Today is my final day at Machu Picchu, but my ticket is for a noon entry time. So I spend the morning wandering through town. I’ve had so many early mornings on this trip that I am just now always waking up at 6 a.m. So I get up anyway and wander the city.
Exploring Aguas Calientes
This is really one of my favorite things to do when traveling. I love wandering a city in the early morning hours, before it’s bustling with tourists and activity. It’s quiet. The only people out and about are pushing carts of supplies up to the restaurants and stores. It’s quite physical work to live in a hillside town with no roads. I can hear the birds and the waterfalls. It’s cool and misty. It’s just such a pleasant time to walk around.
Aguas Calientes 
Rooftops of the Inkaterra Puebla Lodge 
A cool statue 
Nice cool waterfall
There are some very nice stone carvings strewn about town, so I slowly walk by each of them, reading about the meaning behind them. They are beautiful and interesting, and I’m free to wander past each one like a museum, with no one else around. I cross the river, wander to the end of the path, finding the Inkaterra Pueblo hotel/resort, which is completely walled off, as a dead end. I turn back and find a school carved into a large flat spot, with a huge outdoor play area and soccer field. Parents are watching elementary school aged children do soccer drills. Ladies are walking by with cups of some type of jell-o and custard desserts in cups, selling them. Children are definitely morning people.
As time passes and the open air market opens up, I do a bit of shopping, getting some cute ‘gifts’ for Pooka. It’s fun and my Spanish has really improved this week. Since my entrance ticket is for noon, I need to find an early lunch so I can take the bus up to the ruins. The ticket will only let you in between noon and 1, and they aren’t even a little flexible on that. So I wander over to the more touristy side of town and start looking for restaurants.
Lunch
I had seen a cool looking restaurant earlier…. but I have no idea where it is! And now I’m wandering around, actually getting hungry, in a bit of a time crunch, looking for 1 specific place in a city that is only restaurants. Google maps is of no help. Most things have no page. So I try to retrace my steps, but to no avail. I can’t remember which side of the river it’s on. So I just wander the endless street of tourist restaurants. As the only person actually wanting to eat at 11 a.m., any time I even consider looking at a menu posted outside, there’s a guy trying to get me to come inside and sit down. After 20 minutes of this, it’s getting very stressful and high pressure. I find a place I want to go to, check the reviews, walk inside, and no one is there. So I ended up going back out, and stopping at the first place that had ‘palta rellena’, which I have seen around on menus but haven’t tried yet, and it sounds like a good choice for today. As soon as I agree to it, I am ushered into a completely empty restaurant and given my choice of tables. I ordered a coke and a bottled water, and the palta rellena and taqueños.
palta rellena
Since arriving here, I have really had a tough time digesting proteins and meats. So I have thoroughly enjoyed and craved fruits and fresh, cool, refreshing things. So I have eaten mostly mangoes and avocados. So when I saw a photo of this dish, I knew it was what I wanted for lunch. Palta rellena is an avocado, sliced in half, and then stuffed with a chicken and vegetable salad. The chicken-veg salad is pretty full of mayonnaise, so it is definitely not dry protein, so this works for me today. In retrospect, I could have just gone with this dish, but I did not quite realize how huge the avocados here would be. I kind of imagined I was ordering 2 appetizer type things, but in reality, each one would have been a sufficient meal. Anyway, I really enjoyed my cool, refreshing avocado chicken salad, and it is particularly delicious in the warm weather.
Taqueños – like genius taquitos.
But then they return with the taqueños. Let me tell you, taqueños are freaking genius. They are like taquitos, but… the ends aren’t left open. They are folded in before deep frying, so they look more like egg rolls. And do you know why that’s amazing? Because you can put cheese in them. And it doesn’t just melt right out the bottom. Like a cheese egg roll. These are full of nothing but cheese, just deep fried tortillas with queso fresco and some guac for dipping. So delicious. So satisfying. And I am also immediately shocked that I never thought of this before, given my love of cheese. Also, they serve me a plate of maybe a dozen taqueños. This is too many for one person. But I enjoy as many as I can before dashing out to catch the bus.
Machu Picchu Again!
