Tuesday, August 4, 2009

Cuzco-Lima-Cajamarca

Cajamarca is a little (actually not that little) city in the north of Peru, almost in the border with Colombia, but inland, in the mountains, with very difficult access. It is the center for gold mining in the region, and apparently one of the largest deposits of Gold in South America. This place is not very touristy AT ALL. There were some interesting things to see, but it's just so hard to get there, that most people don't really bother.

Cajamarca marked "the first" for many things for me: first time CouchSurfing, first time eating Ceviche (which entails raw seafood! yuck!), first time in a bus accident (although that wasn't really in Cajamarca, it was on the way there...)

The bus accident wasn't really bad, we just had to wait a couple of hours for the replacement... oh well... at least no one was hurt!

After many hours in the two buses (one from Cuzco to Lima, the next from Lima to Cajamarca), our CS host, Giancarlo came to pick us up at the bus station and take us home. Him and his cousin Sergio treated us like kings, took us out for drinks, for lunch, introduced us to their friends, showed us around some ruins, and generally showed us a great time! I could not have asked for a better first experience CouchSurfing... It was pretty amazing!!!


Our hosts and friends

We were only there for like 36hrs though, it was a necessary pit-stop for the keeping of a promise.

Next stop==> Colombia!!!

Cuzco--round II

Next day we get up somewhat early, to take the train back to Ollantaytambo, take the bus back to Cuzco, and hopefully take a bus from Cuzco that same night heading towards Lima and eventually to Cajamarca.

BUT! One of my friends from Buenos Aires, Johan, was supposed to be arriving in Cuzco that day, and we were going to try and meet, even if for just a couple of hours...

So we got to Cuzco, took a taxi from the bus station towards the hotel (where we had left our stuff before). I'm sitting in the front, all of a sudden I hear "Isn't that Johan??" I look back and start to tell the taxi driver to stop! Stop! STOP!! tell Mene to pay, open the car door and RUN!

Couldn't see Johan anymore, where is he, oh there he is, he crossed the street... cars... cars... there, cross, run, jump on Johan in the middle of the street! He had a friend with him, who looked at me as if I were some insane person recently escaped from the nut house. Johan himself started laughing, it was just too great a coincidence that we met on the street like that. :)



So we walked around the city for a little bit, talked for a while, and then unfortunately I had to head back to the hotel, to grab the backpack and go to the bus station for the next leg of the journey...

How to almost die in Peru

With a title like that, you’d think food poisoning, mugged and left for dead in a dark alley, being attacked by Indians in the forest, or having a traffic accident. However, the tail of this post has nothing to do with that. The food may have gotten to us a little bit, but nothing that bad (neither of us got to the point of throwing up, it was just belly ache), we were never mugged or felt the least bit unsafe, the Indians are actually quite friendly, and we haven't had any traffic accidents yet.

But we did almost die in Machu Picchu.

Keep in mind that I hadn’t slept much the night before, and we had to get up at 4:30am to be in the line for the buses (another US$7 dollars!) at 5am, because the buses started running at 5:30am and we HAD to be at the top by 6am when they opened, otherwise we would not get our ticket to Huayna Picchu. Tip 1- buy your ticket to Machu Picchu in Aguas Calientes the night before, as they do NOT sell them at the entrance. Tip 2- if you have a student card, it’s half the price! Tip 3- they only allow 400 people per day into Huayna Picchu. You don't have to pay extra, but if you don't make it there by 6am and RUN to the entrance of Huayna Picchu to get your ticket you won't be part of the 400. We got there early and ran, and I got number 296... 15 minutes later and we wouldn't have gone in...

So after getting our tickets, we had until 10am to explore Machu Picchu before we could go into Huayna Picchu. This was actually perfect, because we could have a little breakfast and walk round the ruins, take loads of pictures, and enjoy the place without that many tourists around, since the majority of the people would come around 10-11am.



