After a solid few days ruin-viewing we packed out bikes up and headed to the Sacred Valley for more ruins. Turns out we just can't get enough of polyagonal blocks.
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| Machu Picchu from Huayna Picchu. Pretty much awesome! |
We cycled up out of Cusco past some of the closer ruins we had already seen and down a awesome downhill to the town of Pisac, a mere 32kms away. The last 2kms were completed in a huge thunderstorm that we didn't put our rain gear on for as we thought we would beat the storm, we rode into town looking like drowned rats. You'd think we would have learned by now, but no.
Looking for a place to stay we pretty much jumped into the first place we saw, which was more expensive than we would have liked but as it was pouring we shrugged our shoulders and agreed that neither of us could be bothered looking around in the wet. Once the rain stopped we dashed up to the ruins above the town which were up about a thousand (incan) steps. We started with most of our rain gear on but within a few minutes were puffing away and stripping off the layers as fast as we could. The ruins at the top were reasonably well preserved and there was hardly any tourists as everyone is put off by the huge climb (and fair enough). While we were up there admiring the views we could see another huge storm approaching and ended up in our second race-to-beat-the-rain scramble of the day. This time we were slightly more fortunate and made it under the cover of the woven blanket stalls before the rain hit. We celebrated with our nicest yet affordable dinner in ages, complete with amazing carrot cake.
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| Ben amongst ruins. |
The next day we cycled all the way down the valley to a place called Ollaytambo which has an amazing Incan ruin perched on the hill overlooking the town. Its also the end of the road to Machu Picchu, so we stored our bikes here and took the train the next day to Aguas Calientes, the tourist trap at the bottom of the mountain that Machu Picchu sits on. While the place is overrun with tourists (there are 2500 people on the ruins each day) we met some fellow travellers and bumped into a few people we had met earlier which was fun.
After much waiting in line for various tickets we lined up an early bus to see the ruins before the hordes. Of course this is exactly what all the hordes thought and there was hundreds of people waiting in the dark for the first busses before dawn. It wasn't even sunny so everyone got up 3 hours early for nothing but oh well. We had a great time exploring the ruins and walking up Huayna Picchu, the mountain behind Machu Picchu which gave us amazing, if sweaty views over the whole site. We walked down later that afternoon and had a soak in the local hot pools, the best ending to the best day!
We headed back to Cusco the next day where we ended up having an unexpected mini-break in a local hospital after Anna fainted in a restaraunt and cracked her head on the tile floor. It turns out she has had a gastric infection for the past 6 weeks and the resulting dehydration finally caught up with her. 3 nights in hospital on a drip and about 15 stitches in her head later she is as good as new. She was in good enough spirits watch all the buildup to the royal wedding on the tv in her hospital room. We think it was the nicest room we have stayed in on our whole trip and all the staff were very nice to us an accomodating of our poor
Spanish. We are also totally grateful for our travel insurance! Anna now has an awesome Harry Potter-esqe scar on her forehead as a reminder of Cusco.
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