It’s a wonder. Peruvian chronicles. Day 7 .

As a typical treat of my anxiety, I woke up before the alarm went off as every single day since I got to Peru (and three years later I can say that it’s the same every day when I’m travelling, why doesn’t this happen when I have to get up to work?)

I grabbed my stuff hoping not to get locked inside the room of the ugly hostel, because besides everything I said in the previous article, the lock wasn’t working exactly fine, and I ran to the bus stop to wait in line for the buses to go up to Machu Picchu. My waiting place was in front of a nice breakfast place I wanted to try, but I refused to pay seven Soles (about 2 USD) for a muffin. Meanwhile, I observe everything -and everyone- around me and I wonder why are there so many signs written in comic sans font. At 5:30 in the morning, the buses started heading out and I didn’t regret at all taking it, because a 8000 ft tall stairs can be too much. I’ve had enough of playing the atheltic gal I’m definetely not to prove something don’t know to whom, maybe to myself, maybe to the rest of the World, who knows.

The sky is getting clear, but the Sun is not out yet. We waited for it.

I found my tour guide and the rest of the group and got into the crowd to enter the archeological site. We reunited on the other side of the entrance and started climbing steps (this is the main reason I’m glad I took the bus to go up the mountain). We stopped a few minutes after. Though the sky is already clear, the Sun hasn’t come up yet and waiting for it is what we are going to do -this last phrase came up kind of Yoda-like ;) -.The Sun starts to show, the sunbeams appear one by one from behind the mountain. It’s simply magical. I think that I’m a bigger fan of sunrises than of sunsets, but there are only few occasions when I actually have the will to get up so early. Just this moment is worth everything, even all the exhaustion and the fear from the day before.

The sun coming up from behind the mountains.

After sunrise we kept on with our tour while the guide explained us about the different parts of the city, which houses were destined to whom, the school, the ceremonial place, the town square where trade used to take place and how the tax system worked. This was way more fun than any history class in school. He also told us about the communications system that consisted of relays carried out by messengers called “chasquis”. The Incas -or the Quechuas, according to today’s guide- didn’t have a written language, so quechua language has survived until this day through orality. In this system, the chasquis carried the messages from one place to another codified in knotted ropes called quipus. This code hasn’t been cracked until now. Back then, the guide told us about the work of a German anthropologist whose work he followed and who was about to publish her discoveries when another quipu appeared forcing her to throw all her theories to the trash. Two years after my visit to Machu Picchu, while I was on my way to Grand Canyon talking about this and that with my guide, he tells me that one of the tribes from the area -I can’t remember if it were the Navajos, the Hopi or other, sorry- had the same communication system and I almost dropped dead because it is in those moments when I feel I’m making huge discoveries and my face probably looks like the guy from Ancient Aliens and I wonder why didn’t I become an anthropologist…or Indiana Jones.

Random photo of the day.

Back to Peru. After finishing the guided tour, each one of us stayed inside the archeological site on our own looking and enjoying the place at our own pace. I didn’t go up to Huayna Picchu because I’m aware of my limitations. Oh, and the vertigo. I almost ended my visit to Machu Picchu without tripping or falling which is pretty amazing, and I say almost because when I was about to leave I misstepped but didn’t fall because I grabbed a wall.

Just because…alpacas ❤

When I went down from Machu Picchu to Aguas Calientes it wasn’t even 11 am although for me it felt like the afternoon already. I sat in a restaurant to have lunch and chat with a friend on my phone when I suddenly heard something too familiar. Someone was listening to a popular Uruguayan cumbia song. I was homesick. I could have left my food and gone behind the music. But I didn’t.

I already had my train ticket to go back to the dam, it was 28 dollars for a half an hour (approx) trip I spent gladly after the experience of the day before. When I got to the dam, there was another problem with the tour vans. A lot of people, including me, didn’t appear on the records the drivers had with them and one of them was telling us to be more patient. Whaaat? Wouldn’t you guys have to be more organized? I ran into my Spaniards friends from the day before, and they were in the same situation. I had a recorded message coming out of my mouth already every time a driver asked me my name and how many passengers were we: “Inés Correa, I’m alone”. I was finally accomodated in a van and took off. I can highlight two things from the way back. The first one, how clear the sky was. I could even forget a little about the curves from the road and the speeding just by looking at the stars. And second, a delicatessen I tried in the way that was so simple that I think it's there where its greatness lays: a fried egg sandwich. Yeah, that. It’s just like when you soak your bread into a egg yolk, now imagine a whole sandwich of it. Writing this made me hungry.

I got to the top!

The only bad thing from this day was that at some point between my arrival to Cusco, me going to a call centre to call my dad, my mandatory stop in the pizza place to buy dinner and my return to my so called house, I lost my beloved blue wool hat, bought just a couple of months before in Bariloche. The funny thing was that, a month before, one of my friends intended to borrow it for a long trip he was making and I said no fearing he would lose it. If that’s not karma, I don’t know what it is.