Machu Picchu is absolutely incredible. How they managed to build an entire city of stone like that, in the top of mountains is completely beyond me. It may be expensive to get here, and the Peruvian government may be making millions from the tourists, but it’s totally worth it!



At 10am we made our way to the line for the entrance of Huayna Picchu, which is the tall, round looking mountain you see at the back of the pictures. Yep, we were going all the way to the top...

Of course, I already almost died on the way up, but fair enough, I could see what I was getting myself into from the beginning, and the views from the top were definitely worth it... It's incredible that the Incas managed to build stone steps around the entire mountain to get to the top of Huayna Picchu, which was a guard post since from there they could see all around and send messages to the main city if they saw any danger.



So we walked around, relaxed in the sunshine, discovered Granadina (close cousin of Maracuya, just a little sweeter) and took lots of pictures. Somewhere around 12:30pm, we were ready to move on, which to me meant going back down to Machu Picchu and from there walking down to Aguas Calientes. Except that we saw a little sign that said "Machu Picchu" with an arrow to the left, and "Gran Caverna" with an arrow to the right. Curiosity spiked, we decided to check what this Gran Caverna was all about... and took that path instead. It's downhill. Very much downhill. Stone step after stone step downhill... with steel cables to hold on to because the steps are almost vertically downhill... At some points, 20m ladders going straight down...


Notice how far away the river looks on this picture...



By this point I'm starting to get worried, because if we have to go all the way back UP to make our way back to Machu Picchu, I'm either going to die or kill someone. But we passed a couple who was going up and they told us there was another way around to get to Machu Picchu, so we didn't have to backtrack. Ok. Good. So we keep going down, so much so that I can see and hear the river, which from the top of Huayna Picchu looked like a little silver snake...

And now notice how close the river looks on this one!!

We make it to the Gran Caverna... and go "So this was it???" alright, back then.



And the way back, happens to be UP. Not the same way we came, but UP nonetheless... We had brought a 2,5l bottle of water for the two of us, but by this point we would've gladly drank the entire bottle each... which of course was not possible. So up and up and UP we go. And round and round and round we go. We had no idea where the heck we were, and we didn't know how long it would be until we got to the entrance of Huayna Picchu, and then back to Machu Picchu.

Remember that we entered the Huayna Picchu complex at 10am... you are only allowed to be there until 4pm... this is 3pm and we're starting to get worried... are we going to make it out in time?? Finally at 3:40pm we see the light, and get to sign our little names out. As a matter of curiosity, after being completely exhausted and feeling our legs were made of silly putty, we asked the guards at the entrance if anyone had ever been crazy enough to count how many steps it was to go all the way around... and the guard tells us: 13,000 steps!!!

Our jaws dropped. Yep, we went up and down 13,000 stone steps in one day, and there was no way we were going to keep going and walk down to Aguas Calientes... so $7 dollars later, we were in the comfy air conditioned bus, back to Aguas Calientes where a good hot shower and a nice bed was waiting for us to collapse.

By 6pm we were asleep. Dead. Or almost...

Ollantaytambo-Aguas Calientes

We got on the mini-van that would take us from Cuzco to Ollantaytambo (try saying Ollantaytambo 3 times fast! haha! took us a while to be able to say it correctly...) and made our way down the Sacred Valley, following the river, in the midst of the mountains. Beautiful scenery. Warm weather (for the first time in a while!!) But since we had been a little late in getting our bus in the morning, we didn’t have that much time to go exploring the ruins. We did however, find this amazing cafĂ© owned by a British woman who used it as a charity place, where all the profits went to benefit the undernourished children of the mountain villages around. Great food, and quite strange to find a full English Breakfast in a tiny little town in the middle of nowhere, Peru.




The best thing though, is that they were having a festival, so we saw lots of people dressed up in interesting/funny/scary costumes dancing and walking around the city... that was fun and unexpected!



