.jpg)
When we got up this morning, we were on our own. The official Regent tour to Machu Picchu was sold out when we tried to sign up so we had to negotiate a trip on our own. Of course, as things work out sometimes, as soon as we had officially booked our trip Regent contacted us and said that they had openings. But, alas, we were going as “Independents” as were six others while the Regent “64” went en-mass on a chartered jet.
We took a cab to the Lima airport, which seemed simple enough until we went to exit the port. The guard told us we needed some type of pass to get out of the port and sent us to the passport office. Well, it wasn’t that easy to find the passport office which was in a very scary looking part of the port including shipping docks, etc. We went in and told them what we needed and no one had any idea what it was.
To make a long story short we finally found someone who could help us, they hand wrote the “permit” and we were off, glad that we had left ourselves a couple hours leeway. At this point we drove around the port area a couple times trying to exit and, when we finally went through the gate the guard didn’t even ask for the permit!
When we got to the airport things turned back to normal, going through passport control and security and we even had time to get a coffee and relax a bit. There were some great posters up about going to Machu Picchu and that your experience starts in a train. Well, it really started in a cruise ship and airplane for us but turns out that the train IS where the excitement started!
The plane was a very nice twin engine jet and the view of the Peruvian highlands was spectacular. The interesting part of the flight is that, instead of going down to sea level to land, we only had to go down to 11,200 feet, over 2 miles up. When they call it the Peruvian “Highlands”, they really mean it! We would be going down to 8,000 feet at Machu Picchu.
You feel the lack of oxygen pretty quickly so you have to take it a bit easy. The locals chew on coca leaves and drink coca tea…the ingredient in cocaine giving you a little pep to counteract the lack of oxygen. We didn’t try this until well into the trip.
We collected our driver/tour guide, Daniel, for the first part of the trip. We loaded up his car for the drive to the Sacred Valley and Ollantaytambo. Along the way we stopped at some of the sites that seemed photo-worthy on a glorious blue-sky day. Those skies weren’t going to last as they had been having torrential, maybe Biblical, rain for days and it was going to continue in earnest. Stories of terrible flood damage were starting to come out as most of the houses were made out of mud and many were on the currently raging Urubamba River.
As we left the town and went into the Peruvian highlands area I was mesmerized by one of the most beautiful places on earth. The people were amazing, the vistas unparalleled and we had so little time to see it. But, I did the best shooting out the window going 55 mph and managed to get Daniel to stop a couple times. I think you’ll be impressed by the shots I got and definitely want to return to spend a week going Sacred Valley speed, which means as fast as a donkey can walk!
We arrived in time to catch our train only to find that the trains weren’t running that day. The tracks had washed out somewhere between here and Agua Calientes and they had cancelled all the rest of the trains for that day so they could repair the tracks. This didn’t sound good and was an omen of things to come. Less adventurous travelers might have thought better of it and just gone back to Lima. In fact, Daniel wanted us to go 1 1/2 hours back to Cusco and return in the morning, but, being the enterprising travellers that we are, we found a nice enough B&B right at the train station and booked a room for the night. Daniel stuck with us for a while but then said he was driving back to Cusco and would return in the morning to make sure we got on the train.
We got settled in our room and later we walked in the rain up the road to explore the rest of the town. There were some Incan ruins at the top of the town but it was too late to explore and raining off and on. We stuck our heads into a couple restaurants until we setttled on Mayupata, a bar restaurant that specialized in wood fired pizzas and other local fare. We tried some local wine and dishes and they were pretty good.
Walking back to our room we bought some local corn on the cob roasted on an open fire from a street vendor. As we ate it in the rain we started to become concerned for the first time. We were on our own, the weather showed no signs of letting up, the sandbags were going up everywhere and we were on an incredibly tight schedule.
Ater returning to the room we drifted off to sleep to the sound of the rain continuing to fall outside. We had no idea of the adventure that lay ahead.
Sacred Valley Picture Gallery: http://travelwithdm.smugmug.com/Travel/South-America/Sacred-Valley-Jan-23-2010/25154101_VC6Fvc#!i=2062662229&k=jG9dLnN