Cusco and Machu Picchu

Cusco turned out to be rather a larger town than we expected, but fortunately, the center around Plaza de Armas (every city in Peru has one named that, it seems) is quite compact. Unless you are hardcore into museums, churches and the insides of other ancient buildings done up specificaly for tourists, there isn't much to do in Cusco. Which isn't really a problem as at over 3000 meters above sea level, you wouldn't have the breath to do much running around, especially climbing the steep streets. In any case, we had some practicalities to take care of between our vists to restaurants and juice bars.

First of all we needed train tickets to Machu Picchu, which required two trips as despite their hefty price (US$105 each) only cash will do and in ID obsessed South America, buying a train ticket also means presenting your passport, which Kylie didn't have on her. Secondly, the contract for the sale of the flat came through, so I had to find a net cafe where I could print this PDF and sign it. Luckily, despite it's remote location I was spoilt for choice to get it back to the UK in a timely fashion with both DHL and TNT having an office in town. (even though their websites don't seem to think they do) The contract is now safely with my solicitors and the agent tells me the buyers want to close the deal next week. Fingers crossed.

After expensive Cuba, Peruvian prices are much more reasonable, except maybe the main attraction, Machu Picchu, itself. (see below) 4 nights in budget accomodation (which is comperable to your average GBP60/night British B&B) came to US$130. A good meal will set you back less than US$15 (starter, main, softdrink) and a large glass of fresh juice on the street is a wallet draining 2 soles - $0.66. Internet access is equally cheap; 1 sole per hour. The downside is that most places (and there are many) seem to have bought nice 1.5-2.5GHz computers and then stick, oh, 96MB of RAM in them and run Windows XP, making sure that despite the fast net connection, the computer itself is slow as hell. Maybe they should ask 2 soles an hour and invest a little in their equipment.

At 6am on Wednesday morning we took the "Vistadome" train to Aguas Calientes; 4 hours out of Cusco, this is the town closest to Machu Picchu. In fact, the train is the only way to get there and apart from the busses that take you to the ruins and some utility vehicles, the town is car free. That doesn't mean you don't have to watch before crossing the road as the train tracks are the high street! The city itself is very compact and completely filled with hotels and restaurant, each and every one of which serves pizza. Luckily, that is not the only thing they serve and you can get some pretty decent more traditional Peruvian meals.

Many take this train, hurry over to the ruins and get back to Cusco in the afternoon. We decided to spend the night here and go explore Machu Picchu the next morning. A wise decission not only because it was far less crowded and the light so much better for photography early in the morning, in the afternoon it was bucketting down too. More heavy rain was predicted for the next day but we got lucky; When the alarm went at 6 am, only a thin white overcast with some breaks was to be seen, but no rain.

We got there at 7 and spent the next four hours exploring and photographing. Thanks to the light overcast the light stayed nice and soft a little longer than usual, though the downside is not many nice blue skies in the photos. Just as we got back to the town after hiking down (a drop of 500 meters) the predicted rain came back with a vengance, so much so it knocked out the town's internet connections, leaving us with nothing much else to do than have lunch and read some books in the hotel's sitting room.

Muchu Picchu is an amazing place but you can't help but wonder what made these people think it was a good idea to build a city at 2500 meters above sea level on nothing but steep mountain sides; it is not like they now get to enjoy the tourist dollars! No matter, it may be a long way to come and cost a fair amount of money, it was certainly worth it. (Train, bus and entry come to US$150/person, and that isn't even counting the airfare from Lima to Cusco, which was included in our round the world ticket) Hopefully we have come back with some great photographs, but that will be a couple of months before I get around to sorting them out, no doubt.