ENJOY MACHU PICCHU ... WITHOUT THE FOUR-DAY HIKE
Board the Peru Rail train in the ancient village of Ollantaytambo to avoid trek, writes Colleen Friesen.
It’s common knowledge that if you want to see Machu Picchu, voted one of the new Seven Wonders of the World, there’s a prerequisite four-day hike. And that’s kept us away for years.
My 60-year old husband Kevin, and I, are both fit, but my 57-year old knees have become increasingly cranky. When we discovered that G Adventures offered a trip that could get us to Machu Picchu without taking the four-day hike and that it was paired with National Geographic Journeys to include other excursions and “upgraded service,” we signed up right away.
G Adventures is the world’s largest small-group travel company serving more than 150,000 travellers each year with over 650 worldwide tours. And it was the philosophy of this Canadian company that attracted us to their tours. Founder Bruce Poon Tip believes that travel can be a force for social good and has set out to prove it with empowering projects funded from trips like ours.
I liked knowing that our journey would help make a difference, but we weren’t travelling simply to be altruistic. We’d seen the pictures of Machu Picchu, high in the Andes Mountains of Peru and listened to the stories from amazed friends who had made the trek. But I’d also heard too many people talk about the stress of the four-day hike.
G Adventures option? Taking a train there.
Our adventure started in Lima a couple days before we would meet up with our group.
Although we’d been warned about the city (too busy, too polluted, too noisy, just too, too much), we wanted to see for ourselves.
All the warnings were true. Lima was loud, tied up with traffic, and polluted. And yes, the sidewalks were stuffed with Limeños.
We were smitten. We loved Lima.
There were parades around every corner; splendid pageantries of indigenous costumes and music. At any one of the ridiculous number of roast chicken restaurants, extended families met for dinner at tables festooned with glowing yellow bottles of Inca Cola.
We ate tasty ceviches, roamed among the skulls in the catacombs under the ancient San Francisco church, and did our best to stay out of the protests in Plaza de Armas, where shield-bearing military police kept silent watch. ( We felt safe wherever we wandered.)
We discovered the joy of hot cinnamon-dusted churros at the wonderful institution of Manolo’s. And, just like Hemingway, we drank legendary Pisco Sours in the faded elegance of the Gran Hotel Bolivar. We learned quickly, that despite the dainty froth of eggwhite on top, the delicious Peruvian brandy-based drink packed a serious punch.
A few days later, we met the rest of our fellow-travellers.
We were a United Nations assemblage of ten; four Americans, two blond-haired Latvian sisters, who spoke in accented English that reminded me of an over-thetop Russian-spy movie, Celine from Toronto, who, we would discover, never stopped smiling — or shopping — and there was us, the two West Coast Canadians.
We were embarking on an 11day G Adventures tour to explore Lima, Cusco, Machu Picchu, the Sacred Valley, Iquitos, and other cultural and archaeological sites with a few days on the Amazon.
Finally, and most importantly, was Cesar Vasquez, our thirtythree year old, G Adventures Peruvian guide, the one charged with the task of creating us into some sort of a cohesive travelling group. Cesar we would discover, could make tickets appear, coordinate cabs, and provide the cultural context to everything we saw.
Our group assembled, we left the next morning from the sealevel of Lima, for Cusco. At 11,152 feet, Cusco, a UNESCO world heritage site, is Peru’s most-visited city. With a population of about 500,000, Cusco is the staging area for visits to the Sacred Valley and Machu Picchu.
From the airport, we boarded a private van and headed into the Sacred Valley.
We walked around, slightly stunned by the heat, the elevation and the sight of hundreds of terraced salt-evaporation ponds that have been in continuous operation for more than 1,000 years at the pre-Inca site of Maras.
More winding mountain roads brought us to the Inca ruin of Moray. It looked like a huge sunken amphitheatre, though archaeologists speculate that it was probably an agricultural laboratory where the Incas studied optimum growing conditions.
The day ended in the cool calm of the San Agustin Hotel in Urubamba. The former colonial hacienda had been transformed into a garden-filled sanctuary.
The next two days were packed with sites and excursions. Our group bonded, one meal and one shared experience at a time.
We visited the Parwa Community Restaurant in the village of Huchuy Qosqo. Being able to pronounce the name of the village is not as important as understanding what the restaurant represents to the local people. It is owned by the Huchuy Qosqo Association, a community-based tourism enterprise developed with funding from Planeterra, a non-profit organization established by G Adventures.
As we dug into our stuffed peppers and dish after dish of perfectly-plated local food, we learned that all the income earned is used for investment in community projects. It is a farm-to-table success, with local farmers supplying the fresh ingredients. Each month, approximately 1500 travellers eat there, almost all, like our group, brought in on G Adventures tours. Employees learn valuable skills, have monthly salaries, pension funds and health insurance. Bringing that many travellers through requires clean water, infrastructure and good hygiene, all of which also benefits the local community.
We boarded the Peru Rail train in the ancient village of Ollantaytambo. Dominated by two massive stone-terraced Inca ruins, the town, with its narrow cobbled street, is a living example of Inca planning.
One-and-a-half hours later, the train pulled into the centre of Machu Picchu Pueblo, formerly known as Aguas Calientes. Sitting in a deep gorge, with no roads in, the town is virtually an island. It is the closest access point to the historical site of Machu Picchu. The next morning we would join a long line of travellers to board perfectly-coordinated busses for a dizzying switch-back ride up, up, and up to the actual site. But for now, we still had the day to do a 15km hike into the orchid-dangling jungle of the Cloud Forest.
“When I was a little girl, I read stories about the Inca Kingdom. I dreamed that I would see it for myself,” said Iveta Bula, that night at dinner. There was a slight pause as she ate more guinea pig, “But ...” she shrugged, a casual movement summing up decades of Latvia’s political history, “... things intervened.”
Arriving at that mountaintop kingdom is nothing short of breathtaking. It is almost inconceivable that someone could dream up such a place, and then somehow, impossibly, bring it into existence. Each new bit of information regarding the placement of temples, the alignment of stars and the exact marking of the solstice, only served to deepen the wonder.
I watched Iveta and her sister Laila, giddy with the realization of a childhood dream. Then I noticed the rest of our group. Whatever our nationality, reasons, or ages, we were all as awestruck and wideeyed as children.
Our next adventure took us inland to Iquitos, a bustling humid city of half-a-million citizens. Iquitos can only be reached by plane or via the world’s biggest river, the Amazon. About 1,100 tributaries empty into that crazy torrent. Ten of those, all bigger than the Mississippi.
We left at dawn, landing two hours later into a city buzzing with auto rickshaws. A short bus ride through a tropical deluge delivered us to our home for the next two nights, the 124’ Amatista Riverboat.
Lined with caramel-varnished woods, our cool cabin felt like we’d walked into our very own jewelry box. The open-sided top deck held lounge chairs and a bar. The window-walls of the dining room sparkled with glasses on linentopped tables.
We were on the Amazon. The hot days were filled with sightings of pink dolphins. We watched, mesmerized, as pods porpoised beside our boat. Howler monkeys, egrets, herons and other birdlife filled our binoculars as naturalist guides zoomed us up river in Zodiacs. We went on guided walks and saw dinosaur-sized house plants and lily pads with the same diameter as a child’s wading pool.
That last night we sat on the upper deck of the Amatista. Our Pisco Sours gleamed as the sun sank.
In only eleven days, we’d accumulated a lifetime of memories, each story made richer because it was shared with our new friends. Our collective dreams had become our shared adventures. The writer was a guest of G Adventures. No one from the company read or approved of this article before publication.