I guess every tourist who visits Peru goes to Machu Picchu; so that’s what we did! Since flights to Cuzco are really expensive if you don’t book at least one month beforehand, I and Chani took the bus which instead of a one hour flight takes you like 22 hours to get there. I was like – “well that’s cool, I’m just gonna sleep on the bus”, but NO WAY. Since Cuzco lies high up in the mountains it takes some curvy roads up the Andes to get there and there was no way to sleep on the bus. Because of the altitude (Cuzco is like 3000 meters high) and because of the road conditions loads of people were getting sick on the bus; a rock was thrown on one of the bus’s windows during our trip (I was told people do that, so the bus driver would stop and they get the chance to rob the bus) — so if you are planning your trip make sure to book a flight to Cuzco beforehand, makes things a lot easier! itself was like a culture shock to me.
So many tourists – the only local people you actually saw were trying to sell you tours, sweets, artisanía (handicrafts) etc. Because of all the tourists flowing into Cuzco every day wanting to see Machu Picchu all the tour companies (and there a like a billion) are in big competition. This is not in favor of the tourists; the tour agencies are going down with the prices for the tours so much that they are actually only earning a couple of bucks. They don’t care – a couple of bucks are more than no bucks, right? But the service and quality of the tours suffer tremendously as we were going to find out soon.Before you head off on your tour (we were doing the 4 day jungle trek to Machu Picchu) you should try to get the journey/schedule written down by the agency. Ask what you have to bring; our agency for example did not tell us to bring torches nor warm clothes – which made us freeze on the first day and blind during the night!!!
Jungle Trek to Machu Picchu
On the first day you bike down the mountain from like 3000 meters to 300 meters. I was freezing (as I mentioned – I didn’t bring any warm clothes) – and I was afraid I could not break because my fingers were so cold – that was the Death Road of Peru – at least for me. I was kind of disappointed as well; I wanted to do some physical exercise, but since you are going downhill all the time the only part of my body that was hurting afterwords were my hands, because I was holding onto the breaks that tight…On my tour were like 10 people (including Chani, Jenny and myself) pooled together from different tour agencies. But I guess in total were like 70 people doing the same trek at the same time. That was kinda annoying since all the tours were mainly eating in the same restaurants so it always took a lifetime for our food to arrive. Me and Chani ordered the vegetarian option which seemed to be a problem most of the times: it took them forever to prepare it, one time it was a only a little bit of rice and 4 (I’m not kidding) French fries and generally the vegetarian option just consisted in replacing the meat with a fried egg… I think the second day was the hardest – climbing-wise. We were having lots of breaks in between though, so it was not that bad. In the evening we went to some hot springs located beautifully in the valley – seems like heaven after a long day of walking. What did not seem like heaven was our night in the hostel. We were put together in the same hostel with people from another tour who only wanted to party.
The third day was partly boring as we were following the train treks from Hidroeléctrica to Aguascalientes. In the afternoon after arriving in Aguascalientes we had the option to climb Putucusi the neighbor mountain of Machu Picchu. It was a tough climb but worthwhile! My first encounter with famous Machu Picchu – exciting!
Fourth day: let’s go and rock Machu Picchu!
Have you heard about Huayna Picchu? It is an easy mountain to climb on the archeological site of Maccu Picchu and it gives you a beautiful view of the ruins. The climb has become a hype among the tourists therefore and if you want to be one of the 400 people who are allowed to go up there each day, you have start climbing up to the site of Machu Picchu as early as 3.30 in the morning (and a torch is absolutely necessary!). Our guide gave us the advice to climb Machu Picchu (the mountain), less people do that mainly because it takes you like 2 hours to get up there (but it gives you a beautiful view over the ruins). What he did not tell us though was that the people not only start lining up for the first buses going from Aguascalientes to the ruins at like 4.00 am but that there was huge line to buy the tickets as well. It took us 1.5 hours to buy the tickets!!! We got to the ruins too late and the tour around the ruins had already started – without us (even though the guide knew that we were arriving late!) He gave us an interesting tour around the ruins, after that we had time until 5pm to explore the ruins by ourselves. It was really interesting and I really enjoyed the ruins – especially after 4.30 when like 90% of the tourists had already gone
At 6.00 pm we took the train to Ollantaytambo and from there a bus to Cuzco. On the train I was talking to a girl who also did the jungle trek but with another tour group. It seemed like everyone was complaining about something…- People whose train tickets were for 12.00pm; which did not really give them much time at the ruins. (and the tour agency had told them beforehand that they were going back at 6.00pm – People who did not get there train ticket for he 12.00pm train on time so they missed their train, had to buy a new ticket (for the next day as there were none left for the same day) meaning that they had to pay for another night and food which is really expensive in touristy Aguascalientes! – Friends who had booked together and were put on trains leaving at different times. Food being too little – especially for the guys and after a long day of hiking. We met a couple of friends who had paid like triple of what we had paid for a private guide. BUT they were eating in the same places we did (maybe they had better food) and their accommodation was probably better?! – but in the end they had the same complaints than we did. So I don’t know what to recommend. On the one hand I think it is nice to have like 3 days of “mental preparation” before getting to Machu Picchu on the other hand there are all the complaints I was talking about right now…
After having said all that: HAVE FUN AND ENJOY MACHU PICCHU!!!! IT’S AMAZING…
On our way to Machu Picchu 1
On our way to Machu Picchu 2
MACHU PICCHU
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