Machu Picchu was the destination I was most looking forward to on this trip – I had very high expectations, and they were absolutely met! Not to say everything went smoothly… but we made it and got to experience one of the New Seven Wonders of the World!
Aguas Calientes
To get to Machu Picchu, you first have to make it to the town of Aguas Calientes that sits at the bottom of the mountain under Machu Picchu. Aguas Calientes is a unique town – it is not accessible by car, you have to take a train or hike a long way. Tourists like us visiting Machu Picchu are a captive audience, and therefore they can charge whatever prices they want (and do).
We caught the very early morning train from Ollantaytambo to Aguas Calientes the day before our tickets to Machu Picchu. Our hostel left us a giant bag of fruit to take with us at 5:30am that morning and the hostel mom got up with us to store our bags and see us off (very sweet). Note – you’re not allowed to take luggage larger than a small carry-on on the train, so you have to be strategic about what you bring and where you leave the rest of your luggage! The train ride was surprisingly rocky but very beautiful along the river valley.
Cocalmayo Hot Springs
In the town of Santa Theresa not too far from Aguas Calientes, there is a set of beautiful natural hot springs that you can swim in called Cocalmayo. But since Aguas Calientes is only accessible by train or hiking, the logistics of getting there is slightly complicated! We chose to hike ~3 hours to the town of Hydroelectrica where we could take a cab the additional 30 minutes to the hot springs. The hike was a beautiful and pretty well traveled trail along the train tracks through the rain forest. The cab ride at the end ended up being more of an adventure than we expected, along dirt mountain roads with low visibility and our cab driver honking at every turn to make sure there wasn’t another cab coming around fast the other direction. They clearly do it all the time and have a good system, but it was a little unsettling at first!
The hot springs themselves were very hot and relaxing. We enjoyed a couple hours there (you’re allowed to stay a max 2 hours) and planned to leave with enough time to catch a cab back to take the last train back to Aguas Calientes. Unfortunately there were absolutely no cabs when we left the hot springs, and we (along with many other people that were relying on the cabs being there) were left waiting for nearly 30 minutes. One of the vendors near the entrance kindly called us a cab eventually, but enough time had passed that we arrived at the train tracks just in time to watch the last train pull away (heartbreaking). Since our tickets for Machu Picchu were for early the next morning, we had no choice but to hike our way back the 3 hours once again. The impending darkness and my unhappiness of hiking all the way back at night motivated us and thankfully we cut our hike time to 2 hours. Definitely not ideal circumstances, and I think all of our relaxing we had at the hot springs was canceled out by the end!
Machu Picchu
We managed to get the first entrance tickets of the day for Machu Picchu (by far the best time because there’s way less people and you get to see the sunrise), meaning we were allowed to enter between 6-7am. We planned to hike up the mountain, so that meant we had to head out at 3:30am. We very begrudgingly got out of bed and were out of our hostel by 3:30am and headed to the trail head. Pretty quickly John realized his knee had taken a beating from our unplanned long hike the day before, and the idea of hiking up the mountain started to seem insurmountable. Determined, we walked the ~30 minutes to the trail head only to realize they don’t even allow you to start hiking until 4:30am and we were somehow the first ones there! Clearly we missed the memo. After our forced 30 minute break in the dark and cold at 4am, dreaming of the extra 30 minutes of sleep we missed out on, we started the hike and immediately determined John’s knee was not up to the task. Thankfully, they have buses as backup and we were up early enough to get back to town and in line to get on one of the first buses up the mountain. Overall this was probably the least ideal way to start our morning, and our very tired selves were admittedly less than happy at this point, but we made it to the entrance just before 6am and it all worked out!
Once we were at the entrance, we found a tour guide and got a group of five people to take a group tour. Our tour guide, Alfonso, was great and gave us a very interesting history lesson while pointing out all of the best views for pictures. The three other people in our group were a couple from the United States taking the same kind of year-long travel break that we are, and a solo traveler from Israel on vacation. The Israeli guy made a strong impression quickly – he disappeared from our group for a moment about 10 minutes into the tour and we couldn’t find him until we heard a security guard yelling angrily at someone. Turns out our friend decided he couldn’t wait for a bathroom at the end of our tour and he got caught relieving himself on a corner of the ruins. The security guard understandably was very very angry and was kicking him out, and our tour guide ran over and managed to convince the guard to let him stay after a good 5 minutes of arguing. Bold move to say the least!
The ruins themselves are truly spectacular and are surrounded by beautiful mountains on all sides. We learned that the Spaniards never discovered this Incan town because it was so remote and high on the mountain, but also because the Incans were clever and destroyed large sections of the Incan trail that led to the town. The town wasn’t known to outsiders until 1911 when visited by a Yale professor in search of “lost” Incan settlements. When he reached it there was a family living in the town – which is incredible – and he asked them the name of the town. The people living there told him they didn’t know, but they called the mountains surrounding the town Machu Picchu and Huayna Picchu (old mountain and young mountain). So that is where the name came from – we have no idea what it was actually called in Incan times!
Since Covid, they have limited the number of people that can enter the ruins from 800 per hour to 200. That is a truly dramatic difference, and it really did not feel crowded when we were there. Parts of the ruins are sinking, however, due to the large numbers of visitors every day. Because of this certain parts of the ruins are only open for a few hours a day to limit the number of people.
Although we had a rough start, Machu Picchu was truly an amazing site to see and absolutely worth it. Getting a tour guide was essential, because there are no signs around to explain each building or section of the ruins.
The Aftermath
The couple days surrounding our Machu Picchu trek were a tad unlucky – and unfortunately that trend continued. The evening of our Machu Picchu visit I started to feel very nauseous, we’re guessing from something I ate. That led to a very unpleasant rocky train ride back to Ollantaytambo that night, and a few more days of nausea and not much eating. We managed to get back to Lima, just in time for me to feel bad enough to need a hospital visit (shout out to our HTH travel insurance that has now covered both John and me in hospitals in Peru). The hospital determined I had a viral infection but beyond giving me an IV and some nausea medicine they didn’t feel like they could really help me. Turns out 2 days later I tested positive for Covid! It was a mild case and I’m totally fine, but it resulted in us spending an extra 10 days in quarantine in Lima. Thankfully we found a two-bedroom apartment and somehow managed to keep John negative the whole time. He became my personal chef and delivered me meals to my door for 10 days – could have been worse! But we were more than ready to leave Lima by the end and head to our final destination in Peru.
Nobody said traveling was always easy 🙂
Christine