machu machu

i guess for those of you who read ari's old post about machu picchu and might just want just a smidge more of details, here we go. amy, ari and erica's story of machu picchu. the story starts long, long ago, in ecuador, when we realized, oh shit, we never got around to booking the inca trail. we called and called and called different tour companies, but they were all booked up. we explored other options, other treks, but none fit our needs. finally, laziness and apathy and a general optimistic viewpoint took over, and we decided to do nothing and just sort it out when we got to cuzco.

and so, after traveling down trough peru, we finally arrived in cuzco. the time had come to answer the age old question, "how the hell are we going to get to machu picchu?" we knew we had to get there somehow. not only is it the biggest tourist attraction in peru, but there is also a picture of it in book three of "total english" (total english. the extraordinary text selected by the kobe city board of education for teaching the youth of kobe to be young international english speakers. or something.)...a pretty, sunshine-filled picture. and if sue gets to go there, than we damn well better too. and after listening to one student teacher in japan repeatedly state that machu picchu is in chile, i just wanted to make sure that millions of tourists were nt mistaken. but i digress.

so we arrived in cuzco. enter the horribly uninformed tourist information center of cuzco. the same tourist information center that told us in no uncertain terms "the train to puno is definitely not running. wait, hold on. it's definitely maybe running. it may run. we don't know when. or from where. but it might exist. you wanted to take the bus to arequipa, right? take a taxi there. here, sign our gguest book" well, we went to tourist info to find out how we might get to machu picchu on our own, but tourist info gave us no info. however, some other tourist did. unfortunately, it was a bit of information we would rather have not been given. the train to machu picchu was not running due to a landslide which may or may not be cleared up in a few days time. thus, to get to the famous incan ruins we would have to take a bus to random place x, hire a guide, hike for 8 hours to place y, and then jump through some hoops, stand on one leg, etc etc etc before arriving in place z.

in typical fashion, we thought about this for an hour or two before deciding that the best course of action would be to ignore the situation until it sorted itself out somehow. this plan worked, as it always seems to do. we went off, did some day trips, visited some ruins, before remembering, oh, what about machu picchu? by this point trains were up and running and we were on our way.

okay, to make this rambling story slightly less long, let me fast -forward. if this where a movie, this is where the montage scene would be. us paying 55 dollars for train tickets. taking the long trip to aguas caliente. seeing poorly translated mmenus(if you are lucky, amy might eelaborateon that one). walking around town. finding human feces down by the river. taking a long nap in the middle of the day. arguing about not one, but two bills with waiters in restaurants. attempting to go to bed early. waking up at 5am.

okay. waking up at 5am. a good place to continue from. so in our minds, we had this wonderful scene. we would suffer, and wake up at five am. we would take the bus up to machu picchu and walk up to the top, being slightly surprised at how we seemed to have the whole mountain to ourselves. we would watch as the sun rose over the mysterious ruins and in that moment of perfection, we would realize the meaning of life, secrets of the universe, or other such iimportantstuff. riiight.

for those of you skimming, that is most definitely not what happened. it went something more like this. we suffered and woke up at 5am. arrived at the top at around 6am. despite the clouds and mist (see ari's post), we were still able to see the scores of other tourists who also deluded themselves into thinking there might be a sunrise. we waited and waited but the mist proved more persistent, so off we went to explore the ruins in the clouds and rain.

eventually the clouds did clear some. and that is when we actually realized, hey, we are at machu picchu. the views were gorgeous. clouds passed above and below us, giving the whole place a very mysterious feel and i could finally understand why these ruins are as famous as they are. i took about a hundred pictures (and if you are lucky i will maybe post one) and if i ever return i am sure i would take at least a hundred more. i realize this entire post builds up to actually getting to the ruins, while the actual description is a few lines, but it is hard to describe what they are like, and i think each of our impressions were different (okay, a cop out, i admit. it's late and i am tired and i got myself in too deep with this stupid long post).

we stayed for about 5 hours until our stomachs protested our lack of food and we had to head back to town to eat.. note to anyone who decides to visit machu picchu. despite the poorly written tickets which state "beverage only on botles not the botle of water. food is not allowed." no one checks and you should bring food. lots of it.

and so we said our good-byes to machu picchu (and took a few more last minute pictures), before heading down into town for yet another cold plate of pasta and a few hours to pass before our train back to cuzco.

and that is the slightly longer tale of our trip to machu picchu.