It’s technically possible to train into Aguas Calientes/Machu Picchu Pueblo, visit Machu Picchu, and train out all in one day. Not actually possible for us or anyone like us who needed to buy next-day tickets on-site, but we still could have escaped last night if we’d really wanted to. But we didn’t want to! Instead we could spend a relaxed second night, and then get up this morning and get a relaxed breakfast at a French creperie. We’d already gotten desserts and empanadas there, but finally could enjoy the proper breakfast experience, with perhaps our first espresso-based coffees in Peru?
I was the only one to get a crepe (Rett got a more American-style breakfast), and it was excellent! On my walk back from the ATM across town, I climbed up a narrow 100+ step staircase to nowhere, that ended at a jungle-coated hillside and gave this view when I turned back down.
Even though the 72-hour truce between the protesters and the railroad had ended two days ago, supposedly an additional agreement had been reached, and since our hotel was a block from the train station (and our breakfast place even closer), we could tell that the trains continued to run. Boarding was an easy and organized process, but for some reason our automatically-assigned seats were not together this time. This really upset Rett, but as much as I love her, I couldn’t get too worked up over the fact that we would have to spend and hour and forty-five minutes 10 feet apart from each other.
While we were at Machu Picchu, I was impressed that I only saw one or two “influencer photoshoots”. I took it as a hopeful indication that maybe the “influencer era” is waning (perhaps people realize that the market is saturated and you need to be more than mildly-attractive to have more than an infinitesimal chance of converting artificial poses to financial success?) Anyway, a group of four girls on the train did their best to prove my hope wrong, by spending at least half an hour taking turns to pose in the “prime (window) seat” while the others took the photos. They ordered a mini-bottle of wine purely so that current model could hold a glassful in her hand while posing, and that model then rotated through the four pairs of designer sunglasses owned by the group. Hair was flipped, tossed behind a shoulder, drawn forward again, then tucked behind an ear, at least a thousand times. But hey, better to do all that where they aren’t blocking anyone else’s photo opportunities (like a prime viewpoint at Machu Picchu), and are more entertaining than annoying.
Instagram Influencer #3 is now the photo target of #1 and #2, wearing #4’s sunglasses while hoisting her glass of wine and artfully arranging her alpaca shawl and non-alpaca hair.More good views from the train. This area must be a contender for the world-record shortest distance between snow-capped mountains and sub-tropical jungle (about 5 horizontal miles here).Back just a block away from our Ollantaytambo AirBNB, an Iron Maiden moto-taxi! (the back window was covered with an Eddie + Alice Cooper artwork.) I was tempted to find the driver and ask for a ride just to hear the soundtrack!
Days 12-14
Hiking: 12.4 mi / 3900 ft. climbing Home: Marleni’s AirBNB
After a couple rest days following our Machu Picchu “vacation” (from our vacation to Ollantaytambo, from our vacation from “normal” life), we set off for a big hike. We’ve barely even done small hikes lately, and nothing in Peru near this 12-mile distance or near-4000-feet of climbing. Our hikes in Huaraz were at elevations with significantly-less oxygen, but it’s funny how a hike rising from 9200 ft. to 12,800 ft. now qualifies as “low elevation” to us (and our cardiovascular systems).
Our departure from Ollantaytambo took us to a separate neighborhood on the southwest side of town that we hadn’t been through yet. And despite not being Inca-historic, it still has an old-world charm that could compete with anywhere in Europe.In order to minimize the distance of our loop hike, we left town on a route that turned out to be barely-a-path through farm fields (which meant that the adventure started immediately!)Walking along canals, past various crops, and then, a random assortment of animals, including this relaxing horse.We lucked into a relatively-clear day for this hike where the views would be the big draw. The Inca “Sun Gate” was our target, seen here as the small-bump high point on the right side of the photo.The dimly-lit path on the Strava heatmap that I was following lead to a dead-end, but a couple of guys working amidst the fields proactively directed these dumb gringos down a creek/path to the road along the train tracks where we could soon cross the river and begin our ascent. The Sun Gate hike is normally described as an out-and-back, but I saw that it should be possible to do it as a loop. We started up on the shorter, steeper, “non-standard” route, so I was surprised to see that it was very well-signed, and even had a couple of these nice rest stops.The Andes, always inventing new types of mountains to show us.This horse was the smart one of three; the other two were on the trail ahead of us, and spent half-a-mile being “chased” by us rather than just pulling off somewhere and letting us by.Hiking up toward the snow-capped mountains, an activity we’ve been missing!Unlike the horses, the cow doesn’t really care if you want to go past it up the trail. There were a ton of cow patties and horse poops on the trail, but we didn’t see anywhere near the number of animals necessary to create it.There weren’t many flowers on the route, but I took photos of four, with the first three being unique, solitary examples, and all four being different colors.Andean Flower #2.Andean Flower #3 (some species of Barandesia).Andean Flower #4, a lupine, backed by its frosty foliage.The Urubamba River and a PeruRail train (still running!)., now far below us.With increasing elevation, new walls of mountains appear.Looking back down to Ollantaytambo. On the mountain behind the town are the granaries we hiked up to on one of our first days, on the toe of the mountain in front of town is the main Inca fortress, and in front of that is the diagonal seam running through the green fields that we walked along to get here.
