Jason D. Barr

We just recently completed a week in Peru.  I wrote up this narrative to avoid having to tell the same stories over and over again. :)  Of course, if you have other questions, you can ask us, but this should give you a general idea of what we did.  Better yet, if you find it uninteresting, you can just stop reading, and not have to listen to me drone on and on about something.  See, isn’t that better than in real life?  Thanks for visiting. Oh, you can see tons of pictures on our Flickr site here.

All day Saturday (the 20th of September)
Sunday
Monday
Tuesday
Wednesday
Machu Picchu Day (aka Thursday)
Friday
Homeward bound and final thoughts

So, we caught our flights with a minimum of hassle and made it back to Seattle a little bit after 1pm on Sunday afternoon.  From there, we had to hop right into the car and drive home, stopping in Kennewick, WA on the way home to pick up Porter from my parent’s house.  We stopped there for a little while, but wanted to get back on the road so that we could make it back home to Boise that evening.  We didn’t quite make it, as we didn’t roll in to our driveway until just before 1am on Monday morning.  Fortunately, I had taken an Ambien on the flight from Lima to Miami, so I had gotten 6 solid hours of sleep the night before.  I didn’t really get tired driving until somewhere between Nampa and Boise, so I was pretty much home.

We had a lot of fun on this trip.  We missed Porter, of course, but enjoyed spending time together, hiking around a lot, and doing stuff we had never done before.  We were both somewhat disappointed with the touristy-ness of Cusco (we couldn’t even go into the cathedrals around town without having to pay), but the town grew on us by the end of the week and I think we’d both enjoy going back.  Definitely will not stay long in Aguas Calientes the next time we go to Machu Picchu; if we can swing it, the ideal would be to ride in on the morning train, catch the bus up for a couple of hours, and take the last train out of town that night.  From our perspective, there is nothing else to see there.  Peru is a great place, and we would need a lot more time there to check out some other places that we didn’t get a chance to see this time; exploring Lima, seeing Lake Titicaca, and going to the rainforest are all on the list still, I think.

Woke up pretty early this morning, as we had gone to bed early, as well. The checkout time here at our hotel is an outrageous 9am. I had no idea what we would do for the six hours we have to kill until getting on our train back to Cusco. This place needs some type of alternate amusement. I would think that if someone were to open an museum about Incan culture, or an actual coffee shop with books (not just about Machu Picchu) and comfy chairs and stuff, they’d make a killing. There have to be people like us around; who thought there’d be more to do in town than simply head up to the ruins. Fortunately, we could at least leave our bags at the hotel until it’s time for us to catch the train, so we didn’t have to haul them all over town and try to keep track of them.

We started hiking up Mt. Putucusi (after spending a little while finding the trailhead), but didn’t really get too far. We were still pretty worn out from the hike yesterday and we didn’t really have our heart in it, especially when we started getting eaten alive by bugs. We came back down and ate lunch at Indio Feliz again (man, it was good). We then went back to Gringo Bill’s and sat in the lobby reading books until it was time to catch the train back to Cusco.

We ended up with Vistadome tickets this time (the fancy train), instead of the Backpacker tickets we had had on the way up. Backpacker was sold out, so we had to spend a few extra bucks. It was totally worth it to have only two seats next to each other and no one facing us so we could stretch our legs out. And, they did little dancing shows and even a fashion show for us (they were trying to sell sweaters). One guy kept bugging me with his stuffed llama.

Anyway, we got back to the hotel around 8:00 or so, and just got ready to leave on Saturday. We Skyped with Porter a little again and then went to bed.

Okay, so the 1.75km hike is just to the base of the mountain that Machu Picchu is on. This kind of occurred to me as we were headed on the road out of town and it was sloping down, not up. It’s another one and a half to two hour hike straight up to get to the ruins themselves. Oh, my goodness, it was exhausting. I don’t think I’ve every been that tired in my whole life, and that includes Tuesday at Pisac. Most (smart) people catch a bus that takes them up to the entrance to the ruins, about a 20 minute ride. Then, the (smart) dumb people walk the road that switchbacks up the mountain, walking in the ditches so as not to be hit by buses on their way up and down. Finally, there’s a class of people like Susannah and I who decided it would be faster to use the steps that cut through the switchbacks and go straight up the mountain. Yes, it’s faster, but it’s exhausting beyond description. It took us about an hour and a half to get to the top. The feeling of satisfaction to be done (not to have “accomplished”, but simply to be finished) was great.

