postcard pictures. More the setting of the buildings than the things themselves. Got some obligitory photos that basically everyone takes then had to go on our tour guides very dull tour in which we found out very little inca history and more that the rocks are grey and granite… He then left us to enjoy the rest of our day We had tickets to go up Huanapichu (which overlooks macchu pichu) but not for a couple of hours so we sunbathed and most of us fell asleep! The advantage of the strikes was that Machu Pichu was completly empty – there are usually around 3000 visitors a day, when we were there apparently there were only 300… So you hardly saw anyone! The climb up Huanapichu was even more steps, but the view from the top was completly worth it. My photos dont do it  justice at all, but you could see right out to Salkanty, which looked a very long way a way considering we had walked from it!

We left Macchu Pichu around half 1ish having had our inca fill and came back down to the town for a rest and some beers We had quite a big group of nine of us so went up the main street untill a restraunt gave us a good enough discount and ended up eating there! The day was kinde lie in, (Pol did better than me, I naturally woke up at 6 30 ) Went for coffee and watched some football. The rest of the morning was building up to the football. I don´t think Englands performance needs to be mentioned in detail… We ended up having to argue with the restraunt after as they put up the beer price (we got it back down after about 5 mins) then feeling very deflated we decided to go to the hot springs. They were nice a bit overcrowded and we decided against getting a drink as they were over 3 pounds!!! Scandalous!

Today we were back to the early start as we had a 2 hour walk followed by 8 hours on a bus to get back to Cusco.. due to all the trains being sold out/the company being to cheap to pay the increased train fares. We were told the first, but found the second reason to be the true reason! Has been quite a long dull day, but we are now back in Cusco! Yaay Was an awesome trek, just a bit annoying getting stuck, but all part of the experience. My card got delcined from the cash machine as I´ve used up the 3000 pounds that I put on it so am going to have to load some back up funds onto it to get us through the last week!! Thought the money would make it as well! Have put up 44 photos just now as we have fast internet So you have up to Copacabana in Bolivia to look at Going to go back to the hostel now for some drinks with our Salcanta trek then we move on tomorrow!

One week to go!

Tags: Bus, Machu Picchu, Peru, South America

This entry was posted on Saturday, June 19th, 2010 at 10:20 pm and is filed under Travel. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.