Apparently we were having too much fun, because when we got up and started to walk towards the train station, we had to run the last 500m or so because the train was about to leave!!! Can you imagine? US$31 dollars for the train and watch it go without us... NO WAY! So we got on the train and the views were simply amazing!!



Arriving in Aguas Calientes, the initial idea was to camp, so we had left our stuff at the hotel in Cuzco, and brought just the tent and a small backpack, because we had heard lodging in Aguas Calientes was pretty expensive. Except we had fallen asleep on the train (it's amazing, we could sleep through anything... any type of transport, if it starts to move, it would rock me to sleep and I had to make an effort to stay awake if I wanted to look at the views!) and so we were pretty tired and wanted a proper bed. This girl immediately approached us and offered us a room for the same amount we had been paying in Cuzco. Well, jackpot. Ok, so the room was a little dodgy, and had a humangous window facing the hallway (with curtains that didn't quite cover the whole thing!) but at least there was a bed and hot shower... eventually we'd realize that was the best thing we could've done...

So we walked around for a while, bought some food to make sandwiches for the next day (yes, you are allowed to take food, just pack it all out when you leave the Machu Picchu complex!) and went to sleep early because we were supposed to get up at 4:30am!

The only problem is that this time it was MY stomach that wasn't feeling so well, and I spent half the night sitting up in bed trying to feel better... :(

Puno-Cuzco

Finally, we're on our way to Cuzco. We took our bus at 10am to arrive around 5pm, and try to figure out everything about the Machu Picchu thing before the next day, because we really wanted to go soon. By this point I was seriously considering going to Machu Picchu and then heading back south to Buenos Aires, but was eventually convinced otherwise...



Cuzco is an impressive city. The buildings, the lights, the architecture. Admittedly, I didn't see that much of it, but it was beautiful... and it's pretty big too...

So we get to Plaza de Armas and start asking everyone around for the street where the hotel we were supposed to go to was. Nobody seemed to have ever heard of it. Not even the tourist police. Yep, they have so many tourists, that apparently they thought it necessary to have a tourist police force. Since we couldn't find the place we wanted, we ended up going to this place close by that was recommended by some people on the square, it was cheap and clean, so we said ok, good enough!

We dropped our stuff and started going around asking for prices of train tickets to Aguas Calientes and such. We managed to get train tickets from Ollantaytambo to Aguas Calientes for 3pm the next day, and that was really great since one of my friends had had to wait 5 days before getting a spot on the train. The idea was to leave early the next morning, take the bus to Ollantaytambo (1 1/2hrs) and walk around there for a while, before taking the train to Aguas Calientes. Since we had bought our tickets at Plaza de Armas, the lady was supposed to come in the morning, and we told her 8am sharp! with our tickets, so we could go. Well, 8:30am and nothing. The cell phone she had given us, no answer. I start to get worried... we gave her US$75 each, and that's one heck of a lot of money!!!

Eventually she showed up, and we were on our way to get the bus to Ollantaytambo, from where we'd take the train to Machu Picchu!! YEY!!

(TIP: We didn't take the train directly, because from Cuzco to Aguas Calientes, round-trip would be almost US$100, against the US$75 from Ollantaytambo. The bus to Ollantaytambo cost us 10 Soles, or around US$3, so we saved a bit, and got to see Ollantaytambo which is a nice little place and also has ruins!)

Back in Puno... for longer than expected!

It has obviously been a while since I wrote here, but I didn't want to leave it that way and I want to finish the part about this particular trip before I start writing about the next adventures... so here we go! :)

We went back to Puno, and were supposed to leave the next morning to go to Cuzco, and from there on to Machu Picchu, but something got in the way... you guys remember in the last post I mentioned the food and something called Oca? Well, apparently that did not sit well in Mene's stomach, and even after a visit to Colors (where we knew we could get good and healthy food), he still didn't feel 100% well. So we decided to stay in Puno one extra day, and go to Cuzco the morning after that. I ran to the bus station and managed to change our tickets, and we spent the day chilling, writing and hanging out... :)