The weather, thankfully, cooperated. It was cool and overcast, with the mountaintops around us rising up into the clouds. Since I had sweated so much coming up the mountain, my sunscreen had run off, so I would have gotten scorched if the sun had been out. We had the opportunity to get a guide at the entrance to the ruins, but since we had a guidebook that told us most of the same information that a guide would have, we decided to go it ourselves. We could do what we wanted that way, anyway. We took our time going around, looking at everything at least once, and stopping to sit and rest a couple of times. Man, it was just awesome. An entire city built on top of this huge mountain, with 360 degree views all around of higher mountains, and river valleys below, was amazing. The pictures are on Flickr, of course, but I’m not sure they really do it justice.

We spent a little over an hour in the ruins. By this time, we found it more and more difficult to get up every time we sat down, so we figured we should head back down to our hotel. This time, we bought two tickets to ride the bus down. Once back to the hotel, we collapsed on the bed and took a nap before heading out for lunch.

I realize that I seem to be writing more about what we eat for meals that any other single subject. Today’s lunch will be no exception. We went to Indio Feliz, a French-owned restaurant in a back alley that totally knocked our socks off. You could get a whole meal (appetizer, main course, and dessert) for s/45, which is pretty good, compared to the other food around A.C. (once you take quality into account). It was great, and filled us right up after the hard effort we had put out in the morning.

Once lunch was done, we walked around to the shops and basically tried to kill time, as there was nothing left for us to do, either in town or back at our hotel. The rest of the day was alternately spent reading in our room, and once that got too boring, wandering the vendors’ stalls. Rinse and repeat. Finally went to bed a little after 9:00.

I didn’t sleep hardly at all on Tuesday night. I’d been taking sleeping medication ever since we got here because we’d read on the internet that it’s difficult to sleep if you’re new to high altitudes and haven’t acclimated yet. Well, the first few nights I’d slept like a log, and so I figured I’d try it without and see how it went. By the time I was frustrated enough to take a pill, it was too late (we had to be up pretty early to catch the train at 6:50 am), so I probably only got two or three hours sleep.

Thankfully, we had decided that today was going to be a slow day, so not too much on the agenda. Once we caught the train, it was a four hour ride up (or down, actually; it’s about 2 or 3,000 feet lower in elevation than is Cusco) to Machu Picchu. The train itself wasn’t bad, but it was kind of cramped. Four seats faced each other, then an aisle, then another four seats. I was relatively fortunate, in that a tiny Japanese girl was sitting across from me, so she didn’t try to invade my space. Still, by the time we got to Aguas Calientes (the city below Machu Picchu), my knees were screaming to be stretched out. The cramped quarters were balanced out by the amazing views on the ride. Pictures on Flickr, of course.

We went to check into our hotel (Gringo Bill’s, har har har), which was pretty nice. We had gotten lucky when Susannah tried to reserve a room here, in that the only room they had left was the suite for honeymoons and stuff. They gave us a 30% discount, which brought it down to pretty close to a normal room’s price. There was a fairly big sitting area in addition to a queen bed (we’d been sleeping on a double the past few nights), and a private balcony. However, the room was the only nice thing about the town.

I had mentioned (complained, really) to Susannah about how touristy Cusco was and wished that it wasn’t so. Well, it was nothing compared to Aguas Calientes, which exists solely to support excursions to Machu Picchu. When we were out eating lunch at a crummy little pizza place just like all other 20 pizza places we passed, we both said that being here really made us kind of sad. The natural beauty of the place juxtaposed with the squalor of the town was just a shame. I understand that Peru is a poor country, and one of its main sources of income comes from the tourist trade, but it seems to me that the expansion of said trade could have been handled better. Machu Picchu has been a World Heritage Site since 1983, but in the 1990’s, UNESCO threatened the Peruvian government that they were going to strip the designation if they didn’t start taking better care of the ruins and the surrounding area. If controls have been put in place, I would have hated to see the area back before the threats. It’s really just a shame.

Anyway, the majority of the day was spent in our room, just reading, relaxing and listening to the constant music outside our window. Thursday morning, bright and early, we planned to walk the 1.75 km from Aguas Calientes to the ruins at Machu Picchu and do some other hiking, as well.

