| Jeff Poulter & Graham Tillotson: 28th September 2004 |
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Ollantaytambo to Machu Picchu Pueblo
Last night we caught a train from Ollantaytambo to Machu Picchu Pueblo. It was an interesting 90 minutes journey along the Urubamba river valley with the train running tight alongside the river, following its every curve. Reminded me so much of train journeys in British Columbia. Almost as soon as we left Ollantay the river livened up to a quite considerable torrent. Indeed they run white water rafting excursions along it. Rather you than me, Horatio - full of malicious rocks and angry water. Me, I don't do dangerous. But it was beautiful. The white-water was fluorescent in the light of a full moon and this seemed almost to magnify it, lighting up the surroundings. In places, the valley is so narrow that there is no room for a road to run alongside the rail track so it seemed to close in tight on the train with huge, black, sheer mountain faces on either side of the valley. This also means that the train company has a monopoly on ferrying people to one of the world's great tourist attractions, but more of that later.
To Puno by bus at 05:30 !!!
At five thirty this morning we bleared our way through a simple cold breakfast and sloped down the hill to catch a bus up to the ruins. (Only special buses are allowed on the road to the ruins, so they have a monopoly...) It cost $9 each for the trip which is about what it would cost to get from here to Puno by bus. However, it must be said, the 20 minute journey is quite spectacular. It's a one-vehicle narrow dirt road that was muddy when we ascended the mountain through a series of very tight switchbacks. Of course, there were no safety barriers or anything to obstruct the view down 1000ft to the valley below and up the other side to forested mountains rising 8000ft.
The Inca City - Machu Picchu
Machu Picchu is the subject of endless hype. It's all justified. When we turned the corner of the rocky path to be presented by the vista of the Inca city below, its grandeur just took the breath away. That is, the little we had left after the mountain and altitude had its share. The city sits perched on top of row upon row of stone-faced terraces, built up like a fifty-tiered wedding cake, so that it occupies a flat plain right at the peak of a mountain with sheer drops all round of 1000ft or more deep into the green Urabamba valley. That's half the picture. The other half is the setting: this Inca wedding cake nestles between two even higher mountains, Machu Picchu ("old Mountain") and Wuana Picchu ("young mountain") both of which are extravagantly shaped like traffic cones. And the whole plot is surrounded by much higher mountains range, blueing into the distance. Half an hour after we arrived the sun came out. Normally it's misty up there and yesterday it poured but today the morning sun gradually textured the stonework before our eyes. Out came the cameras and, with a mixture of excitement and awe, we framed and clicked and framed and clicked, hoovering up digital memory like paparazzi. You have to hand it to those Inca chaps, they knew how to whack together an impressive city.
Danish Tour Guides
By this time it was 7.30am and we bumped into two Danish girls opposite
whom we had sat in the train. They asked if we would like to share a guide
so, for $30, Veronica (pronounced Beronica) talked us around the place
for a couple of hours. All the individual bits of the city are interesting
and impressive, especially the stonework of the Inca masons. They fit giant
rocks together so you could not slide a sheet of paper into the gaps. And
these stones were laid at the beginning of the fifteenth century, surviving
centuries of earthquakes. The classic Inca tapered-to-the-top door shape
is echoed by all walls and alcoves, and the 15 degree taper coupled with
the astonishingly well fitted masonry makes them virtually quake-proof.
(Indeed in recent times, an earthquake at Cuzco flattened the modern buildings
but the Inca ones remained intact.) Unfortunately, Machu Picchu is not
bullshit-proof. Our lovely little Beronica waxed lyrical about every tiny
detail of each building, attributing exotic function and meaning to the
most simple, everyday item. This represents a puma, that the three levels
of life, whereas a dispassionate observer might conclude that this was
an odd-shaped rock with lichen for an eye, and that is, well, three steps
because two would be insufficient and four excessive. She kept up the romance
throughout, bless her, even though some of her assertions were speculation
and rather far-fetched. Can't blame her, though, as the Inca's were so
busy honing stones to perfection they didn't have time to write anything
down, so most of their culture (even why Machu Picchu is where it is) is
a mystery and thus prey to theory.
Gasping for a Coffee !!!
After four hours walking around the site, we aimed for coffee and a bus down the mountain, still buzzing from the visit. Now I'm at the railway station waiting for our train and. outside there is a lovely notice which I just had to photograph. It's poorly handwritten, purporting to be from the people of Peru apologising for the lousy service and outrageous prices of the trains. This is because, it says, the last President, Fujimori, signed a thirty year contract with a private company to have a monopoly of trains to Machu Picchu. It ends by saying: don't blame us, the people of Peru, for the dishonest decisions of bad politicians! Priceless. And they have a point. The cheapest Gringo fare from Cuzco to here is $59 return whereas a local can travel for $3; the bus up the mountain cost another $9; entrance to the site another $20. Those are fabulous prices for this part of the world. Let's hope some of it goes to do some good for the folks here rather than being deposited in a Panamanian bank account.
Jeff 28.09.04 |
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