Huzzah for Machu Picchu! The day started with my alarm blaring at the unfriendly hour of 4:30 in the manana, followed by breakfast at 5, so that I could be standing in line to buy my bus ticket up to Machu Picchu by 5:30. Now, the guidebook said there would be a line of people by about 5:15 since the buses start running at 5:30. However, the guidebook did NOT mention that that line would stretch down the street. Holy cow were there a lot of people. All told, I didn't actually walk through the gate of Machu Picchu until about 6:45 (and it's only a 20 minute bus ride up). Luckily, the sun didn't come up over the mountains until a little after 7, so I had time to climb up to the Gatekeeper's house for some prime sunrise viewing.
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| A llama decides to be postcard-scenic as the sun rises over Machu Picchu. |
After the sunrise, I decided to do the hike up Machu Picchu Mountain that my slightly more expensive entrance ticket enabled me to. I had wanted to hike Huana Picchu, but that extra ticket was already sold out, so the Montana was kind of the consolation prize. An hour and fifteen minute hike up steep stone mountain steps consolation prize. After having done the Putucusi hike the day before, my muscles rebelled a little, but I eventually made it up to the top.
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| Stone doorway on the hike up Machu Picchu mountain |
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| Machu Picchu looks so far away from the top of the mountain! |
After enjoying the view from the top of the montana and hiking back down, I spent the rest of the afternoon walking around and visiting the rest of the ruins.
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| A pensive view of Machu Picchu. |
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| Aguas Calientes |
In the afternoon I sprang for the expensive buffet lunch at the fancy schmancy nearby hotel, spent a bit more time at the ruins (it was kind of nice to just hang out on a rock and take in the city in the sun), and then headed back down to Aguas Calientes to catch my train back to Cusco. My train ride back was in a slightly more expensive car than the trip there (hey, it was all that was left in the time spot I wanted), and it was quite a different experience than the budget train. Instead of just a snack, I was served a full-ish meal, and then came some true randomness. A guy in a jester suit with a mask danced up and down the aisles for a while, and then the serving crew put on a fashion show of for-sale alpaca sweaters and such to the sounds of blaring Andean music. If this wasn't strange enough, yours truly got pulled by the weird jester guy to the back of the train where I was pressed into said fashion show, in which I (reluctantly, but with good humor) modeled a baby alpaca hair poncho. Yep. A poncho.
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| Cool street drain in Aguas Calientes |
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| Sorry, no pictures of the fashion show. Just the train. |
On the train ride both there and back I ended up sitting next to psychologists (apparently there was a big international conference in Lima this past week and they were all taking whirlwind tours to Machu Picchu). When I told this to my airbnb host Carlos, he laughed and told me I had taken the "crazy train." Heh.
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| The gabinete crew: Juan, Eliza, y Elva |
And, lest you think I've only been bouncing around ruins, here's a picture of the amazing trio at the gabinete de antropologia fisica with whom I have shared office space for the past month. The last two weeks have involved 9 and 10 hour days of work and so have been a little exhausting - but great in terms of getting a lot of data! The wonderful Elva even arranged an extra trip last week to the deposit where the skeletal material is stored so that I would have more bones to study. It was definitely sad to say goodbye to everyone on Friday; Juanito gifted me with a Quechua name: Qorichaska, which means something along the lines of "gold star."
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| Newly renovated entrance hall at the Cusco Teatro Municipal |
On Friday night, Eliza invited me to a concert at the Teatro Municipal, which was celebrating its grand re-opening after being shut down by a fire two years ago. We had a little comedy of errors to get in - we went early and waited in line, only to be told they had handed out all of the free tickets already. So, we headed off to dinner and had just sat down at the restaurant when we got a call from Elva telling us they were letting people in without tickets. We literally ran back to the theater, managed to get in, and found some seats just a short bit before the concert started.
The Orquesta Sinfonica del Cusco was performing, with guest soprano
Sylvia Falcon. She sings in the style of Yma Sumac, with an upper range that basically imitates a flute - pretty amazing. After a lovely concert consisting mainly of orchestral arrangements of traditional Andean and Peruvian music (it is, after all, the Fiestas Patrias weekend - today [July 28] is the celebration of Peru's independence), Eliza and I headed back to the restaurant for sushi and cocktails. I then headed back to Casa Carlos, where I joined my airbnb hosts and a couple of other guests for a cozy evening of pisco sours that lasted into the wee hours. All in all, it was a great evening to top off a month of data collection here in Cusco. Can't believe my time here is drawing to a close - I head back to Lima on Tuesday!
Qorichaska out.
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