On Tuesday morning, we wanted to go visit Pisac, another set of ruins a little further away from Cusco. We had planned on taking the bus, which only cost s/2 per person. We were walking from our hotel, and were almost to the bus stop, when we were confronted by a little man waving a map in our face saying that he’d take us to all the way to Pisac (the buses stop at the bottom of the hill and require you to walk up about two hours just to get to the ruins) and show us around on the way. All this for the bargain price of s/70 for the both of us. I figured this sounded like a decent deal, so we took Francisco up on his offer and away we went.

Francisco pulled out all the stops on this trip. Between my limited Spanish and his limited English, we talked about how long he had been living in Cusco (since he was seven, 53 years), what he did before becoming a taxi driver (worked in a bank), and how he loved dogs (he was the one that told us all the statistics about the number of dogs in Peru). He was a typical taxi driver, as well, but not as bad as Rocky. He proudly showed us his insurance card and stated that he was one of only a few taxi drivers that were nationally licensed to take tourists around to the ruins outside of Cusco. This trust that was placed in him by the federal government didn’t preclude him from flying by a group of school kids so closely that one girl shrieked at the top of her lungs when his side mirror came close to her. Oh, well. No one was hurt while we were with him.

He first took us to a market that was much cheaper than either the ones in Cusco or the one up at Pisac. We stopped and took advantage of the opportunity to buy gifts for the family that we had planned on getting in Cusco. Next, he took us to some kind of a zoo/preserve/research area for the camalid species that live in Peru (Alpacas, Llamas, Vicunas, etc.). It was free and we got to feed alfalfa to the llamas and alpacas that were there, so that was fun.

Once we got to Pisac, Francisco told us to take our time hiking the ruins, and that he would be down at the bottom of the hill waiting for us when we were done. Now, originally Susannah and I had planned on taking the bus, which would have dropped us two hours below where we were starting now. Once we began walking up the STEEP hills to the ruins (see our pics on Flickr for more detail), we couldn’t believe we had even thought of doing something so borderline suicidal. These hills were so steep that we could barely make it fifty feet before having to stop to catch our breath. There were steps carved into the hillside to allow easier passage, and we were still dying. I honestly had a time or two where I was seeing spots. Add that to the fact that the sunscreen we bought down here isn’t waterproof, so it was running into my eyes, and you have a recipe for tons of fun. We did take lots of great pictures, though. Really amazing.

Francisco took us back to Cusco and dropped us off at around lunchtime. We went to a restaurant called Granja Heidi, which served a whole bunch of different foods; traditional Peruvian, French, whatever. I had some interesting crepes, filled with tomatoes, green peppers, and curried chicken. Sounds pretty gross when I type it, but it was really pretty good. Of course, after all the hiking we had done, I was starving, so anything would have been good.

Next, it was time for the afternoon nap (I love the siesta) that we’ve become accustomed to. After that, we went to the office of PeruRail to pick up our tickets that we had reserved online to go to Machu Picchu on Wednesday. Once this had been accomplished, it was back to the Plaza de Armas to just hang out. The traffic around the square had been rerouted for a concert that was being put on by the city. From my limited translation abilities, it seemed that they were celebrating the return of Spring with a week of festivities, of which this concert was a part. The concert hadn’t started yet; they were just setting up the sound system and the stage in front of the Cathedral.

We went to a coffee shop on the square, ordered something to drink, and watched people just being out and about. It’s a different vibe from what you get in America; at least, the places I’ve been in America. Susannah said it reminded her of what it was like in Tunisia, and what I assume life is like in one of the older European cities.

By this time, it was getting cold, and I didn’t have my jacket with me. We went back to the hotel room for it, and then went out looking at stuff to buy for our house, since it was the only thing we hadn’t really done yet. Susannah ended up with a new belt and an alpaca sweater, and we found a painting that we both liked. I didn’t have enough soles on me to buy it, though, so we just made a mental note to remember where it was and we decided we’d go back for it when we came back to Cusco.

Dinner time was here, so we went to a different expat restaurant; Jack’s Café Bar. It appeared to be owned by the same folks as Paddy Flaherty’s, but the food was better here. Susannah and I both had a huge steak sandwich, made with grilled sourdough and covered with lettuce, grilled onions and roasted tomatoes. Once dinner was finished, we walked back up the street to our hotel and packed up our things to leave in the morning for Machu Picchu.