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 café 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!)