I get to the bus stop at around 12:15, and ride the bus up the mountain again. Today is free time. Today is just wander around and look at things time. No explanations or history or ‘why’. Today is just ‘awe’. Just wonder and amazement and wow. I enter the park at around 12:45, and walk the first part that is all stairs straight up the terraces. I get to the llamas again. One llama is just hanging out in the area where people are allowed to walk, totally unbothered. There’s a guy, laying on the ground, with a giant camera lens, taking a photo of the llama’s nose hairs from the looks of it.
Getting all up in there 
The view from the beginning – pretty much level with the ruins 
My super dorky happy face 
One more llama for the count
I keep hiking up and up, and get to the point that Wilfredo showed me yesterday. There is a hike you can do, to the Inca Bridge, that’s about half an hour each way, and takes you to the back side of the mountain, the opposite of where Machu Picchu is, but also gives you a better view of the Inca Trail that leads from other mountains into Machu Picchu. This is a beautiful hike, a little off the beaten path. None of the tour guides take this path, so I was immediately away from the crowds. It’s also up a bunch of stairs, which probably also eliminates some of the crowd.
The view as I climb a bit higher 
Signs for the Inca Bridge 
So many stairs 
And getting a little farther up the mountain 
Starting to round to the back side of the mountain 
Just keep climbing
Before entering this part o f the hike, there is a guard shack, and you must sign in with the time and date you enter the hiking area. Then, afterwards, you must sign out. This is how they know if they should come looking for you, if you don’t come back. The hike is over a rather narrow path, most of that path having a wall on one side and a sheer cliff edge on the other. Some spots have only a 6 or 8 foot drop off. Some even have ropes or a stone wall to keep you away from the edge. But one spot, the final portion of the hike, is a very long drop on one side, and a steel cable to hold onto on the other. It’s damp and cool and mostly shady under the tree cover. It smells foresty and moldy. I took a bunch of photos, and I think this day is full of some of the happiest looking photos, as I was just on my own.
Walk carefully – Narrow Path 
The valley behind the mountain 
Narrow path with steep drop-off 
The most precarious part of the hike 
I also bought a cute scrunchy 
Really up above the ruins now 
I climbed that.
Once I returned, I found a nice spot under a tree and sat and drank some water, looked out over the ruins. I finally get up and hike back down all the stairs and join the rest of the tourists, flowing through and over the ruins, examining rooms and paths and stairs. Just imagining what it was like to live here, or to build this, or to find it and have no idea what it was.
Look at these guys 
On my way back – the back side of Machu Picchu 
Hiking back down into the ruins 
And the ruins 
Back down, actually venturing down to the lower ruins 
A path with a beautiful view 
This kid sat here for like 15 minutes – no phone, no one to talk to, just looking out at the world. Hellz yeah. 
What goes up must come down… 
Under the ruins 
Water from the ancient Inca irrigation system 
Mountains 
And what goes down must go back up yet again 
Ending a beautiful day with a beautiful sky 
Goodbye Machu Picchu <3
Tea Time
By the end of my day, my feet are very sore from the cumulative amount of walking and hiking. My calves are begging me to never go up a stair again. I’m sweaty and tired, so I am perfectly ready to enjoy the next part of my journey. I am taking the fancy Hiram Bingham train from Machu Picchu back to Cusco tonight. But first, they offer a high tea at the Belmond Sanctuary Lodge atop the mountain. There are plenty of intriguing lucuma and potato dishes, and everything is fancy finger foods. I find a table in a quiet corner and enjoy some delicious tea and snacks.
High tea at the Belmond Sanctuary Lodge 
Lovely band playing at the train station 
Pink sparkling wine – the best kind
From here, we all board a bus and are taken to the train station. At the train station, we are seated in a lounge where a 3-piece Andean band is playing and we are served pink sparkling wine. It is pleasant and calm, but quite crowded. They take groups one at a time to board the train, carrying luggage and snapping photos.
Hiram Bingham Train
The train is very nice, with beautiful white linen place settings with wine glasses and lots of space. I am seated at a 4-person table with a family of 3, and they are very cool interesting people. This is a trip to celebrate the daughter graduating with her bachelor’s degree, and she’s off to graduate school soon. The mom is a former project manager, but now a competitive baker, even featuring on Food Network. And the dad does….stocks? I dunno. He wasn’t overly chatty. The mom is from Peru, so she grew up there, but now lives with her family in upstate New York. They are very fun to talk to and we have lots of fun chats, showing each other photos of pets and cakes and whatnot while the multi-course dinner is served. I even let her charge her phone on one of my plethora of travel batteries (thanks, Joe!).
