Head in the clouds

I don’t even know where to begin. I mean, where am I? What day is it? I guess sometimes words just can’t explain things, (and even saying that feels cliche and inaccurate to me), so I’ll just do facts. Deborah and I got up early again and took the shuttle up to Machu Picchu. Frabrizio gave us a quick tour of the ruins, which are of course incredible, though it’s so hard for me to imagine what they would have looked like as an inhabited city. Then he left us, and Deborah and I set off to hike Machu Picchu Mountain. We decided to do this hike instead of Huayna Picchu because A) it is higher; you look down on both Machu Picchu and Huyana Picchu, B) it is more challenging (and oh is it ever), and C) it is much less traveled.

We huffed and puffed and sweated our way to the top, and we both sweated off our sunblock so I am truly a red neck right now. One and a half hours straight up. No joke. But the views from the stop are spectacular - really, really incredible. I was so sad that my D40 doesn’t have video, because we were so high - literally in the clouds - and the view just kept moving and changing. One moment you couldn’t see either Huayna Picchu or Machu Picchu, the next they were both drenched in sunshine. The sky shifted, patches of blue sky appeared and disappeared, the brown and muddy Urubamba river was snaking all the way around the mountain we were standing on, several thousand feet below... I just can’t do it justice, so I’m not even going to try:


So the hour and a half up (literally up; steps the entire way, as well as a few dizzyingly sheer drops) was, unfortunately, also steps the entire way down. My legs were like jelly by the end, and I’m wondering if I might need a knee replacement soon.

We had lunch at the Machu Picchu Sanctuary Lodge, a ridiculously overpriced hotel (rooms start at $660 a night), where I sampled the unfortunate Inca Kola as well as some traditional drink made from purple corn that tasted almost exactly like corn syrup.

Then we wandered around Aguas Calientes for a bit before hopping the train back to Ollantaytambo. On the train I was creeped out by the guy in the sock money-esque mask dancing around inviting people to pet his small stuffed llama. (Highlight: Deborah looked at him when he put the llama in front of her and said with a wrinkled nose, “No gracias.”) This somewhat awkward performance was followed by a fashion show of alpaca goods set to horrible techno music that never stopped until we got to the station. Perhaps the worst part was the guy (German? Not sure) who did his own cat walk down the aisle of the train while pretending to take his pants off. From there we stopped to do another hotel inspection at a property I’m using for another trip, and then drove back to Cuzco, getting to the hotel around quarter to nine.

Tomorrow we visit the two weaving villages, then have our farewell dinner with Frabrizio. If I have time in the afternoon, I’ll see what I can do about fotos. I’ve only taken 400 or so.... (SO glad we don’t use film any more!)

(Wi-fi in my room is terrible; I’ll try to go down to the lobby tomorrow to do more.)