"And if we tell you the name of the game, boy, we call it riding the Gravy Train."
Pink Floyd
Our plan, as elaborately outlined to us by the lady who owned our hostel, was to take a shared taxi up to a place called Maras, take a 3 hour trek through the countryside to the Salinas salt pans, catch a bus to Ollantaytambo where we could get the train to Aguas Calientes, the jumping off point for Machu Picchu. We would spend the night there and be up the mountain before most people realised what day it was. As I say, that was the plan.
We walked to downtown Cusco where the share taxis headed over to Maras and stocked up with crisps and pastries on the way. As luck would have it, a car was about to leave and we could get all the way there for just 2 Soles each. The downside was we had to ride in the boot of the car as all the other seats were taken (it was an estate car, you'll be glad to hear). An hour of bumping around in the back and trying to eat the snacks we'd brought and we were there, covered in crumbs and nursing sore backs. The taxis drop you on the main road 2km from the town so we then had to take another car into town at the exorbitant rate of 1 sole each. The tiny pueblo of Maras consists of a main plaza, 6 buildings, 2 donkeys and a snack stand. 4 of the buildings seem to exist for the sole purpose of giving the plaza it's four sides. Another building houses the gruff looking police and the final building was for some unfathomable reason a toilet block. The 2 donkeys seem to exist for the sole purpose of staring at me and housing the resident flea population. We bought some drinks from the stall, stared back at the donkeys and made a dash for the public loos to set us up for our arduous 3 hour walk. Big mistake. Catching a whiff of the place before going in, my hair tried to crawl back into my head and my nostrils jumped off my face and tried to hide under my left armpit. I took a big lungful of air and headed in, desperate to be in and out on one breath. The only cubicle inside was half full of a thick, brown liquid, not too dissimilar to old oxtail soup. I pulled the chain and the bowl filled up with water, although this achieved nothing more than stirring up the contents and releasing a stream of noxious gas. Just before my eyeballs rolled back in their sockets, I swear I saw a small tentacle thrash about the bowl before settling back down to the bottom. By this point I was running out of air and turning purple. I dry retched a few times and relieved myself quickly before passing out. On the way out of the building I was forced to take another lungful of air and almost passed out again. Cara, wise sage that she is, decided to give it a miss. Of course, all this has nothing whatsoever to do with Machu Picchu but it will be seared into my memory for all eternity so I thought you should suffer with me.
We set off down the trail through some magnificent countryside and enjoyed the experience thoroughly. That was until, after an hour and a half of walking, we came upon a couple of small girls who were working the fields with their father. Where are you going, they asked. To the saltpan, we replied. Well you've bollocksed that one right up, they said (I'm paraphrasing but that was the gist of it). How so, we asked. 'Cos you're on completely the wrong path. You should have taken the right fork about one hour back. There's nothing this way for miles and even then it's nothing. You dozy gringo halfwits have been walking the wrong way for ages, and now you're going to have to walk all the way back to where you started. They actually said something indecipherable in Spanish, but from their elaborate mimes and hand gestures I assumed this was their message. At this point, the old farmer (he was probably 26) came over to see why his kids were laughing their arses off. We tried to explain to him where we wanted to go and he also said we were idiots. He walked with us down a narrow track and pointed to a deep gully running through the floor of the valley we were in. You want to be on the other side of that gully, we think he said. Take yourselves through these fields and across that gully and you'll be fine, we also think he said. We thanked him and set off through somebody's maize field.
After further 15 minutes we reached the edge of the gully where a family of farmers were having their lunch. What are you doing in our maize field, they asked. We're trying to get to the saltpans, we said. Well you've bollocksed that one right up, haven't you, they said. For full details of how this conversation transpired, see previous paragraph. They also kindly offered instructions of how we could get back on track. We set off again through another field, down a steep bank, across a stream, up the other bank, down a path then up a steep hill. At the top we heard a noise that sounded like "arbroogletropflunbunghandle". We looked back and saw one of the farmers in the distance, waving his arms in the air and jumping up and down. "What was that?" we shouted. "arbroogletropflunbunghandle" he repeated. "Si, si, gracias" we responded, which is the textbook response for anything we don't understand. He wasn't impressed and kept up his jumping and waving. We waved back and set off down the path into the steep sided canyon. After a further 20 minutes we came across some more young girls tending goats of the slopes of the hill. Where are you going, they asked. To the saltpans, we said. Well you've bollocksed that one right up haven't you, they said. You know the rest of the conversation. The farmer had meant for us to keep going until we reached another canyon, and down this were the fabled saltpans. Unfortunately, thanks to his complete inability to speak fluent English, we were once again lost. There was no way we were headed back on ourselves again, so we kept going down the path, heading for the road that would take us to Ollantaytambo. We never did see the salinas, but the valley was incredibly beautiful and we were treated to some great sights. At the end of the canyon, the ground dropped straight down several hundred metres and getting to the bottom was a novel experience, but we finally made it to the road. From there we eventually hailed down a minibus and got ourselves to Ollantaytambo train station.
