Home: Catari’s House

The archeological site of Machu Picchu, “The Lost City of the Incas”, roosts 1,200 feet directly above the Urubamba River and Aguas Calientes (aka “Machu Picchu Pueblo”), the modern village where visitors can spend the night. A trail of stairs connects the two locations, but the vast majority of visitors take a bus run by a company called Consettur.

Consettur had held the monopoly contract on the route for 30 years, until September 5th, two weeks ago. A more-local company was supposed to take over, but apparently Consettur said “nah”, and continued to operate the service themselves, abetted by PeruRail, who were neglecting to deliver the new company’s buses to Machu Picchu (there are no roads to Machu Picchu Pueblo, so delivery via rail is the only option).

Locals began demonstrating against Consettur’s apparently-illegal action, and five days ago those passive protests grew into something more active, the the demonstrators blocking train service between Ollantaytambo and Aguas Calientes by placing logs and rocks on the tracks, and then even digging under the rails to destabilize them.

In 2023, protests against the national government also disrupted the railroad, and resulted in the government closing the Machu Picchu site itself. One of the “New 7 Wonders of the World”, in a relatively-poor country, turns out to be a tremendous point of leverage for protesters. On our visit, we would be spending ~US$550 (US$218 for tickets to the site, US$278 for the PeruRail train, and US$48 for the Consettur bus), not including our hotel and dining. That’s an incredible amount of money by Peruvian standards, nearly our average cost of lodging for a month in this country, or a month of dining out two meals a day. So any disruption of that flow of foreign income can deliver an outsized blow to the nation.

The 2023 protests included Machu Picchu as a target simply because of its high-leverage status within the nation; in contrast, this 2025 disruption is protesting an issue that’s actually directly-related to Machu Picchu. So while as “use your words” type of guy, I don’t necessarily agree with the protesters’ tactics, I understand their beef, and can’t really fault them for escalating in order to force a response from the powers-that-be.

It turns out that the railway determined that it was safe to restart operations after ~40 hours of disruption because a 72-hour truce had been negotiated between the protesters and the involved parties. That truce was due to expire about 4 hours after our train brought us to Aguas Calientes. So, we should be able to make it to Machu Picchu, but would we be able to make back? Rett stuck with her pared-down packing list that she had come up with when she had briefly determined that we would hike in from Hidroelectrica, because there was now a chance that we would need to hike out!

With the majority of our possessions (including our bikes) safely stored in our AirBNB/starship, we began our “away mission” to the surface of Machu Picchu with only our two backpacks. Our fourth walk down the road to the train station began quietly (it oscillates between calm and chaos depending on train arrivals/departures), but we soon saw something new: an army of native Peruvians charging uphill toward us carrying backpacks far more massive than our own. We quickly deduced that these were porters returning from a 4-day hike on the Inca Trail (nearly an entire train must have been filled with them!) And despite four days on the trail, they were absolutely flying up the hill, even though their customers’ gear on their backs likely weighed as much as their bodies (native Peruvians are not known for their large stature!) It was an impressive show of strength and endurance, and a solid answer to the mystery of how their Inca ancestors could have traveled long distances over these rugged high-altitude mountain landscapes without wheels or pack animals.

Boarding the train was smooth and modern, with ticket takers scanning the QR codes on our phones (and checking passports) as we entered our carriage. The bathrooms at the station were also the most-modern public bathrooms we’ve seen in Peru, indistinguishable from an international airport’s. A group of a dozen National Police were standing in the background at the station, some with long guns, but that was the only sign that anything abnormal had been happening in recent days.

The journey down the narrow Urubamba valley was pretty spectacular, with Rett getting mad at the gentle rocking of the train and warm sun for allowing sleepiness to win the battle against watching the sights. The overhead windows were quite valuable for allowing us to see the mountains towering overhead (and later, the jungle trees), but we could still only see a fraction of what we would have been able to normally enjoy from our 100%-unobstructed bicycle seats. While the descent on the 1.5-hour journey was “only” 2000 feet, the environment changed more than we’ve seen in our 5000-foot descents. We went from the relatively “normal” dry Andes to dense green jungle that initially recalled New Zealand, but then became sufficiently-tropical to require Hawaii as the comparison.

On arrival in Aguas Calientes, we dashed straight to the ticket office to secure 2 of the 1000 last-minute, next-day tickets that they make available. What was once a lengthy and complex process has recently been simplified, and now that we’re past the highest part of the season, was fast and stress-free. For weeks I had been monitoring the website that shows the real-time ticket sales each day, so I knew that there was zero need to line up before the 6:00am opening time, which is what most blogs still advise. When we turned up a bit after 10am, we were the only ones there, our passports were quickly scanned at a desk, and we were then immediately directed to a window to buy our tickets (with our information automatically pre-entered into their computer). The website matched the local status, agreeing that 27 of the 50 tickets made available for our primary desired route (3-A) were still unsold. The only thing the website doesn’t show is the time-slots that are available, but luckily in this case there were 13 left for 7am, and 14 for 9am. 3-A includes a lengthy climb up Wayna Picchu mountain, so we took the 9am slot, to enable the possibility to do another route earlier.

Ideally we would have bought both routes simultaneously, but the clerk explained that we could only buy one next-day ticket, on the quite-reasonable basis that allowing people to suck up multiple tickets at a time would unfairly limit the ability of others to obtain one of the last-minute options. However, he also reasonably said that we could come back at 9-9:30pm (near their 10pm closing time), and then buy an additional ticket. Because at that point, it’s better for everyone to sell multiple tickets to people rather than leaving them unsold. My monitoring had shown that our second-desired route (1-B) rarely sold more than a handful of the 100 tickets available, so I knew we would have no problem when we returned at night.

We checked into our nicer-than-expected hotel, which at US$44/night was cheap for Aguas Calientes, but expensive for Peru. Then we went out for an equally expensive-for-Peru lunch at “Chullos Craft Beer”, (which does seem to serve craft beer, but they certainly don’t brew it and it’s not clear who does), and then did a full exploration of the dense grid of the artisan (“artisan”) market for earrings or a ring for Rett (no luck). Dinner was at another expensive place, partly because almost none of the many places advertising Mexican food and 4-for-1 cocktails appeared on Google, and those that did had terrible ratings with many claims of being bait-and-switched. As much as we tried to dawdle, it was still only 8:30pm when we returned to the ticket office, but it was again empty and they had no problem letting us buy a second ticket then (the process was slightly less-efficient because the entry clerk had to enter our passports manually rather than scanning them to handle the “two tickets in one day” exception). Unfortunately for route 1-B, there was only a single ticket left for the 6am time slot that Rett wanted, so we “settled” for 7am. Success: we’re going to see Machu Picchu tomorrow!