Day 71 - Cusco to Aguas Calientes

Aguas Clientes is the entirely tourist town at the base of the hill which you climb to reach Machu Picchu at 2430 m. The Peruvian government has now banned all private vehicles from entering Aguas Caliente so it is necessary to take the train either from Cusco or from Ollyantaytanbo (sp) which is about half way along the river to the site. 

The actual procedure for our team to get to Machu Picchu was very unclear and the confusion lead to some frustrations in the group. In actual fact, on reflection it made sense but was poorly explained. We actually walked to our garage in Cusco after a perfect day before, and collected our bikes and rode then to Ollyantaytanbo where we had lunch and stored the bikes in the yard of the hotel that we would return to the next day! That was all fine, except we had packed our fully rolly bags and actually they wanted us to take a small back-pack for the overnight, which we eventually re-packed for. Sheryle actually bought a $20 Cusco coloured backpack to save on the back and fourth packing. I just threw a few things into my very un-waterproof day pack and off we went to the train. 

There are actually a number of different trains that operate from Cusco to Aguas Caliente, the most famous being the Highram Bingham which is truly posh-posh with fancy food etc and which we took last time. This time we took the PeruRail train, which was rather simpler and rattled away on the narrow guage rail, albeit through spectacular scenery of all the mountains surrounding the river that it follows. About an hour and a half later, we reached Aguas Caliente (which means Hot Water). From here you have a couple of options, one is to stay in the extremely flash hotel at the front gate to Machu Picchu, the other is to stay in the simple hotels at Aguas Cliente which we did. The town has had a major face lift since we were there in 2009, starting with all the streets being paved and the addition of many hotels and a huge tourist marketplace. 

The following morning we had the option to walk for a few hours uphill to the site or taking one of the many new Mercedes buses around the terrifying corners. Overnight it poured with rain and was still gunning down at 8am, so we chose the bus.