Oh man where do I start with this blog. How about with the 22 hour bus ride trip from Lima to Cuzco. If you ever want to visit Machu Picchu I highly recommend buying a plane ticket from Lima to Cuzco because the the bus ride sucked. The road from Lima to Cuzco consists of a lot of twists and turns. Imagine being on a bus where the driver turned every other second. My friend said it best when he said he woke up in the middle of the night and said ¨I´m on a boat¨. The bus ride sucked so much that over half the bus threw up in the bathroom. But wait, there´s more, the bathroom somehow flooded with a mixture of water, toilet water, pee or all three. One time when I had to use the bathroom I almost fell trying to avoid the small lake in the bottom. But you get the point, don´t take the bus from Lima to Cuzco. Unfortunately, I will be taking the bus from Cuzco to Lima which I would imagine would suck just as much.
Once I got to Cuzco everything was better except for the fact that you´re 10,000 ft. up and so I got altitude sickness. Luckily they have altitude sickness pills which I bought and also cocoa tea for all you druggies out there (the same leaves they use to make cocaine) which I of course did not try. Walking up and down Cuzco was a struggle but the city itself is really nice. The day we arrived we arranged with to meet with a travel agent who got us a really good deal on our trip to Machu Picchu. I would not recommend this person to any of you for various reasons haha. Yes we did pay a lot less than an average person but there´s a reason for that. Before I talk more about Machu Picchu let me talk a little more about what happened in Cuzco. Just like every other city in Peru everything is negotiable so never settle with the first price anyone offers you. For example, when I was trying to buy a sweater the lady asked for 30 soles ( a little over $10). When I was about to leave she brought it down to 25 soles. I negotiated for 2 sweaters at 40 soles (dos por cuarenta soles) and she said cuarenta cinco. I said no but I´ll be back tomorrow determined to get two sweaters for 40 soles.
So this is where things get crazy. I couldn´t sleep the night before leaving for Machu Picchu because of altitude sickness so I ended up not sleeping and waking up everyone at 650 to leave for our trip. When our travel agent Vicky came she said she couldn´t get the train tickets we wanted so we had to get another route to Machu Picchu. We went in a big van that could fit around 20 people and picked up other tourists. The van ride took almost 7 hours to get to Iglerectico which was where we boarded a 1 hour train ride to Aguas Calientes which is the city at the base of Machu Picchu. The van ride consisted of bumpy roads, stops at shady towns, close calls driving near the edge of cliffs and funny people. Things got even crazier when we met our tour guide Juan Carlos who somehow managed to disappear and reappear at appropriate times. We stopped at a random town where dinner was provided and Juan Carlos took our passports and i.d and didn´t give it back until later that night (I recommended bringing a lot of copies of your passport to give). Oh I forgot to mention there was a road blockade because of a farmers strike so we were stuck in a random city ( this would happen twice more during the trip). Fortunately, the police came and told the strikers to move... and they did.
After the 7 hour van ride we got pretty close with the other people in the van (french girls, a chilean, peruvians, etc...) which was cool. The van dropped us off at a "train station" which was pretty much just where the tracks end. We waited around an hour for the train to leave and they put all the non peruvians in the last train car which was weird. During the train ride we played old maid with some of our new friends. When we arrived at Aguas Calientes (the base town of Machu Picchu) we met up with Juan Carlos and the rest of our group. This is where things get a little shady. First, the hostel he tried to put us in didn´t have enough beds so he had to walk us to another one. Then, the place we were supposed to eat dinner was packed so he randomly chose a different meeting place. Also, my friends noticed that the reason he would disappear and reappear is because he had another group he was taking care of.
The night before Machu Picchu I was able to practice my Spanish with a Brazilian guy and another guy from Honduras. It was cool because I know English really well and a little bit of Spanish, the Brazilian guy knew Portugese well and was pretty decent in Spanish and English, and the guy from Honduras only knew Spanish. We would help each other and translate for one another when we were confused. Hopefully with a lot of practice I will become fluent in Spanish. That night I only got a couple of hours of sleep before Macchu Picchu. My group planned to wake up at 2:30 to get a head start climbing the mountain. I´m still uncertain if I wanna blog about Machu Picchu because I don´t want to ruin it for anyone that wants to go. The feeling of not knowing what was ahead and the unknown is what made Machu Picchu so amazing that I want all of you to experience it the same way. Even if I do blog about it, I recommend not reading it. The purpose of the blog would be so I don´t forget what happened. In short, there is a reason why Machu Picchu is one of the seven wonders of the world and you should all go visit it!
God Bless all of you and try to leave a comment if you can.
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Keep blogging JaSON!
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