Sept 16 - Sept 19
Elevation 7874 ft
Cuzco to machu picchu pueblo
Train - Cuzco to Machu Picchu
Thursday, September 16
First of all, thanks go out to Ruben who translated the protester’s sign from Cusco. Apparently they were protesting a lack of water and the government’s selling of water to other provinces. Thanks to everyone else who has sent us email too!
Now back to the trip…
We arrived at the Poroy (suburb of Cusco) train station to take our bus to Ollantaytambo where we’ll pick up the train to Machu Picchu. If you remember the end of the last leg, Peru Rail is doing some rail maintenance and has a portion of the track between Cusco and Ollantaytambo closed, so it’s bus for us. A young Peru Rail employee sits across the aisle from Travis, and we suspect that he selected that seat on purpose. Apparently, the major businesses here in Peru have English language classes for their new employees and our young Peru Rail employee had homework that he hadn’t quite finished. Travis helped him out with some verbs and he seemed most appreciative.
We arrive at Ollantaytambo without incident seeing some countryside populated with farmland and llamas. We arrive at the train station and have quite a bit of waiting to do to catch our train. We didn’t exactly know when our train was supposed to depart, so we had to keep going up to the gate to see if the arriving trains were ours. We ended up waiting about 3-4 trains. Doug goes off to buy breakfast from one of the local vendors. Bananas and a can of Pringles potato chips. He comes back and realizes that he paid with a S50 (50 Soles) note but got change back as if he’d paid with a S10 note. He goes back to the vendor and she actually realizes what she’s done too and gives him the rest of the money. So far it appears that the people in Peru are fairly honest.
There are a couple of different levels of train service to get to Machu Picchu. They range from the Hiram Bingham service, which is really expensive (it’s owned and operated by the Orient Express – we saw one of the train car – truly impressive) to the “locals only” service where you won’t be necessarily riding with chickens and goats, but it’s not too far from it.
We are in “Expedition” class which uses a Vistadome car. It’s an okay train with glass windows in the roof so that you can see the mountains (hence it has very limited luggage storage and the supposed 5kg limit) and you make your way through the mountains. It’s a nice concept, but the problem is that when it’s sunny, it gets really hot in there. Doug who is an airplane seat snob was quite annoyed with our selection of seats because it was both in the sun and we were facing the wrong direction. The train was full, so there wasn’t any option for us to move. We each took our one bag on the train without issue. The train makes several stops to either allow for other trains to pass or to let off some of the passengers early so they can hike to Machu Picchu. Several times when the train stops, children from the neighboring village come to the train and want food, money, or whatever. The lady across from us throws one a cookie and gets reprimanded by the train porter.
We arrive at the village of Machu Picchu. Apparently, the town used to be called Aguas Calientes (“hot water” – there is a natural thermal spring here) but it was too confusing to the general tourist population, so the official name is now Machu Picchu Pueblo. We meet up with the hotel representative. We’re staying at another Inkaterra hotel – the same brand of hotel that we stayed at the Amazon. It’s adjacent to the train station which will make it very convenient. All of our meals are included and a few guided tours. We check-in and make reservations to do Machu Picchu tomorrow morning and an orchid tour for the afternoon.
Our room isn’t quite ready yet, so we have lunch out at the pond (natural spring water pool). They have really good ice tea here. It appears that we’ve reached civilization! But their internet is really slow, so we’re going to claim that we’re just on the edge of the grid.
We meet up with our guide, Carmen, for the orchid trail tour. The grounds here at the hotel contain 372 species of orchids. That’s a lot! Some of them are quite large and some of them are quite small and you need a magnifying glass to see them. We had no idea!
In addition to the large array of orchids, the hotel grounds also have 18 varieties of hummingbirds. That’s a lot! They only have a hand-full of the traditional hummingbird feeders. There was a study done in Brazil that indicated that the sugar-water diet from the feeders was causing diabetes in some of the birds. So now the hotel isn’t interested in harming the birds and they make sure there are enough natural plants that the hummingbirds like around the property. One thing that we learned was that hummingbirds have different shaped beaks and they are attracted to different flowers which accommodate the shape of the beak. There are also some hummingbirds that have beaks so curved that they can’t even fit into one of the feeders. There is also a large population of butterflies, but we saw plenty of those at the Amazon.
We take a walk into town and buy some more water. The hotel provides quite a bit, but did you know that you can use up about 1/3 of a bottle just by brushing your teeth?
We have dinner at the hotel and then it’s off to bed.
