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...

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!)