The fancy part of this fancy train is that they serve a fancy meal while you ride. Interestingly, they spread out the meal over the entirety of the trip. So it’s a really nice, relaxed pace. We start with a basket of breads and yellow pepper butter. Then, there is a soup course of cream of asparagus soup. It’s a nice, mild soup, though quite heavy and creamy, with a pretty drizzle of olive oil on top. Then there was a salad course. It was a nice arugula salad with vinaigrette and slices of smoked duck breast. They also bring by bottles of wine and pisco sours all evening.
Cream of Asparagus soup 
Smoked duck salad
Now, there is also a bar car. And there is a cool flute band in the bar car. But there are about a million people in the bar car, so I step in, look around, and head back to my seat. However, as the evening progresses, all of the people from the bar car return to their seats. And their seats are right behind us. A group of about 20 people, all from one family, Americans, spread out over 5 or so 4-person tables. And returning from the bar car. They are drunk and yelling. Like, really yelling. A couple of men at a 2-person table across from me is complaining about them. The mom at my table actually turns around and yells at them to quiet down. Our happy dinner conversation dies out as we are unable to hear one another without shouting. The daughter stares at her phone. I put on my noise canceling headphones, but they don’t help much. The train porters and servers seem to not care at all. So when we hit the halfway point and drop off the people at Ollantaytambo, I went and asked to be moved to another car. I was sad to leave my super fun travel family, but this situation was not improving. So, now alone, just one car back, at a 2-person table by myself, I enjoy the rest of the journey and my meal.
After that was the main course. The options were either a rabbit/beef ravioli or a fish dish. So I went with the rabbit and beef ravioli in a mushroom sauce. It was… ok. The mushroom sauce was quite good, but the meat was very clearly smoked over the eucalyptus fire, and I ended up trying to eat the noodles and scrape out the filling. Fortunately, it’s like 5 courses of dinner, so I wasn’t hungry. But those are 2 very strange options, and none of the food was specifically Peruvian. Like, it was specifically made with local produce, but it wasn’t traditional Peruvian food, which was disappointing.
Rabbit ravioli with mushroom sauce 
Lucuma custard cake 
After dessert snack – alfajores and chocolates
After dinner, we had a slice of lucuma custard/cheesecake thing, topped with chocolate. As usual, I found the chocolate a bit overpowering for the delicate lucuma flavors, but it was otherwise delicious. Then, there was a final bonus course of after-dinner snacks. There were little cookies, alfajores, which are little sandwich cookies with cajeta, or dulce de leche in the middle. And there were chocolates filled with presumably caramel, perhaps a lucuma paste. Caramel and lucuma are often combined together, as they have similar flavor profiles.
After that, we were back in Cusco. There was a driver waiting for me at the train station, and we went back to my previous hotel in Cusco, arriving late in the evening to a room with the sheets turned down and a nice bath robe and slippers laid out for me.
The Hiram Bingham train is nice. But…. I would hesitate to recommend it on a couple of grounds. It’s by far the most famous train to/from the mountain. So it’s the most popular, and it’s the most popular with the type of people who care that it’s a famous train. This was really the first time the whole trip I felt like I was surrounded by entitled American tourists. Midwesterners with their kids in tow, running up and down between the tables at high tea. Loud drunk people who don’t at all care about anything or anyone around them. There was also a group of 20 or so people from a ‘Celebrity Cruises’ tour group, so they were loud and generally being ushered around in a huge mob. So I didn’t enjoy the other clients, and I don’t think that the porters or train workers could have really changed that. The decision to go for ‘fancy’ food and not ‘authentic’ or ‘Peruvian’ food would also not be my preference. I really want to try the local cuisine when I travel. I would honestly recommend the Vistadome, as it seemed to be more full of hikers and backpackers, people who were excited and in awe looking out of the glass top of the train. It was still a bit noisy, but much, much more pleasant overall. It didn’t have Peruvian food either, but you know that going in and can bring your own on board if you want.
