This was still outside our budget, so we pressed and were presented with a cheaper $150 option, which we took. This option involved a "5 hour" (7.5 hour) ride through a high mountain pass and around the back side of Machu Picchu to a town called Santa Teresa. On the way we saw a lot of natural beauty, drove on roads next to sheer cliffs above rivers, and took a lot of cool pictures. The cheaper option turned out to provide the best exposure to the Peruvian landscape:
Landslides that block the road are very common in the rainy season, we saw a few but this was the most dramatic. Fortunately we were able to squeeze by..
As we descended from the high pass (4016 m), I was a bit carsick. You can get an idea of how the roads are here from the switchback picture of the road above. After getting to the bottom of the other side of the pass, we diverted from the paved road and drove along an extremely turbulent river. The road was about 1000 ft above the river, was carved into the side of a cliff, and had many places where rockslides had clearly taken out the road. Oh, and we passed a lot of crosses where perhaps guides had driven gringos off the cliff to their deaths. We were on edge... Literally!! Haha.
Eventually we came down from the cliffs and encountered the power of a river at maximum capacity. We imagined the quick death we would meet if we were stupid enough to raft it. The picture below doesn't do the river justice. More pictures and videos to come. But this was a cool waterfall coming out of a cliff so it made the cut:
The road up the river dead ends at the "Hydroelectric" PeruRail stop. From here we hiked 2.5 hours up the train tracks. We watched as the train sailed by us filled with obviously less hardcore travelers. The scenery was amazing on this hike, with lush green vegetation and very steep Machu-Picchu-esk peaks rising from the river on both sides:
I guess I can't upload the video here, so here's a link to YouTube:
Now that I know how to do this ill include links to videos more often. We began our hike around 415pm and arrived in Aguas Calientes just after dark, around 645pm. I'm fairly out of shape, and was carrying all of the stuff like a good boyfriend, so my back was killing me.. Also I tend to overpack. Either way, here's some more happy pictures from our hike:
Aguas Calientes exists only to rip off international tourists on their way to Machu Picchu... We were grateful to have a place to sleep, but we quickly learned that everything cost at least 150% of the already inflated tourist prices of Cusco. Because of this we spent a lot of time walking around in search of the best deals, and while there were few to be found, we manager to find some street carne con papas on a stick for about $1.25 USD. While eating we joined the crowd of locals watching soccer for half an hour, and laughed with the crowd when one of the players was struck very hard in the face by the ball.
The next morning, we woke up at 4am, dawned our fleece tops and bottoms, sealed in the warmth with our waterproof tops and bottoms, and set out in the rain with about 300 other early risers to hike the final stretch of the famous Inca trail. The rain slowed to a mist after 530am. We realized we were very overdressed for the steep switchback-staircase headed straight up, and the layers started coming off. I ended up bring too much stuff again, and struggled up the accent with 25 pounds on my back... One day I'll learn that you can be over-prepared. The hike sucked so bad I didn't even think to take a picture, and when we reached the top at 630am I was a sweaty half-delirious mess. (I've never been one to stay in great cardiovascular shape, and since I had hernia repair surgery in June I've been taking it especially easy..) I recovered slowly as we watched the clouds pour over Machu Picchu before most of the busers got to the park at 830am.
After a few hours the sun came over the peaks and burned the fog off. The weather was really perfect all morning, as the sun remained present without becoming too hot. I ended up getting kind of sunburned... but it doesn't take much for me haha.
At the top of Machu Picchu there were about 10 extremely tame alpacas for tourists to take pictures with. Later that night, Marcela and I decided to see how they tasted. Pretty similar to beef if you were wondering, and they served it very salty (just like everything else here). Marcela said it was similar to her dads seasoned carne asada. Don't feel bad, there will be more Alpaca in the future.
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