I am waiting for the beans to cook. They will be spicy, slightly chewy and hopefully delicious. They are probably going to be our last cooked meal in South America, so I hope they turn out well. We are staying at a very nice hostel called the “Blue House” with one of the best possible views of Cuzco. High up in the neighborhood of San Blas, we found this place, where most people seem to be staying for over a month, at around 11pm the day we arrived from Bolivia about a week ago. Cuzco has treated us well. We have decided to budget big time again and so aren't allowing much splurging anymore—gone are the days of cabanas and fondue. However, after Machupicchu which we did the cheap way (more on that below), we did treat ourselves to pedicures and full body massages (you can't beat $15). Oddly enough we got into a religious art mood and spent the second day here looking at paintings and wondering about archangels. This was of course accented by the immense Inca stones lining the streets, and inflected by our reading allowed of the Golden Compass trilogy, which we recently finished, over coffee and hot chocolate.
So I said we went to Machupicchu the cheap way. That means that we only spent $100 each. But in order to avoid more costs, we woke up at 3:40am to leave Cuzco for Santa Theresa which took us over harrowing roads. Caitlin and I were separated on the van and so we were unable to sleep for fear of waking up in an angry woman's lap—a distinct possibility. So, exhausted, we walked the 2.5 hours to Aguas Calientes at the food of Machupicchu and stumbled half crazed half dazed, into a nice looking hostel at around 2:30pm. Food was so expensive in Aguas Calientes that we had prepared and brought enough food for all of our 6 meals while in Cuzco. We ate the second of what would be many avocado on bread with cheese sandwiches and fell promptly asleep before 7.
Waking up at 3:52 the next morning we trekked to the base of the mountain where the Inca ruins actually are located. There we found the line of 100 people just like us hoping to be the first 400 to the top and so be allowed to climb Huaynapicchu, the mountain so famously depicted in every picture of the site. We were told that the buses would start leaving at 5:30, and walkers could start at 5:00. We were nervous. We thought we might not make it. At 4:50 we were let over the bridge and allowed to start the climb. It was like a cross country race. The staircase up was narrow, slow people could keep you back for long enough that the buses might pass and leave no chance of getting there in time. We ran. Thirty-nine minutes of knee splitting, and thigh dragging latter we made it to the top—no one had passed us. And so it was that we raced up a mountain (600m up) in order to be given the priveledge of climbing another mountain! We did it happily. It was a really fun time in a beautiful place—even if the tourist tax is extravagant we couldn't help notice how much less like an amusement park Machupicchu is than the Iguazu falls. Unbelievable.
Today we leave for Lima—one more 20 hour ride ahead!
