The long (and winding?) road to Machu Picchu. Peruvian Chronicles. Day 6.

Today I got up super early to do the first part of my trip from Cusco to Machu Picchu. Although everything was turning surprisingly good until now, this day turned out to be a little bit more complicated.

During the days I was walking around Cusco gathering some information and hiring tours, I saw that there were different ways and roads to get to Machu Picchu from Cusco, but that’s enough material for another post. As I wanted to do some trekking but not that much, I decided to go with an option that consists of going in a van from Cusco to a hydroelectric dam near Aguas Calientes, it’s an approximately 8 hour drive. And, from there, I took a 3 hour walk (I actually did it in less time but for unhappy reasons) from the dam to Aguas Calientes to sleep in a hostel over there and go up to Machu Picchu the next day.

This was one of those times when something is wrong from the very beginning. We left Cusco already late because we had a flat tire. Luckily, it happened inside Cusco and not in the middle of the beautiful but curvy road, because in that case, changing it was going to be a risky business. After waiting a while and with the fixed tire, we hit the road. At that moment, uncertainty had taken over me because I didn’t know that we had taken off when we did, and I didn’t have a clue about my tickets to Machu Picchu, the guide, the food, or even the place I was supposed to sleep in! The thing was that the lady that sold me the tour was in the van when I was picked up but at one point she went down, supposedly to pick up more travellers but, the driver just took off and then the events with the flat tire began. As a textbook overthinker, I had a vast catalogue of worst case scenarios before 8 am.

Almost all the way it’s like this (and then there’s the part that is still curvy, but with no pavement and the cliff right beside you). Luckily, the tire incident happened still in Cusco.

While I still had a lot of doubts to which the driver responded with vague and even false information, we went up and down the mountain range so we could go through it and the view is just breathtaking. I distracted myself from the bad thoughts just watching the mountains and taking photos. We made a stop in the highest spot of the road, around 19000 ft high. I felt dizzy, don’t know if it was because of the altitude or my vertigo (yeah, I have vertigo and went to Peru, I do that kind of stuff). The good thing was that it was sunny and there was no fog, fundamental for a safer drive but also to see these unique landscapes. Being able to watch the mountains and see with your own eyes how the bioclimates change is astounding. Seeing how the bare rock of the mountains starts being covered in vegetation until there’s a rainforest down near the ground -and experiencing the temperature variation yourself- is one of those big time moments I’ll treasure forever.

The highest spot on the road. The signs warned "watch out: foggy area". I would rather call it "clouds zone".

Biodiversity. Graphic definition.

However, the real bad stuff just starts now, it was “the worst trip of your life” material. We got to the dam, where’s there’s also a train station and it’s the end of the road for vehicles (except for trains, of course). Supposedly, the guide would be waiting for us in that spot to make the walk with us and tell us where was our hostel, give us the tickets, etc etc etc. B*lls#!t! I started the walk towards Aguas Calientes. It is estipulated that it takes 3 hours in average to complete it. After a couple of minutes, I was behind all the people in my van, so I sticked to a group of Spaniards who I had shared the vehicle with and were a little less behind than me. Thank God I did that, because we were walking super chilled, watching the landscape that is truly beautiful and taking photos, when we realized it was beginning to get dark. The night came upon us in minutes, and who was carrying a torch? No one, of course. So, we walked as if we were in ancient times, under the light of the stars. The most hopeless moment was when we had been walking for a while and ran across a guy who was going in the oppposite direction and told us we had to walk for another 50 minutes. We were crushed. The other worst parts were the ones where we had to step on the railroad track sleepers. One misstep and you went down to the water. Did I mention it was already nighttime and we didn’t have a torch? My clumsiness and me were Oscar candidates to an inminent fall, but thanks to one of the Spanish guys and his cellphone with low battery, we all survived.

The way to Aguas Calientes and my Spaniards trekking mates. As you can see, the landscape is totally worth the walk, just keep in mind the light hours.

At this point we were already aware of the fact that the night was coming upon us.

When we finally arrived and I was about to burst into tears since an hour and a half before, I had to look for the famous guide that I had no idea of his name or how did he look like, and to be honest, at that point I doubted if he even existed at all. So, I went to ask a policeman if he knew where the guides used to be waiting for tourists. But I couldn’t do it because that’s when I had my panic-attack-drama-queen moment, and before I could even say a word I started crying non-stop and the poor man didn’t know what to do but tried to calm me. While I looked for a call center to phone the tour agency (but thinking of the possibility that that number didn’t even exist), a couple of minutes passed when I heard my name. It was the guide that was calling me in the town square. He took me to my hostel, where casually the wifi and the tv weren’t working. Not that I needed those stuff, but a while of mental blackout wouldn’t hurt. The good thing, however, was that the matress was very, very good, and that was necessary indeed.

After getting comfortable and taking a long hot shower, I went back to the town square, where I had to get together with the guide one more time to buy the tickets to Machu Picchu and then to have dinner with him and a cute couple who I also shared the van with. Afterwards, when I was on my own again, I went to another restaurant to get something sweet before going to bed and chat with my friends on whatsapp. So, there I was, in the middle of Peru but with Uruguayan prices. But, after the day I had, I deserved it. Now, it’s time for bed, so I go back to the ugly hostel with a good bed because I have to be up at 4 am to go to one of the Wonders of the World hoping that the next day will be better than the current one. ————————————————————————————————–

Thinking about this in retrospective, a big part of everything that went wrong on this day wouldn’t have happened if the people in the tour agency had been more explanatory and if I had asked more questions.

So, lesson: always ask absolutely everything, even the slightest details and anything that may sound obvious or dumb, because it isn’t. For example, if like myself you hadn’t payed attention, the sunset time.