Sunday, October 30, 2005

Agua Calientes - 30 Oct 2005


This morning I woke up at 04.30 hr. Again it was not easy to sleepe because of the altitude. Everytime I go to bed I get a headache and drinking during the night (alcohol free of course) does not help so much. At around 05.15 a taxi picked me up to bring me to the train station.
There I boarded a Railperu train to Agua Callientes, or as the local people prefer to hear, Ciudad de Machu Pichu. The trainride was nice. The landscape changed from altiplano and snow topped mountains to subtropical cloudforest as the train descended from 3326 meter to 2050 meter above sealevel. In the train I met 3 Brazilian guys from Salvador and one of the three worked
in Salvador for Hamburg Sud and visited Belgium a few years ago so we had an interesting talk.
After 4 hours we arrived in Agua Calientes where I found a clean room for 40 Sol or about 11 USD. This room has the best shower I had untill now. Hot water without interuption, quite unique in Peru. Cause of the difference in altitude its also a bit better with my headache. The landscape is really nice here, high mountains with subtropical jungle, a lovely river and parrots in the trees. I made a short walk for about an hour on the Inca trail, I had no time to do the whole trail so at least I did a few hundred meters of it. The weather is perfect, sunshine and about 26 degrees, hopefully the same weather tomorow when I go to Machu Pichu. Agua Calientes is really growing, its 50/50 between the finished houses and the half constructed houses, I think they really expect a boom here. Its 16.00 hr now and I am going to look for some food I think as I did not eat a single gram yet today. Tomorow I want to be At Machu Pichu at around 08.00 hr, so I can enjoy the splendor on my own before the next trainload arrives at 10.00 hr. This means early bedtime again which is not too bad as Agua Calientes is not Antwerp of course.

cheers