20: the final adventure (part 3)

I woke at some despicably early hour to the sound of someone stamping up and down the hotel stairs wearing a pair of giant concrete boots. After a lovely cold shower (just what was needed after two days of hiking and no sleep) we headed down to breakfast, where Fernando was already there nursing a cup of coffee, also having had no sleep.

The bus took us on a winding road from Aguas Calientes up to Machu Picchu. The site was breathtaking. Fernando gave us a pretty comprehensive history of the site as we sheltered from the sun, before taking us on a walk up to the famous viewing point. Somehow, after this, I got lost.

just some llamas and an old wooden bridge...

I could have sworn Fernando said that we would now be walking to the Inca Bridge, and I trundled up some steps after him and the others. As I looked behind me, I saw the rest of the group preparing to set off, and carried on, taking my time to get up the steps. When I got to the top, no one was there. It was almost as if aliens had landed and taken everyone away. In the hope of catching them up, I followed the signs to the Inca Bridge, telling a lady along the way that I had lost my group and had she seen them. "They went that way!" she said cheerfully. So I continued on, on my own, on a narrow path round the side of the mountain. I saw a few people along the way, but nothing like a group. I realised I had reached the end of the path. There was no one there, apart from three llamas. I realised that it had been nearly an hour since I had lost them, and so I turned back.

I returned to the place where I had last seen everyone, and sat on a long flat stone overlooking the view. As places go to wait for someone, it wasn't a bad one. I sat for another half an hour, looking over the site and thinking about my trip; where I had been, who I had met, and what would happen when I got home.

After a while I found them, using my zoom lens as a telescope, and we walked back to the cafe at the site entrance for an amazingly expensive lunch, before heading back into Machu Picchu for some free time. Amy took me round the bits I had missed and we climbed back up to the viewing spot. The light had changed as the afternoon wore on, and it was the golden hour for photos. Pete appeared from behind us, having climbed up to visit the Sun Gate, and we all walked back down to the cafe for Pisco and passion fruit cocktails.

cuy!

That evening we celebrated in a local restaurant, all warm and aching and pleased with ourselves for having made it. This far, at least. There was still the small matter of getting out of Aguas Calientes with no transport, as the trains were now on strike.

High spirits meant most people had hangovers the next morning, so we enjoyed coffee at a late-ish hour at a street cafe while Lola inflicted on Mark some punishing stretches. Our only option for getting out of the town was to walk down the train tracks, so we set off at about 11am and followed them along the river, stopping very occasionally but basically marching as fast as we could. By this point, we were really very tired, I could hardly lift my boots; but we carried on, buoyed by the scenery: the roaring river, the butterflies and the giant smooth rocks.

After a break on a bridge to eat our sandwiches, we finally came to our destination point, where we were to be picked up by bus and taken back to Cusco. There was some sort of mix up with timings, and we waited for what seemed like hours for it to turn up. Lola suggested we play a game, so we all wrote names of famous people on a piece of paper and stuck them to the forehead of the person next to us. The idea was you had to guess who you were: I was Michael Jackson, which, for reasons I won't try to explain here, brought me down a bit.

the terror begins

Finally the bus turned up, clearly too small to take all of us, but somehow we all crammed in, with Fernando and Henry jumping on the top with the bags. Now, I'm usually quite relaxed when it comes to taking risks and throwing myself down holes etc, but this was to be the beginning of what I can only describe as one of the most hair raising journeys I have ever been on. The roads were blocked along the direct path back to Cusco, so our only option was to take the mountains, round the back and to the north of where we were.

Our tiny bus shuddered along a mountain path hewn out for lorries, teetering on the edge of a giant, thundering chasm, at the bottom of which seethed an enormous river. The road was still under construction, and at one point we found ourselves passing a JCB at a non-existent passing point. We eventually made it to a small inconsequential town where we changed buses for a larger and much more comfortable one.
We eventually got back on a mountain road, sometimes not much better than the quarry one we had begun the journey along. There were occasional signs denoting landslide danger, and a few points where the weight of our bus caused rocks and dry earth to come tumbling down the mountain walls that were very close to the road.

For six hours we wound up and down the mountains, at our highest point reaching Abra Malaga at 4,300m, into and above the clouds. The moon was full, and it created a very strange atmosphere, being so high up, and so far away from everything and everyone else. As we neared the end of the journey and passed from the mountains on to a flatter road, we passed through roadblocks made of giant smoking tree trunks and boulders. The mountainside at Ollantaytambo was still on fire.

our last, happy, day in Cusco

After the longest shower ever taken, the rest of our time in Cusco was spent eating giant late breakfasts, shopping for alpaca hats, and treating ourselves to a massage. We said goodbye to everyone at an appropriately Irish pub (specifically chosen for Amy) and headed back to Lima, where we visited the Museum of the Inquisition, to get us into the spirit of coming home.

Amy and I settled in with the lovely landlord and his lady in Lima, who looked after us brilliantly for our last couple of nights. As a treat, we took ourselves to the Rosa Nautica, a posh restaurant at the end of the pier. Sadly, while the food was good, the service wasn't - which was very surprising given our impression of the people in Peru until that point.

It's hard for me to work out how to finish this blog. I've written it more for me to remember everything I did rather than to go on to everyone about the wonderful adventures I've had. I needed to go away, to get away from problems I can't solve and to give me a chance to re-set myself. I can't promise it's worked, and I can't say I know any more now about where I'm going next. But I've reminded myself that I'm actually a bit of an adventurer... and you can travel down any uncertain path, as long as you've got a good pair of boots.