Machu Pichu

Up at 5am in order to catch the train at 6.30am to one of the sights that we have been looking forward to the most , Machu Picchu. As I have already said the train is quite expensive but luxury, there is none. The seats are in groups of four and you are literally knee to knee with the person opposite... nice and comfortable. We seem to be in a carriage with some circus side show entertainers. One guy walks past with a neck so thick he must take at least a size 30 inch collar. When we take our seat we are sitting opposite a German fella with the longest head I have ever seen, it must be two foot long from chin to top and is resting on a neck that is at least another foot; it's like sitting opposite a giraffe at Gerry Cottells.

The train journey is not that exciting and after 3 hours my legs feel ready to drop off. However on the final hour we descend into some great scenery. Towering jungle covered mountains surround us on either side and we start to get excited at seeing one of the wonders of the world.

We arrive in Agua Calientes, a very small town that is nestled in a gorge 20 minutes drive from the Inca site. We have accommodation booked in the town but unfortunately we have not bought the name or the address of the hostal. Oooops. Anyway it all works out well as we get an even cheaper place to stay from a lady waiting at the station. We dump our stuff with the intention of getting to the bank, drawing some cash and heading off to the ruins. We find the only cash point in town... it doesn't work!!! And it is Saturday and the bank is closed til Monday. We have just enough money to pay for the room. We ask if there is another ATM but there isn't. We go into several shops that have advertised that they change money... they won´t do a Visa transaction. We go to the Machu Picchu ticket office to see if they accept cards... they don't. The entrance fee is 120 Soles each and the bus to get there cost another 40 Soles each. We need 320 Soles to go to the site... we have 90 Soles on us. Fuck,fuck,fuck,fuck!!!!! I can't believe that we have been so stupid as to come all this way and not have the money to see this magnificent site. We go back to our hostal and explain the situation. She very kindly leads us all round the town trying to get a shop owner or restaurant to do a Visa transaction and give us the cash. No one will do it. After an hour the lady says that our only option is to stay there until Monday when the bank opens!!! After she leaves us we both feel like crying... it's a beautiful day and we are 20 minutes away from one of the most spectacular sights in the world ...and we can't go.















Adrian, my hero, starts to get angry and says there is no way that he is going to accept this situation. He marches down the main street, full of restaurants and shops, and goes into every one asking if they will do a transaction for us... on about the fifth try one lady says yes!!!! We have to pay her a 10% commission but at least we have some money!!! Yihaaa, Ad saved the day.
The weather is gorgeous, blue sky interspersed with big fluffy ice cream clouds. We rush to the ticket office to buy our passes for the site - it is now 2pm and the site closes at about 5.30pm -there are six people in front of us, the old man behind the counter is obviously on some sort of medication as the simple task of issuing tickets at anything approaching speed seems impossible for him to cope with. There's nothing worse than wanting to get somewhere quickly and being held up by officious incompetence. We are finally issued our passes after having to nudge the old man awake with a stick three times. We race to the bus stop. There's another big queue. The person at the front is buying what seems like a hundred tickets and wants to pay with pennies. Oooh the frustration!!! Our bus arrives and a kindly gringo, who was a few people in front of us in the queue, holds the bus up for us so that we embark just in the nick of time. It's tough work all this sight seeing.

The bus makes a steep ascent clinging to the side of a mountain. All around us are monumentally huge tombstone-like eruptions of forest clad elevations. This really starts to feel like the deepest darkest Peru that you read about. I'm sure Paddington's Auntie could be close by. After 20 minutes of zigzagging backwards and forwards on this near vertical incline we reach the entrance to this sacred site. We have all seen the pictures before and I really wanted my first sight to be that fantastic view that looks down on the village with the massive protuberance of a mountain encompassing the background, so I shielded my eyes until we came to a part that gave such a view. It truly is a fantastically awesome panorama. The site is built on a levelled mountain platform with two humongous elevations rising from the back of the construction. The village is at about 2500m elevation with the back mountains must be at least another 200m above that. On top of the highest point, which just seems to defy any logical concepts of construction are further structures, there seems to be no way of getting to these points let alone building on there. Machu Picchu is a fantastic, mystical phenomena, we explored most of the site viewing the reconstructed building and climbing to the top of some of the terracing to receive an even better viewpoint. Words can't properly describe the beauty that this construction has or even the sense of wonderment that one has when trying to fathom how the hell the materials for these building were transported and carried up these sheer, isolated heights over 600 years ago. Machu Picchu really is one of the new seven wonders of the world.