Friday, September 17
Today is Machu Picchu. This is the thing that started this whole trip idea. Carmen, who took us on the orchid tour, is our tour guide for Machu Picchu. She recommended meeting at 6:30 am to let all of the serious hikers do their thing and before too late in the morning when the huge crowds arrive from the morning trains. That sounds pretty good to use – we were afraid that she was going to recommend something closer to 5:00. We have a quick breakfast, meet up with Carmen, and then catch the bus to the Citadel of Machu Picchu. Just to set a couple of things straight, Machu Picchu means “Old Mountain” and the term really applies to this whole area. Most people also use the name for the old Incan settlement, but technically, that is really “the citadel” of Machu Picchu. After a short hike up, we arrive at the old entrance gate. It is truly impressive!
It’s probably time for another disclaimer. There are a lot of different versions about history regarding Machu Picchu. The version being told here is what we learned from Carmen and some fill-in-the-blank pieces from our guidebook. So with that said, there are probably a lot of misconceptions (perhaps even by us) about the citadel. First of all, it was primarily for Incan nobility. The common Incan did not live here, but would live in very close proximity. The commoners were essentially the nobility’s servants and laborers and they weren’t allowed into the citadel other than to work. Anything that was brought into the citadel was also taxed by the Incan rulers, so that also limited who could live here just by a basic economic means. Second of all, the citadel was still being used by local farmers when Hiram Bingham “found” it in 1911. The story we were told was that Hiram Bingham attended a lecture by one of his peer’s about Peru and decided to see things for himself. He talked to enough locals to get a reasonable idea that there was more up here than just old terraces used for farming. He was actually looking for Vilcabamba, the last stronghold of the Incas, which was later found deeper in the jungle. He approached the citadel from the old Incan trail and came upon mummies and whatnot from the commoners supporting the citadel. He then “found” the citadel. Another interesting fact was the Bingham made trips back for additional exploration and mapping at the site a few times between 1911 and 1915 and then didn’t return again until 1949. Bingham sent a lot of artifacts back to the United States (Yale University) and there’s a controversy going on right now about their return. Oddly enough, two German adventurers in the 1860s looted the site with permission from the Peruvian government.
Another interesting point was that the citadel was never discovered or structurally destroyed by the Spanish Conquistadors. The citadel is situated such that it makes it very hard to see from below. It is believed that it was abandoned because there was so many deaths from the epidemics brought on from the Conquistadors that there simply were not enough people left to support the citadel and they were forced to merge into other communities.
There are at least eight trails leading into the citadel from other important Incan settlements and the thinking is that the Machu Picchu citadel was a hub of commerce and politics.
Okay, the history lesson is over for now, but a little bit of culture needs to be explained for the rest of this to make sense. The Incans were very connected to Mother Earth and believed in balance. The balance thing with them was a sort of yin-and-yang. Up and down. Left and right. Light and dark. You get the idea. They essentially had three idols that they worshiped. The condor represented the sky. The jaguar represented the earth. The snake represented the underworld. You may see some pieces of this in the rest of this write-up and in some of the photos.
At the entrance, we take the obligatory postcard quality photo shot and continue on the tour. We head up in the citadel to the Hut of the Caretaker of the Funerary Rock. This is another entrance point that intersects with the Inca Trail that a lot of people hike. There are a lot of hikers coming in and they appear to be very happy to finally be reaching the end of their journey. There are big groups of hikers taking group pics all over the place.
We continue on our tour and end up overlooking the Temple of the Sun. They believe that this was used for astronomical purposes. There is a window that lines up perfectly for their summer solstice. Slightly before we got to this point, there was a fixed compass where Carmen laid her compass on top of and they lined up perfectly. How they could figure out north-south-east-west back then is amazing.
There are terraces everywhere. Some of them are used to manage erosion and others are used for farming. There are two rock quarries at the citadel and all of the stone work was done here on site. Carmen explained to us that there is a layering of soil on the terraces, with sand being toward the bottom and then fertile soil being close to the top. The fertile soil is known to not be local to the Machu Picchu area and they believe was imported from the Sacred Valley area some 40km (or so). They believe that llamas were used to transport the soil using the Incan Trail.
We look into the Incan king chambers where we would have found his bedroom and there was actually an attached bathroom (we think only the king would get such a privilege back then).
Carmen shows us the Principal Temple that has a slightly falling down portion of the wall. It results from the wall foundation being improperly made and the area ended up sinking some (this must be the Leaning Tower of Pisa of Incan construction).
We navigate our way to Intihuatana (loosely translated to Hitching Post of the Sun) and is a curved rock pillar which is a sundial-like device. The Incan astronomers were able to predict the solstices using the angle of the shadows off this pillar. It is believed that there were several of this intihuatanas at the important Incan sites but most were destroyed by the Conquistadors. It’s very special and people like to touch it. They now have it roped off, but you can see that people really want to touch it. There is even a crew doing 3-D imaging to see if they can tell if tourism is starting to destroy it. Apparently the University of Arkansas sent a 3-D imaging crew to the citadel several years ago to get images of the most important pieces. We suppose that they’ll be comparing the two images.
