Machu Picchu - lives upto the hype!!

On May 12th, We met our guide Patrick Walter at 6:45 AM. The Machu Picchu train station town is called "Aguas Calientes" which means "hot water springs". This town is famous for being a nasty touristy town and for being very expensive. Because of all this hype, it did not look that bad for us.

First we had to board a bus to reach the Machu Picchu ruins. The bus journey was around 30 mins. It was very cloudy and misty at this time. The bus tickets were around 18$ one way, which is ridiculously expensive.

The bus reached the Machu Picchu citadel around 7:30 AM. There was a lodge at t
his place [closest to Machu Picchu], and our guide mentioned that lodging rates were 700$ to 1000$ per night at this place, really crazy.

It was all very misty and beautiful. But not much views of the city. Few photos to describe the scenery below.

 

 

The clouds were playing hide and seek. The lush greenery, the ever changing clouds, the interesting mountain shapes and the ruins combined to form a spectacular scenery.

 

Around 9:30 AM or so, the clouds cleared up, and we got the famous view of Machu Picchu. Our guide was very passionate, and many times over explained certain things, that it was like a lecture sometimes. Still we enjoyed it and thought it was very informative. Our guide also took some good pictures often asking people to get out of the way for us to be in the frame :)

 

The famous shot of Machu Picchu

With our guide Patrick Walter

 

 

We also asked our guide about an Indian movie being shot here. He mentioned about "Robot" as a Bollywood movie and also mentioned about Aishwarya Rai. No word about superstar Rajni. He claimed that Aishwarya was a world beauty and all the local dancers wanted to take a solo picture with her. He also mentioned that she was very nice and patient and took pictures with all the dancers. The Peruvian government also cordoned off some area towards the top for the shooting for some days.

 

Our guide left us around 9:30 AM. We spent lot of time just soaking in the panoramic views. Around 11:00 PM, we decided to make our way down. We walked towards Govinda, another Hare Krishna restaurant for lunch. The owner spoke only Spanish, and we ordered some quinoa soup and curry rice. The food was mediocre, in line with the reviews about this place. Still this was the only veggie option we had. After the lunch, we went towards the hotel Inti Punku, picked up our luggage, and went towards the train station.

 

Inti Punku hotel

Aguas Calientes train station

The train started around 1:30 PM and was on time. This time we were travelling in VistaDome class, which was better than the previous expedition class. The leg space was better, and the train attendants do some local dance. The train journey was also more scenic because we were now travelling in day time and so could see outside the windows.

 

scenery en route the train

The train reached Ollantaytambo around 3:15 PM, and our driver Hector was waiting for us here. He drove us back to our hotel "Siete Ventanas" in cusco around 5 Pm. We then went out in search of food for dinner.

 

First we went to "Shaman Veg restaurant" - a Peruvian one. Unfortunately there was only one server/owner, and he had not talked to around 6 people for the last 45 minutes. They all left without eating because they were not even greeted by the owner for almost an hour. I asked them the reason, and we soon made our way out to avoid huge delays.

 

We then decided to walk to Maikhana Indian restaurant because it was sunday, and the other veggie options like "Prasada" were closed. Here a north Indian guy named Suresh made awesome phulkas in the flame. We had some good Phulkas and Parathas, and some decent dal for dinner. Then we returned to the hotel and slept off.

 

Siete Ventanas Hotel