As each day passes, my powers of Spanish grow stronger and stronger. Now, on top of making a blank face and stammering, I also have the option to make a really stupid sentence. Great success!
We left early this morning, bound for Aguas Calientes, aka Machu Picchu Pueblo. The train ride is over three hours and descends about 4,000 feet in elevation as it goes from Cusco to Aguas Calientes.
Our train ambled down the tracks, jolting from side to side unevenly. An hour or so in, the sun broke through the clouds. We passed through valleys, switchbacked down a gorge, and jostled past ancient terraces.
This train wasn’t as nice as the last one for taking pictures, but I managed to take a few shots of the scenery as we trundled past.
We arrived in Aguas Calientes around 11 and checked in to our hotel. It’s a sort of charming, laid-back, bumbly town with a prospector feel nestled in the mountains.
Feeling hungry, we went to Tree Top for some Peruvian fusion food…which is a popular and tasty thing, second only to pizza/Italian places. I tried googling “Why does Peru have so many Italian restaurants?” and got nothing. I suppose that’s along the same lines of asking why Japan had so many tasty Italian places to eat…probably one of the dumber things I’ve googled.
I had quinoa and fried wigglies. Very tasty despite having no idea what the fried wigglies were.
We picked up our bus tickets for the morning so we wouldn’t have to stand in line in the morning and took off on our hike to Mandor Gardens, about an hour’s hike out of town towards Machu Picchu.
The lady in the iPeru office told us to follow the train racks about an hour and then turn left when we saw the gate. So, we did just this thing: followed the train tracks.
Followed them past a sign that said “do not walk on the tracks.”
Ok, I can do that. I’ll just walk next to the tracks. On the chunky rocks which seem to be ubiquitous to railroad tracks everywhere and are all extremely adept at jutting up to trip you when you dare look up to appreciate the scenery.
And then we came up to a tunnel and this sign:
Some guy from Chile walked up behind us and the three of us wondered what we should do as the office told all of us to walk down the train tracks. He went the YOLO route and headed into the tunnel, but came dashing back as we all heard a train horn sound behind us.
Shortly thereafter, a train rambled through. Because we are idiots we followed it after it passed through the tunnel. How many more trains could there be? How many more tunnels?
A little later on, we came up to a second tunnel. There was just a train. It was probably fine, right? A moment after we had entered this shorter tunnel, we though we heard a train rumbling…
We hauled ass through that tunnel.
If this was a horror movie, one of us would have tripped on the chunky death rocks, dropped the light, or just willingly laid down on the tracks to wait for the train while screaming helplessly.
Fortunately and perhaps miraculously, we did none of those things, not even tripping over the giant railway rocks! We made it out and about five minutes later, a train rumbled on through. Our Chilean friend made it through, too.
Shortly after the tunnel, we came upon a small train station which had a path down to the road below. Oh. Note for the way back: no need to play Peruvian Train Roulette, you can bypass all the tunnels.
The walk itself was beautiful, offering lovely views of Machu Picchu and the surrounding mountains. The Urubamba flows rapidly here, which sounded lovely but I had to pee.
After a few more kilometers, we made it to the Mandor Gardens. We paid a small entrance fee which goes towards the upkeep and started to hike up to the waterfall.
The gardens had a plethora of labeled plants and butterflies fluttering everywhere as we walked. We saw many species of orchids and there were a few places to rest for a picnic or tea.
The thundering waterfall was gorgeous and the spray from it felt nice after an hour and a half of hot walking.
On the walk back, we took the alternate path around the tunnels of train terror which we didn’t realize existed on our way out. We came out near the entrance trail to Machu Picchu and walked back on the road with the buses.
Tomorrow, an early ascent to Machu Picchu awaits us!