We come to the Sacred Rock (we don’t know why they call it that), and a lot of people say that it looks like a guinea pig.
We end up at the Temple of the Condor which is a carved rock that looks like a head of a condor and the flanking rock beside it make up its outstretched wings.
Our tour with Carmen is finally over and we are much more enriched with Incan culture and their way of life. We walk out of the citadel with Carmen who has brought packed sandwiches for us. We eat our lunch and say goodbye to Carmen who was really a good tour guide. We learn that she is from Cusco and gets 4 days off a month and has a 2 year old daughter.
We buy a much needed cold coke and take a break in the shade. We want to go back into the citadel to take some more pictures but don’t want to lug the big backpack around with us, so we check the backpack and take a restroom break. You have to pay S1 (one Soles – the unit of Peruvian currency – about 33 cents US) to use the bathroom and it was discovered that they don’t even provide toilet paper. Very interesting and inconvenient at the same time!
We spot a couple of young men who had insect bites all over their legs and were attracting quite a lot of attention at the snack hut. We were able to snap a pic. It’s a very good example of why one should wear insect repellant – see kids, listen to your mothers! We noticed at least one other person who was as bad, if not worse. Ouch!
We go back into the citadel with the primary purpose of just taking some pictures. This must be the peak time of tour groups, because the place is just packed with tourists and we have a difficult time navigating around in general. We sure are glad that we listened to Carmen about our tour time.
We go back to one of the terraces and Doug tries to use his over-complicated camera to take some self-pics and we take some pictures of the llamas. Do you know some of the differences between the llamas and the alpacas? Llamas are mainly used as pack animals. They will carry about 11 kg before they just drop to the ground and refuse to carry anything at all. The alpacas were raised for meat, basically serving the purpose of cows for us. There are some slight differences in their fur. You just never know what you’re going to learn reading our website, do you?
We take some more pictures and then take the bus back to town. We work on the website leg from Cusco. We are really far behind!!
Doug tries to publish the website and thinks he does, just to learn that it’s not there. Apparently the hotel has a lot of web functions blocked and the way Doug updates the website is one of those functions. We eat dinner and then try the web stuff again, but finally give up for the night. Slaves to technology!
Saturday, September 18
Today is a very easy day. We signed up to go on the spectacled bear tour at 8:30 am. The corporation that owns the hotel has a foundation whose primary concern is environmental conversation. As part of those efforts, they have a spectacled bear sanctuary and will do an occasional spectacled bear rescue. It’s sort of like SPCA except for the spectacled bear. The spectacled bear is indigenous to the Andes and is endangered. It’s called spectacled because it has these white circles around its eyes that makes it look like it’s wearing eyeglasses or spectacles. We were amazed to learn that with the clearing and burning of the forest, sometimes the bears end up at the homes of farmers and the farmer’s family will just take in the bear to raise it as a pet. Some of them finally wise up and realize that they can’t take care of a bear (they eat a LOT and eventually become pretty aggressive) and make a call to a group, like the hotel’s foundation. They can get bears for other reasons too.
The hotel has three spectacled bears on site – Yogi, Pepe and Coco. Coco is 2 ½ years old and was the only one who was out of its cave and was interactive with us. They’re hoping that when he matures a little more he can be released back into the wild. The bears are pretty lazy and don’t move around a lot. They like to sleep! To get Coco a little more interested in us, one of the young women in our group even got to feed the bear a heliconia leaf through the fence, which definitely got his attention because he really liked that leaf! We got to fill out observation sheets which recorded the bear’s activities and what it has in its pen to eat and they apparently send these back to Lima to the director of the program. We even got certificates to record our participation in the program, and we’re quite proud of them!
Doug finally gets the Cusco leg of the website published. He has to individually load one file at a time and claims that it is quite tedious. The things we’ll do for our fans! (ha ha)
We have a pretty easy afternoon with some shopping in town (we had a really good time because the stall vendors don’t hassle us much and we get to do some serious bartering – we ended up buying way more stuff than we actually needed), lunch, and have a sauna appointment (it’s included with our room). The sauna is a eucalyptus hut and is pretty hot. We’ve both been suffering from allergy issues and we’re hoping that this will help. We survive our 45 minute session, but Travis is really glad that it’s over.
We have dinner and it’s off to bed.
