Machu Picchu

Woke up at 3 and decided to head out. I wasn´t going to get back to sleep anyway. I knocked on the door of my travelling companions, Ben and Mark with whom I had seen the Sacred Valley the prior day. Ben affirmed that he was up and I told them that I would meet them at the station.

Went to bus station, made it first in line. Need to be one of the first 400 to get the climbing pass.

I laid down on the ground, with my head and back on my backpack. Two stray doys adopted me, sniffing heavily in my ear. When a couple of earlier walkers passed the dogs charged them barking heavily and stopped barking when I yelled "quiet!". Great, they probably think that they are my mutts. Presently a guard came over and told me I couldn´t sit there. Presenting my ticket I tried to explain that I just had to be on one of the first buses. He gestured to a spot further down the sidewalk plainly marked with an ordinary trash can lid and indicated that I should sit on the other side and I obliged him.

Ben came up to me and said they were just going to walk to Machu Picchu; may as well warm up rather than sit around. I sure wasn´t in a walking frame of mind or body.

With nothing else to do the guard visited me again in five minutes and by this time my gastrointestinal distress was providing short notice of a serious situation. The guard responded to my request for the location of the nearest public bathroom (oh, no, not again) and told me I would have to go back to my hotel. I gave a look of great distress and said that was not possible. He was kind enough to allow me into the guard station to use the guard toilet. The toilet had a seat, there was toilet paper and soap in the room, life was good. Water dripped from the tank at the junction of the supply line to the tank and the floor was wet, but, just hold your pants. Figuring that the speed with with this onset occurred was indication of things to come I thanked him profusely and gave him a 10 sol note, about 3 1/2 dollars. He thanked me. I went back to my spot and he came out and thanked me profusely; I now owned him.

About 3:30 an Inca woman sat down next to me and tried to say something but I told her I demonstrated my fluency in Spanish and she gave up. So we sat silently. The guard came out and spying someone with whom he could have a conversation and decided to tell this woman about my GI problem. Then he told me that coca was good for it. So I pulled out my bag and gnoshed a few leaves and offered some to the woman, who gratefully took the large portion I handed her, tweaked of the stems and we chawed together.

The previous night around 10:00 the guide told us that we had to be at the station at 3:45 if we wanted to get our ??? ticket. Apparently this well kept secret is the word. At 3:43 three Israelis came and set up camp, boiling water, making tea. Within two minutes people started trickling in by the twos and threes. By four there were at least one hundred people in line. By this time I had prevailed on the guard to use the facilities at least twice more. As we were best friends he told me his name was Washington. That is the second Washington I´ve met in Peru. I met two Nixons in Columbia, both Colombianos and named after the U.S. president.

By 5:00 I had used the facilities several more times and the line was over 100 yards long. Soon a large group of Israelis decided that it was appropriate that they join their friends who had been there 75 minutes earlier, cutting in front of hundreds of people, ensuring that they would get there tickets at the expense of people who had paid the dues of getting up early.

At 5:30 we boarded the bus and headed out for the short ride. When we pulled up the people were swarming out of the second bus and the late arriving Israelis on our bus were all elbows and assholes heading for the ticket man. They held out passes for their friends, who probably were still in bed saying "This is my wife´s." "Where is she?" Over there, pointing to some random woman. I got my ticket and stepped away from the crowd.

Ben asked if I got the group 2 ticket, the premier one that allows entrance at 10 and I replied affirmatively. The group 2 tickets are premier because the members of group 1 have to vacate the mountain in order to allow group 2, but there is not group 3 so group 2 can loiter as long as they want.

We found our guide, who passed us over to our tour guide and we proceeded on the tour. Before passing through the main gate one ascends to a spot just below the original guard tower, the spot from which the classic National Geographic picture was taken. Everybody posed for their "Me, at Machu Picchu" shot. The group was heading through the main gate; I told Ben where I needed to go. He offered an Imodium and I accepted and headed back down to the only bathrooms, located outside the entrance. This was truly going to suck.

Our guide saw me sitting on a bench I explained what happened. He told me that he had another group going at 10:30. Within 45 minutes I felt emboldened enough to venture on and reclimbed the steps and entered through the gate. The groups walk a couple of steps and pause for a 10 to 15 minute explaination of the spot. With no pacer I just charged around up, down and accross. I counted the number of stairs and looked backed recollected my path and I figured I had climbed 800 stairs since arriving.

Thrice more I was ordered back to the front gate by some vile bacilli from the nasty hands of a chicken roaster in Cusco. On the third occassion I met Ben and Mark they wanted to know if I was ready for the climb. I don´t think I want to be that far from the facilities. I gave my precious ticket to my guide hoping that he could find somebody that could use it and went off with the 10:30 group. Much of what he had to say I had heard from other guides during my previous explorations. Having read a few web articles I was able to provide more detailed answers to some peoples questions than the guide could especially about Yale "borrowing" thousands of artifacts that have never been returned. The guide was pretty bitter about it.

After stopping for lunch I made yet another round and the place was really beginning to thin out. Unless you plan on climbing ??? don´t leave before the afternoon. When I have time I will post some pictures and you will see that 90% of the people are gone by 2:00 at least on the day I was there. I also found the lighting, with shadows provided more interesting photographic opportunities.

By 4:00 I couldn´t take it any more. Three days of next to no sleep, dehydrated and malnourished I took the next bus back to town, which I will refer to as Agua Caliente although the name is Poblado Machu Picchu.

Having arrived after dark and having left before dawn I had no idea what the town looked like. Three rivers, a waterfall, brick walkways, no roads, no cars; charming. I went to the ticket office for the train station and damn, where is the bathroom? The toilet paper supply was the usual for public accomodations, none. I had no time. My personal carry stash was exhausted. Thank god for my notebook which contains several pages less than it did formerly. It joined the rest of the paper in the trash can, which is where everything that doesn´t exit your body goes. Can´t somebody, somewhere install proper waste sized plumbing? No soap? Great at least I have my alcohol based hand cleaner.

Back at the ticket counter I changed my ticket. Saturday was fully subscribed so set my return ticket to Sunday at the same time, figuring that´s when the tour company comes every day. The return ticket is not all the way to Cusco but to a town in the Sacred Valley.

After an hour I found suitable accomodations, with a fantastic location. Even I could locate it. With a mountain that towers over everything and being able to tell any of the rivers apart by site and being able to observe current directions I could ascertain the way home at a glance. Most people have less spatial orientation problems than I do. Put me in the jungle and I can find my way back. Drive me down a road and make a few turns and my mind had already gone off track.

By 5:00 I was in bed. Even the construction noises didn´t bother me and they stopped soon anyway and drifted off to blissful needed sleep.