The Journey Back

After having hiked for days and seen AMAZING sights we were ready to head back to Cusco and ultimately back to reality. However, "the powers that be" had other plans for us...

From Machu Picchu there are buses that take you down a very curly road to the town of Aguas Calientes. This is the city where the train goes. If you are the "lazy people" that our guides told us about, you can take the train from KM82 to Machu Picchu in about 3 hours. Apparently, a lot of people do this everyday. However, on the day that we got to Aguas Calientes the workers of Peru Rail decided to strike! Apparently they had been on strike the day before too...We were told, "No trains today!"

This caused two things:

1) Machu Picchu was relatively empty that day, we have great views, were not bothered by mass amounts of tourists and were able have a very rare experience up there.

2) We were stuck in Aguas Calientes (which by the way, translates to: Hot Water)

As we gathered with our group and with our guide, to try and figure out what to do we realized we would need somewhere to sleep that night. We all scrambled around the town (knowing that soon many other hikers would be in the same situation we were in) and we found a hostel for $13 a night! SWEET!!! It had nice beds, with sheets and the most important part... it had a HOT SHOWER! We were set!

Melissa's friend from MIT who came with us, was not so set though...his flight was going to leave Saturday before any of the trains would get him back to Cusco. So he and one of our guides decided to WALK BACK! Along the tracks it was suppose to take about 6 hours. I can't even imagine having to do that, but apparently that is what the Porters had to do at 5AM so that they could get back to Cusco and get picked up by the next groups and start the trail again...YIKES!

So those of us who did not fly out until Sunday were stuck in Hot Water for one more day. Honestly, not a bad place to be stuck...cheap room to sleep in, hot shower, Internet downstairs, bar around the corner showing the World Cup, great restaurant next door (where we ate Guinea pig) and the entire town had WONDERFUL VIEWS! plus, we were about 2 minutes walk from the train station...not too shabby!

So we hung out for the rest of the day and that night in Aguas Calientes. The next day, we met up with our group at 8:30 AM. We met with our guide who had worked some magic and gotten all of us tickets on today's trains. (Since everyone had been bumped the two days before, tickets were not too easy to come across) Somehow, Percy worked it out so that we each got tickets, the catch... they were all at various times. Mine was leaving at 8:30 AM! I grabbed my ticket, said my good-byes and took off for the train station. This was the first time since Lima that Melissa and I were separated and it was a little nerve racking as we said "Okay, I'll meet you in Cusco." The instructions we were given as to what to do on the other end of the train were as follows: "Get off at Km82, take the Peru Rail bus to Ollantaytambo, then look for the man with the sign and he will take you back to the main square of Cusco".....um... slightly sketchy "the man with the sign???" But I'd figure it out.

So I hopped on the train, expecting to be smushed into some hot stinky cart....not so much! I was in FIRST CLASS!!! It was awesome, glass windows all around, so you could see the beautiful landscape we were traveling through. It was niiiiiice.

So I got back to Km82, in style. A little nervous about finding the bus to the next city and then finding the "man with the sign" but... while I was waiting to get off the train I looked out the window and saw Melissa jumping and waving at me!! She had gotten a ticket from our guide about a minute before the train pulled off and so she jumped on and was in a different cart from me. We made it back to Km82 at the same time!

So then, together, Melissa and I got on the Peru Rail bus that took us to Ollantaytambo, we found the "man with the sign" (that said my name!) and he put us in another bus that took us to Cusco. I thought I might get sick in the bus, weaving and swirling through the mountains and then through the city...but alas, he dropped us off in the main square and we were welcomed back to Cusco by yet another parade.

We made it back to our hotel for nap time and then decided it was a good night for pizza and HBO in English.

The next morning we got on the first of many planes (5) back to the US.