Months have passed since our last long hike, so we were both pleased to learn that we could still motor up high-altitude mountains. We passed three or four parties on the way up (I was surprised that we passed any at all on the less-publicized route for this challenging hike), and quickly left them behind us gasping for breath, never to be seen again (understandable, they all likely arrived at elevation less than a week ago, so have had essentially no time to adapt…which makes it incredible that they were trying this hike at all!)
That means we were the first of the day to arrive at Inti Punku (“Sun Gate”), insanely but optimally perched on a ridge to give 360-degree views. It’s another exhibit for my “we built it because it was fuckin’ cool” theory of Inca architecture, which I believe has far more logical support than any of the religious/astronomical theories that white men copied and pasted onto this culture that left no written records by which they could object.
The Sun Gate: we have arrived!Rett passes through the Sun Gate. Will she remain part of our world?!Looks like she is still here on the other side, and the eponymous sun is even shining on her. The full-height tapered doorway always signals something relatively-fancy in Inca architecture, but when they’re inset like this you know it’s *really* worth passing through.The view after passing through the Sun Gate, to a whole new valley view, and the wall of snow-capped peaks above them.Reverse-angle through the Sun Gate. The views “behind” it weren’t bad either.Still nothing like the glacier-covered mountains we saw near Huaraz, but it’s pretty impressive stuff considering there is near-jungle five miles from here.Like, maybe this was just a house built by a guy who wanted a great view of the mountains, and only the wall with the back door remains standing (because the other walls with their panoramic windows were a lot less stable)?A full view of the “finger mountain” that we can see from Ollantaytambo, though there just barely poking above the ridge we’re standing on now.A cold wind blowing from the mountains made it less-pleasant to stay on the far side of the gate.The Sun Gate opens toward Mount Veronica; unfortunately the clouds didn’t open in concert.
Some 20 minutes after our arrival, a group of American guys with a guide arrived via a higher path (presumably on a multi-day trek where guides/porters set up camp for them), but our first-place prize allowed time for us to sit and use the gate as a wind-block while we ate lunch, without concern for spoiling photos. Most mountain day-hikes end with a viewpoint, and this would have been a great one even if it had been like the 99.9% of such hikes that don’t have an Inca monument waiting for you at the top, but that bonus feature made it even better. We waited a bit longer hoping that the clouds would break to give a clear view of Mount Veronica through the gate, but it was not to be. Not unexpected, since the mountains create the clouds, and it seems fully-clear skies here are fairly rare. And really, we lucked into a clearer day with better views than most days before and after.
Beginning the hike back down from Inti Puntu.After a bit less than a mile of path-retracing, we took a branch that would return us on a different route to Ollantaytambo via the eastern entrance. Soon after, we passed this set of ruins, more atmospherically-overgrown than any we’ve visited so far.Inti Punku seen through a small window in a less-monumental ruin.It’s a good thing we didn’t wait any longer for the clouds on the opposite side of the valley to clear, because they instead decided to re-gather and drop rain (some drops of which blew across and occasionally sprinkled on us. For people less-ambitious/acclimated, the Inca quarry a bit lower down is often their target (not a very worthwhile one, IMO, but I guess that’s a cool big rock).“Living” in the Sacred Valley for two weeks now (and in Peru much longer than that), it requires some effort to remind ourselves that a “neighborhood walk” here is a National Park anywhere else.I don’t know what these are (Rett guessed maybe ovens of some sort?), but as we’re closer to a village, they’re likely post-Inca?Unusual for a Peruvian river, the Sacred Valley has a lot of spots where it’s wide enough to grow a lot of food.A goodbye wave from a mountain as we near the bottom again.The Quellorakay ruins that we walked to a few days ago, here seen from the opposite side of the river. Our trail took us along the whole width of Ollantaytambo, before we crossed at the Inca Bridge and then backtracked up into town via the terraces (and tried and failed to find our canine friend Sirius!)
Reasonably exhausted, but still walking, we returned to the restaurant on the plaza that had good “happy hour” drinks, this time rewarding ourselves with only two of their four (mojito and pisco sour), and a pizza for a mid-afternoon snack. We tried and failed to understand the constant stream of “Servico Turistico” vans picking up and dropping off people. As comfortable as we have become in this country, there is still plenty that baffles us!
Although it sometimes seems like it, not everyone in Ollantaytambo is a foreign tourist!
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