No mad gecko: octobre 2011

lundi 10 octobre 2011

Cuzco - Machu Pichu

Come back to Cuzco 4 years later with the firm intention to do Machu Pichu !! Thankfully this time absolutely no problem at all. Ok Machu Pichu is THE Peruvian touristic business but it's definitely worth it and they know that ;)

We choose an half expensive option bus to Ollantaytambo and then train to Aguas Clientes aka Machu Pichu town an artificial touristic town near Machu Pichu. Overthere everything is ten times more expensive than in the rest of Peru and they even have a Machu Pichu tax on the top of the bills...veridic. Hopefully we were in the low season and hostals and restaurants were cutting their prices ! We chose to climb the Wayna Pichu wich is a peak dominating the site at 7am so you have to get up around 5am hike form aguas calientes to the entrance of the site (where most of the tourists take a bus...). The entrance on the site around 6am was stunning with still a lot of mist giving a magical touch to the site.

Then we climbed the Wayna Pichu where you have a unique view of the site and also some ruins...crazy incas...it's hard to imagine the work of building a city in such a remote and steep place. 7.30 at the top and you've already climbed more than 1000 meters...pfiou !

Then we spend the rest of the morning hanging around in the site with more and more tourist coming in...and it's the low season...arg.

Train to Aguas Calientes

In less than an hour the vegetation goes from dry to jungle.

Machu Pichu and Wayna Pichu in the back early in the morning

The mysterious Inca rabbit.

View on the way to Wayna

Pretty steep Wayna !

And the view from the Wayna

Again...

Inca construction in the "big" cave

I love the panoramic feature of my camera :)

Good stuff. Ernie got a full check-up in an overland vehicule specialist :)

As well we found some bouldering near Cuzco. Massive roofs. Powerful climbing. Sore muscles :) Toursitic stuff are nice but we need to CLIMB !

Huw contracts his abs.

Going out from the roofs...

On the road to Cuzco

I know not many updates lately but often on the road....hopefully it's changing :)

After Hatun Machay we head to Lima for a few days to have some decent civilised rest. Restaurants, bars, and parties mostly. We left some people overthere with other joining the trip. We ended up staying a bit longer in Lima with unexepected truck issue...again :) This could have been way worse...the breaks just happened not to work on the way out of Lima and we crashed into a taxi which crashed into another car. Tom and I spent the whole day first to deal with the damaged cars and their drivers. The taxi was pretty well smashed and the Peru way of dealing withr accidents is to find a deal between the two parties with the police as a councelor. So we went with the taxi driver to have a quote for the reparations and we paid for this as well for the all the days he won't be able to work. Insurance representatives were also there but we haven't yet understood their role... The end of the day was spent to find a garage specialist in truck breaks...we've been to maybe more than 10 different garages before finding this garage apparently unique in Lima. It appears that in Lima the garages are specialist in something in particular and do not do something else. So you have the car break specialist, the truck steering specalist, etc... Crazy country.

Then we mostly drove, Peru's big... from Lima to Atiquipa when we did some beach bouldering and head for Arequipa for a couple of days and then had the massive drive ever on a dirt road through the Colca Canyon.

Atiquipa beach (unfortunately not so warm !)

Lety's beach boulder !

Around the beach lot's of pink granite boulders but most of them either too small or too big. We still managed to find some nice problems which kept us busy for 2 days.