Once there, the ticket office kindly informed us that the evening train was fully booked. So was the next evening's train. We'd bollocksed that one right up, hadn't we? There was another train that night with plenty of space, but it was for locals only and foreigners were not permitted to buy the $5 tickets for it. Our only option was to take the first train at 6am the following morning and stay overnight here. Take it or leave it. Cara and I were a bit hacked off but there was nothing we could do but get the tickets for the next morning. The ticket seller put his hand in my pocket and helped himself to $74 for the 2 one-way, 90 minute train tickets. This, sadly, pretty much encapsulates the situation for any foreigner trying to see Machu Picchu these days. The only way to get there is on the tourist train and the prices for foreigners are exorbitant. But this was not the end of it.
We found ourselves a cheap hotel for the night. At 6am, bright and breezy, we loaded ourselves onto the Perurail gravy train and headed to 
Aguas Calientes. Once there, we walked into the town centre to get our entry tickets for the ruins, which now have to be purchased in advance before going up the mountain. The vendor helped himself to $46 from my stash. We climbed onto the bus to take us up the mountain. I felt a hand in my pocket and I was relieved of another $12. 20 minutes later and we were finally at the entrance to Machu Picchu.
We handed over our tickets and made our way inside. It was still reasonably early and the trainloads of people coming from Cusco had not yet arrived. We quickly headed up to a place where we could see the whole of the Machu Picchu site. The weather, however, had decided that was not a good plan and the entire site was clouded over. We sat down and waited for the clouds to clear. Instead or clearing, it started raining. We both put on our splendid plastic ponchos and continued to wait. After a while nothing happened, so we waited a bit longer. Nothing continued to happen, but in a slightly less exciting way. It did finally clear up and we had our first glimpse of the ruins. And pretty impressive they are too. The buildings themselves are nothing spectacular and not much different from many other Inca ruins dotted throughout Peru. What does make them different is the location, perched atop an extremely steep sided mountain, hundreds of metres up from the valley below. I was also surprised to discover Machu Picchu itself is not that high at 2600 metres above sea level. We had travelled here from Cusco which was at 3100 metres and not on the top of any mountain. Whilst this made Machu Picchu much warmer than we were used to, it also made it much more humid. The rain hadn't helped. I peeled off a few layers and wiped the sweat from my rather fetching and sophisticated beard. After a few hours it started raining again and we took shelter inside a small hut and plundered the stash of biscuits we had daringly smuggled into the ruins.
We spent the next 5 hours wandering around and taking 7,824 photos. When we left, we decided to walk down the mountainside rather than shell out a bunch of dollars for another short bus ride. We made it down to the bottom of the mountain just fine, but as we reached the bottom the heavens really opened and out came the ponchos again. The twenty minute walk back to town wasn't the most pleasant and by the time we reached it we were both absolutely drenched. To cap it all, my sunglasses took a dive out of my bag while we were crossing a bridge and hurried off down the choked river, off to give optical comfort to some fortunate goat herder downstream. Perhaps we should have taken the bus after all.
Back in town we bought train tickets back to Urubamba, which was not
where we wanted to go but meant we had been able to spend an extra few hours in the ruins and also saved us about $20. The people in the ticket office came around the counter, flipped me upside down and shook out my pockets. They left me with loose change and half a packet of Clorets, which I thought considerate. On the train, our carriage was almost empty so I switched seats to one with extra legroom as soon as all the passengers were on board. No sooner had I done this than a surly Perurail employee with all the social skills of a whelk walked over and asked why I wasn't in my allotted seat. I said this one had better legroom and wasn't already taken. She said yes, it was taken and I had to move back to my original seat. I said that of all the empty seats around me, this seat, the one I wanted, was occupied. She said yes. Several other staff came over to lend her moral support and loom over me. As it turned out, those seats were reserved. Reserved for her and her colleagues so that after spending 5 minutes dishing out tepid coke to the people on the train, they could put their feet up for the remainder of the journey. Being discourteous, lazy, self-centred tossers, I can only assume they were trained by British Rail, and what fine training it must have been, too. It is consoling to know that rail companies insist on offering a consistent standard of service no matter where you are in the world. 2 hours later we were in Urubamba where we took a taxi back to Cusco. The taxi cost just a couple of dollars and the driver was very friendly and chatty the whole way, proving that taxi drivers are not so consistent the world over.
So there you go. Visiting Machu Picchu was the fulfilment of a lifelong ambition for me. On the whole, however, it turned out to be a bit of an anticlimax. Somewhat akin to getting trapped in a lift with a bikini-clad Cameron Diaz and discovering all she wants to do is talk to you about 18th century loom building methods. Terrific scenery but you were hoping for so much more!
Mik
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