What a week! After almost 24 hours in transit we arrived in Lima at 6am last Friday. The city was still asleep, and that´s what we wanted to be. Our much awaited taxi that our hotel promised would be waiting for us wasn´t there so we found our own way to our hotel, which ended up being in a shady part of town. We were so looking forward to seeing someone holding a sign with our names on it in the airport, oh well...
After a day in Lima we went on a 19.5 hour brutal bus ride up on to the Altiplano to the city of Cuzco, which is the gateway to Machu Picchu. We rode on a superfancy Saab double-decker bus. We had the front seats on the second level, which gave us great views. But it also was extremely scary as our bus driver believed he had to pass every single vehicle on the road. He would routinely pass other trucks and cars on blind corners and hills and it was an act of God that we weren´t in a head on collision.
After following the coast south from Lima the route goes straight up from sea-level to 14,750 feet (310 ft above Rainier!). That combined with the horribly windy road made both us feel pretty nasty.
We arrived in Cuzco and were happy to have our feet on the ground again. Cuzco is worlds apart from Lima. It is the tourism capital of the entire region and it seems there are more gringos than locals. The history is rich here, both with Spanish and indigenous influences. We happened to arrive in Cuzco on the day that there is a huge celebration for winter solstace. There were tons of tourists and locals lining the streets around the central plaza and lots of colorful dancers. At that point I think we were both so exhausted and hungry to be too enthused but it still looked pretty cool.
We made our way to Urubamba which is located about a 1.5 hour drive from Cuzco and is much more of a rural town. Urubamba has a much different feel than Cuzco, not very many tourists and much quieter. The hostal we were staying at was very cute and yellow with many flowers. This made Danny very happy. We went on a mountain biking trip the next day. We were dropped off by taxi on top of the ridge and given a hand drawn map of how to get back to our hostal at the bottom of the valley and off we went. We were able to explore some local ruins and salt pans in the area which was so much fun on bike despite the heavy breathing due to the high altitude and getting sunburned.
The following day we had to get up very early to take a taxi to the neighboring town of Ollantaytambo. From there we boarded a train with people from every part of the world, it seemed, to make our way to Machu Picchu. The train ride to Machu Picchu was incredible. We had a perfect day for it - blue sky with lots of mountains to see which made Danny happy. Machu Picchu was very expensive but also very impressive and beautiful. We ended up hiking up Wayna Pichu which is the dominant peak directly behind Mahu Picchu in the picture. This gave us a really great view of Machu Picchu and the area. When we came back from Machu Picchu on the train we were given a fashion show and dance performace by the train attendant. Very amusing!!! More amusing probably was watching all the tourists take pìctures of them.
When our train arrived we were´t sure how we were going to get back to Cuzco which was where we were planning on staying so we ended up taking a very scary taxi ride. I was pretty sure we were either going to die in a car accident, be robbed, or that I (Alison) would just die of fright. Thankfully we made it back to Cuzco in probably the fastest time on record.
Today we are relaxing in Cuzco before taking a long bus ride to Copacabana which is on Lake Titicaca in Bolivia. Hopefully this one goes better than the last one.
