From Anchorage to Ushuaia by Bike

The Sacred Valley

The sites in the Sacred Valley can only be visited with a “boleto turistico,” a kind of group tourist ticket that !!include!!s entry to all the sites, so it’s impossible to visit them individually. With our ticket we visited Pisaq, Ollantaytambo and Moray. They are each very impressive considering the amount of effort it took to build them. The Inca would quarry rocks, huge boulders, from the bottom of the mountains, or a dozen kilometres away. A real herculean labour! At Pisaq, the terraces were dizzyingly high, at Ollantaytambo, the granite blocks gigantic, and at Moray, the strange circular terraces were fascinating.

We also stopped to visit Salinas (not !!include!!d in the boleto ticket). It’s a saltwater waterfall which fills over 2000 earthen containers at the bottom. The water evaporates in a couple of days, leaving the salt to be used by humans and animals alike. There were 330 people working there, barefoot and without gloves. It was a strange place, tucked away in the middle of the mountain, and almost supernatural since everything was white, surrounded everywhere else by the red earth.

Machu Picchu

It’s one of the seven wonders of the world, famous both in Peru and worldwide, and is a hugely popular tourist destination.

To get to Machu Picchu, you either have to walk several days along the Inca Trail, or else you can take the train. Most tourists take the train from Cuzco, but it’s cheaper to get on at one of the smaller stops along the way. We got on Poroy and paid US $41 each way. It’s a pretty serious racket, especially considering that the village right at the base of Machu Picchu is only accessible by train or by foot. That means that Peru Rail had a monopoly and can charge as much as they want. And the locals only pay US$8!

After three hours on the train, we arrived at the village, in high tourist season. The village was built to accommodate the hordes of visitors, and it was built quickly and cheaply. Everything is geared towards the tourist. There are restaurants, souvenir shops, 2 hour laundry places, and grocery stores with prices inflated up to 200%.

We arrived just before noon and after checking into the hotel, we climbed up Putucusi, the mountain across from Machu Picchu. There is a beautiful view at the top, but it’s not easy to get up there. It was 671m up an arduous track, including at least 8 wooden ladders between 5 and 40 metres long when the path got too steep. It was a long climb, almost 2 hours, but well worth the view! There was an Incan flag and an unobstructed view of Machu Picchu, lit up by the sun. We didn’t stay that long at the top, but enough to see that the next day was going to be incredible.

The next morning, our guide Raul came to get us at 5:50 am. We were taking the shuttle bus (US$14 return) to climb up the twisting road to reach the site itself. There was already a long line for the bus, and Raul said that already 650 people had left by bus that morning! And that didn’t !!include!! the people who had left at 3:30 in the morning on foot in order to be the first people there. Sébastien had wanted to climb up on foot, but after seeing the trail from Putucusi, we decided to take the bus. That way we wouldn’t be too tired to explore the site. The whole climb took about 25 minutes.

This meant though that we wouldn’t be able to climb up Wayna Picchu, the mountain in the background of all the pictures that you see of Machu Picchu. Only the first 400 visitors get it !!include!!d in their ticket price. It’s a dangerous climb and there have been a lot of accidents (17 people have died since 1970). Raul asked the person in charge, just in case, and she told us that all the spots had been filled up 50 minutes after the site opened at 6 am!

There was, naturally, a line up at the gate, but we got through it quickly, and then Raul took us up Mirador. We were the first to arrive there and we had a largely tourist-free view of the whole site, shrouded in clouds. There were the obligatory group photos and then it started to rain. The Gods of rain seem to be playing a cruel joke on us – it never rains at Machu Picchu in August! But the fat rain drops didn’t put a metaphorical damper on our visit. We walked around for three hours with Raul who spoke very good French and who explained everything in detail. He answered all our questions, and then, eager to find out more about France, its language and culture, he asked us questions. There was one real stumper: he asked how you conjugate the verb “moudre” [to grind] in the present tense. We got stuck after “nous…” and couldn’t think of the right ending. And we didn’t have a Besherelle with us… so the question remained unanswered. Raul left us and headed back towards the entrance to meet with his next group tour.

We continued to explore the site on our own, trying to take everything in. We tried to get to the “Inca Bridge,” but ended up in front of three construction workers cleaning an Incan wall by hand. We couldn’t go any further, but weren’t sure whether this was the famous bridge or whether it was further along.

Then we set off towards the “Sun Gate,” and we ran into some hikers who had come along the Inca Trail, the long road through the jungle that ends at Machu Picchu. The view was still pretty cloudy and we couldn’t see much, so we ate a little. You can’t have a picnic on the site, but it’s no problem to have a little snack. Eventually the clouds cleared away and we were able to explore the site again in the afternoon, this time in the sunlight. At 5 pm, we got back on the train for Poroy and then went back to Cuzco in a car.

We were actually much less impressed with Machu Picchu than we were expecting. The vast number of tourists is a real problem for the site, and about a month ago UNESCO issued a warning. They said that the degradation is becoming obvious and the number of visitors is only increasing (more than a million people each year!). It’s a difficult problem, and there have seen a number of strategies tried on site, but without much success. Eventually, we figure that the number of people allowed in will have to be restricted, or else the path that they can take through the site strictly limited and it will be mandatory to have a guide. Right now, visitors can just wander wherever they like. But it’s another example of an Incan site in danger.
PS. So that successive generations can also be the first to discover the site, not everything has been excavated – that will be for our children!

Next Up

Sébastien’s parents have left now, and we plan to stay a couple of days in Cuzco. We have a meeting Monday with our host Mario’s mother, who is a micro-entrepreneur, and who had invited us to her monthly meeting with the other members of her group. It’s a great opportunity to see these micro-entrepreneurs without having to go first through a MFI.

This trip is outside the scope of the Association Planète Durable et Solidaire, but we are using the website to keep you updated on all our adventures.

Sara