To Machu Picchu: Day One, Part One

Friday, May 25 8:30 pm PT

Please see my post Maps for more information about this image!

"I didn't have time to write yesterday! We left Cuzco around 9 am and began our drive towards Machu Picchu. The trip from Cuzco was really long, but was filled with amazing views. We totaled about nine or ten hours for the complete trip our first day, with a few stops along the way. Outside of Cuzco, there is a lot of hilly farmland with mountains off in the distance. The highway is well-paved but very curvy in some places. 

After about an hour and a half of driving, we reached a cliff and began a winding descent into the valley. At the bottom lay Urubamba, one short stop on our journey. 

A view of Urubamba from the top

On the descent we were able to see letters or words carved into the steep mountain adjacent to us on the other side of the valley. (I don't know what they meaning of these were, but many communities that were settled in a valley have this sort of writing on the surrounding mountains. Sort of like terrestrial graffiti or something? In Cuzco, it says "Viva Peru" so perhaps they are mostly patriotic or nationalist monuments.) The view on our descent was incredible: a main road through Urubamba cuts through two huge mountains, and a river runs perpendicular to them. The hill we were on ran parallel to this river, known as the Urubamba River. Once at the bottom, it was clear that Urubamba is very different from Cuzco. The streets and people appeared better kept, and since they are in a valley the roads are mostly flat (unlike Cuzco, which is Hill City). 

[I have to interject in my own story at this point (I wrote this in my journal) because something has been dying to get out all day: I HATE public toilets in Peru.]

We drove on and after another 30 minutes we began our ascent into a hilltop village known as Ollantaytambo (pronounced Oy-yan-tay-tam-bo), which was very quaint and reminded me somewhat of the "Old World" exhibit at the Milwaukee Public Museum with all the examples of housing from around the world, but the styles here were Peruvian. It was very clearly a tourist destination, and there was a very clean and orderly market full of souvenirs. 

Down in the valley, following the Urubamba river towards Ollantaytambo

The market in Ollantaytambo

Ollantaytambo is home to a temple of the Incan Sun God. There is a huge compound on top of a hill, but we opted for distance photos instead of paying s/.70 each. (Travis and I later went on a tour where we got to go inside, which I will discuss later). We drove on and eventually ended up in a town called Santa Maria..."