The Trip to Aguas Calientes

On Monday we all woke up and checked out of our hotel and caught a taxi to a town called Ollantaytambo. It was about an hour and a half car ride and we stopped to check out some Inca ruins along the way. This is where the train station is to catch the train to Machu Picchu.

Little girl at the market at the ruins we stopped to look at

Before we reached Ollantaytambo, Georgia woke up from a nap and realized that she had left her passport with our bags at our hotel in Cuzco (we didn't want to lug around big bags to Machu Picchu). We contemplated going back and getting it, but decided that maybe we could just use her drivers license. When we checked in to the train we asked the guy at the ticket counter and he said her drivers license would work just fine, so we relaxed and went and got some lunch close to the Inca ruins.

There is a huge Inca archeological site of ruins here and it was so beautiful! We wanted to explore so we convinced the guy at the restaurant to keep our bags while we hiked the ruins. We hiked up and down the site and all over the place. We even got yelled at for walking on the grass...oops. There was so much history and it was crazy to see how perfect the rocks were carved to fit together with each other. We met some people along the way that we toured with and they were really funny. Dad hiked down a set of stairs where he thought he could hike all the way down, but it just ended at a cliff. Those people saw him and the lady said "Oh no, if he wants to live he better turn around." She was quite worried about him actually. We spent about 3 hours at the site and it was so much fun!

Looking up

Georgia and I climbing up

Looking down

After this we walked around the city and watched a little kid spin his top in the small alleyway. It is such a wonderful city and the Inca lifestyle is very well preserved. From here we had to go back to the restaurant where we tipped the guy 4 Soles for watching our bags and then we caught a really awesome ride to the train station. The train ride was awesome and we got to see a ton of Inca ruins along the way along with small farming villages. There is no other way to get to Aguas Calientes unless you go by train.

We got here to Aguas Calientes and went to the address that we had for our hostel and guess what? There was no hostel by that name in that area. We asked a couple of people if they knew where to go (good practice for the Spanish) and the pointed us in the right direction. We found a hostel by the same name, but they did not have a reservation for us. Well apparently there are two hostels with the same name. One is a backpacker hostel and the other is a bed & breakfast. The guy from the backpacker hostel was very nice and led us to the bed and breakfast one where we ultimately had a reservation. Talk about an adventure!

We got checked into our hostel and our room is very nice. When we checked in they had to photocopy our passports. Well and Georgia's drivers license :) When we went to get our passports to go get our Machu Picchu tickets, they couldn't find Georgia's drivers license...things got quite stressful for about 5 minutes. The lady left and miraculously came back with her license in her hand. We were quite relieved. We got to the place to get our tickets and the guy was such a jerk about Georgia not having her passport. He told her multiple times that he would not issue her a ticket until she showed her passport. After a while of arguing with him and insisting that she did have a form of identification, he finally handed us 3 tickets!

After this we got some dinner at a really nice restaurant where a local band played really good music, however once we bought their CD's they quit playing and left :( We have to get up early and be at Machu Picchu at 7:00 AM. Hope all is well.

P.S. There will be more pictures when I get back home and have a better internet connection. It took all night just to load these four. Yikes!