Sunday, September 19
We have a bird watching tour at 6:30 am. Cecilia is our tour guide for this one and she seems to know a lot about the area birds. We’ve already talked about the hummingbirds, but in addition to lots of those there are also a lot of tanagers around. They are fruit eaters and the hotel actually hangs bananas up in a couple of the trees for the birds (and for the tourists to watch). We see a lot of different varieties of tanagers and wander around the property looking for other birds too. Probably the most impressive one is the Mot Mot. It’s the national bird of Peru and it looks like a flycatcher with really long tail feathers, but the tail feathers look more like a clock’s pendulum.
Cecilia takes us further back into the property past the hotel’s tea plantation and the spectacled bear area and we see the hotel’s heliport. Some of you may remember that there was terrible flooding around Machu Picchu back in February. The Rio Urubamba runs through Machu Picchu (the town) and the rising river washed out several parts of the train track. Without being able to get food and water to town, the government had to evacuate the tourists over a seven day period by helicopter. They used the two heliports of the hotel to get everyone out. Cecilia tells us that the government’s evacuation efforts ended once the last tourist left. The locals had to fend for themselves or had to walk the 40km (or so) to Ollantaytambo. Machu Picchu was closed for 2 months until they could get the train track repaired.
Our bid watching tour ended. There’s probably little reason to believe that we’ll become serious bird watchers, so you might not want to add high powered binoculars to either of our Christmas list just yet.
We eat breakfast, shower up, and finish packing. We have a little bit of time to do some last minute market shopping before heading on the train. We’re off to Ollantaytambo to do some Sacred Valley activities. We wonder if our bags sent from Cusco are there???
Things were a bit chaotic boarding the train in Ollantaytambo.
Travis diligently working away on the website on the train.
The entrance to the hotel. All through the hotel there are stairs with fountains down the sides of the steps.
We asked about the animals on the roof. We've learned they should always be bulls and there should be two of them. They are theoretically good luck. There are two to represent the Incan idea of duality, and their being bulls represent the strength of the home or family.
Travis at lunch by the pool as we wait for our room to be ready.
This is our room. On the plus side we've got a veranda facing the orchid garden and we don't have other visitors walking past our room. On the minus side, it's quite a distance (and lots of steps) from the main parts of the hotel.
The town is located in a deep valley along the Urubamba River.
The hotel grows all their own vegetables as well as tea (shown here) and coffee. They process the tea and coffee onsite.
After seeing this guys legs, we're really glad we kept up with the bug spray!!!
You get a receipt when you pay for the toilet. Perhaps this is supposed to be your toilet paper?
They had really bad flooding in February and had to close the town for 2 months. They're now trying to make the waterway a bit deeper and wider. The rocks in the riverbed are huge (this is not a toy backhoe).
The hotel deal included an Andean Sauna. The inside of this is covered with Eucalyptus leaves. They have hot stones in the middle of the floor. It was like a sauna in there!
The hotel has 3 Andean Spectacled Bears onsite. This is Coco who is 2 years old.
Coco woke up quickly when the right food was made available.
We got certificates - we guess for viewing the bears?
Travis in Pueblo Machu Picchu town center. The town used to be called Aguas Calientes but this was confusing to tourists so Peru recently changed the name.
This is the Gate Keepers Cottage. It's one of structures that has had a thatch roof put back on so that one can get a sense of what the completed structures looked like.
This is our first view of the full Citidel.
The Incan's used cantilevered rocks out of the terrace walls to move from one terrace to another.
The Temple of Water (with the thatched roof) and Temple of the Sun (with the rounded wall).
This is the gate that leads into the part of the citadel where only nobility could go. Somehow we managed to walk through!
In the Temple of the Sun, there are two windows. The one directly in the middle of the picture lines up directly with the sun during Winter Solstice and the other window (which is on the right and not visible here) lines up with the sun during Summer Solstice.
This gives you some idea of just how many mountains there are around Machu Picchu.
We both left offerings of 3 Coca leaves representing the Sky, Earth, and Underworld.
The Inca king had a toilet room directly off his bedroom.
Rock aligned with magnetic north.
Doug & Travis in front of the "Sundial". This isn't a traditional sundial telling time of day, but rather seasons. Directly behind it in the mountains is the "Sun Gate" where the Sun would align with Summer Solstice.
This closed window or niche shows how the rocks would have been finished.
A chinchilla like animal resting on the rocks in Machu Picchu.
An "Astronomical Mirror" which is sort of like a birdbath on the ground with a shallow layer of water which reflects the sun and stars.
Travis in the "House of the Chosen Woman".
Doug with a Llama. There are 40 llama's wandering the site.
Doug & Travis in front of the "Sacred Rock" which looks a little bit like a guinea pig.
Doug & Travis standing in the middle of the Temple of the Condor. The falcon's head is on the floor next to Travis' feet and one of the wings extends out behind us.