Hola from Aguas Calientes, which means hot water in Spanish. So, as my Zaida used to say, I’m literally in hot water.
Into the Sacred Valley
Today, we left Cusco and headed into the Sacred Valley for a two-day tour. Leaving our big bags at the Cusco hotel, we loaded our small backpacks into a big ten-seater van that we had all to ourselves — well, save for Michael, our guide, and Mario, our driver. Yep, today we had a private tour. We’re so posh.
Heading out of Cusco, we chatted a bit with Michael, who, as it turns out, was a bit of a legend: His career as a tour guide started when he was in grade school, and decided to skip school to visit some local ruins … and thirty of his classmates followed him. The parents, principal and police got involved, but once they figured out that the kids weren’t kidnapped and were merely interested in Incan ruins, the rest was history. Or so the story he told us went. I’m sure it was a tall tale, but it was a fun one.
On the way out of the city, we drove by the ruins that I can’t spell for the life of me, but that are pronounced “sexy woman”. We decided that was rather appropriate, since we had three sexy women in the car.
We stopped off during the drive to the valley to snap some photos at a couple of viewpoints. The Sacred Valley is made up of mostly agricultural communities surrounding the Urubamba River. These days, the main industries are farming and tourism, though there are still some places that are relatively less frequented by tourists. The entire valley is surrounded by the Andes, and of course, it should go without saying that the views were pretty much awesome. It was a bit tough to take photos today because of the cloudy weather and the hazy light, but seeing everything live was good enough.
Pisac Ruins
Our first stop was at the Incan ruins of Pisac. One of many ancient Incan cities discovered by archaeologists in the Sacred Valley, Pisac is full of the trademark agricultural terraces that are probably most associated with Machu Picchu, but also remind me strongly of rice terraces in Southeast Asia. Funny how so many ancient societies, located halfway across the world from each other, with no means of communicating between them, came up with similar solutions to nature’s challenges. Pisac also has limestone caves carved out for tombs for the royal and noble Incans. We didn’t spend long there, just enough time to get a sense of the place, before we had to move on.
Caution: Women Shopping
Next we headed into the modern town of Pisac, best known for its market. We visited a silver factory; Peru is world-famous for its silver, which is stamped 950 (95% silver, versus the 92.5% sterling silver sold most everywhere else) — that is, when it’s real. Of course, most of what’s sold in the markets and shops is fake. But we did a bit of shopping in the factory store, where we could be assured of getting the real stuff.
Then, it was time to hit the market stalls. There, everything is fake — fake “100%” alpaca handicrafts, fake hats, scarves, mittens, socks, bags, purses, shot glasses, t-shirts. Pretty much all the same stuff they have in Cusco and everywhere else in Peru, at slightly better prices depending on how good a negotiator you are. We wrangled as much time there as Michael would give us, and hit the shops with a vengeance. Vanessa and Marie-Andree both did quite well. I didn’t buy much; as you know, I’m not big on souvenirs. I did get one scarf, though.
Ollantaytambo Ruins
We had a touristy buffet lunch of the sort that tends to be found on such tours — think pan-flute player playing Celine Dion — and then headed towards Ollantaytambo.
Ollantaytambo — which I can’t pronounce for the life of me — is an archaeological site that the Incas built as a fort and includes a temple, agricultural terraces, and an urban area. It was raining a bit by the time we got there, so we pulled out our rain jackets and walked around in the drizzle a bit. We learned about how the Incans built their structures to withstand the earthquakes that are common in this area, and that the foundations are still standing today. The modern-day town of Ollantaytambo was built literally right on top of some of those foundations, which is why people refer to it as the only “living” Incan town today. There are also aqueducts and fountains. Go figure; we can’t build anything to last more than 50 years, and yet these centuries-old fountains are still working.
Inca Rail: All aboard!
After we spent a bit of time taking more cheesy photos in Ollantaytambo, we headed over to the nearby train station. Destination? Machu Picchu. Well, almost.
See, there are two options to get to Machu Picchu: Hike, or train. Plenty of people I know have done the 4-day hike, but we’re lazy realists, so we quite sanely opted for the train. We boarded the rickety old Inca Rail train and bumped our way through winding mountains and spectacular views for an hour and a half until we reached our destination, the small town of Aguas Calientes.
Visiting the hot springs
Aguas Calientes is a town that exists purely for Machu Picchu tourism. The whole town is basically a collection of hotels and restaurants catering to the thousands of tourists who come each day. From here, we’ll be getting an early bus tomorrow to the site itself. But in the meantime, we had one more site to visit.
See, the name of Aguas Calientes comes from the fact that this town is built atop hot springs. After checking into our hotel — and sorting out some confusion with the tour and scheduling — Vany and I changed into our swimsuits and headed up to the hot springs to take a dip. Marie-Andree opted out and stayed in our (rather posh) hotel to relax.
The hot springs entrance was just steps from the hotel, so we didn’t take much other than our towels and flip-flops. Little did we know that we would have to hike up about a mile of rocks, steps and walkways to get to the pools. Oops.
But, seriously, the hot springs were wonderful. No photos to show you — we didn’t bring our cameras — but there were about six or seven different pools of various temperatures, and we had one of them to ourselves at one point. It was dark out, so we didn’t get any views. But it was great to just relax after such a long day.
We headed back to the hotel and snacked on some nuts, dried fruits and other assorted bag food for dinner, since none of us were hungry or motivated enough to go out to a restaurant. Then it was time to get organized for our early start in the morning. Yep, it’s the one you’ve all been waiting for. Watch this space.