Today is a very big day. We’re doing the train ride to Machu Pichu! This will be one of the biggest highlights of our South America trip.The tour company picked us up at the hostal at 5:30 AM. (I though we were on vacation!!) The train ride was filled with beautiful scenery through the Sacred Valley of the Incas. Aguas Calientes is the end of the line for the train. After walking through the market (!!) we board a bus that will take us to the top of the mountain and the Lost City of the Inca’s. The 30 minute bus ride consists of about a dozen switchbacks which take us from about 2200 feet to 2700 feet.
Unfortunately, just after we arrive, the rain starts. And the fog has settled in so that we can’t see the top of the surrounding mountains. But that’s okay, our English-speaking tour guide shows us enough amazing sections of the city that we are totally blown away. How in the world did the workers break the massive rock into blocks, then move them into place, and stack them with such precision you cannot fit a sheet of paper between them. Their construction is a work of art.
(If you want to see some of what we saw today, just Google “Machu Pichu”. There are a lot of awesome pictures on the internet.)
A really sad point concerning these ancient ruins is that they were discovered by an American, and he collected many artifacts from the site and shipped them to the U.S.A. Apparently they are currently on display in Connecticut. That is just wrong! In addition, the Peruvian government is going to have to take steps to limit the damage being caused by the 2,000 to 3,000 visitors per day who tour this site. It is truly a world treasure.
At the end of our tour, the bus departs for the downhill ride. A few minutes into the trip, a young Quechuan boy who was sitting at the front of the bus hops up and says “Goodbye”, “Adios”, and the same in his native tongue, and then gets off the bus. Strange?! At the next hairpin turn, there is the boy at the side of the road yelling out the goodbyes and waving. We didn’t immediately figure out what was happening, but then it happened at the next turn. He was running downhill and crossing paths with us about every second crossing (about 5 times). At the bottom of the hill, he entered the bus again and held out his sack for donations. We learned that he and his co-workers do the run 3 times a day. They probably earn a pretty good living this way.
