Today was the second day of the Macchu Picchu trip. Surprisingly, I didn’t feel sore after all of the biking yesterday. We woke up at 7:00am and had a great breakfast of bread, juice, jam, and scrambled eggs. After breakfast, we started the trekking portion of our trip, which would be about 15 km from Santa Teresa to Aguas Calientes. Although the trekking portion wasn’t difficult, it was still a lot of walking. There was an option to zipline for the first 7km instead of trekking, but I wasn’t too sure about the safety.
My favorite parts of the trek were crossing the Urubamba river in a cable car and stopping at the Mandor and Alccamayo Waterfalls to take a short rest and dip our feet in the cool glacial water. The cable car can be thought of as a zipline, only with a small carriage on it. We got into the carriage, and the people on the other side pulled the rope to help bring us across. It was a little scary, but I found it to be really fun. If there is anything that I will remember from this trip (aside from the wonderful Macchu Picchu), it will be the great variety of activities and the general amount of exhilaration.
Once we had walked about 6km, we arrived at the Mandor and Alccamayo Waterfalls. These are man-made waterfalls that are created by the flow of water through the hydroelectric plant. My feet were feeling a bit sore from the walking, so I took off my shoes and socks and dpped my feet in the cool water. I was actually expecting it to be freezing, but it was onl a bit colder than the water we went rafting in. After about 15 more minutes of walking, we arrived at the hydroelectric plant, where we had a nice snack of bread and avocados with lime and salt.
We then trekked along the train tracks for another 2km before arriving at our restaurant for lunch, Inti Raqsay. Johan claimed that this restaurant had the best food in all of Peru, something I was skeptical of initially. However, after having the food, I can say that it was one the best meals I have ever had. We had a four course meal consisting of potato salad with tomatoes, quinoa soup, beef stew with rice and vegetables, and banana cake with caramel-banana sauce. Additionally, we drank some lemongrass juice. We were all so full after the meal that we were worried about having to walk another 5km, but thankfully we got to relax in the hammocks of the restaurant. It was a great to rest a bit and let the food digest before continuing on to our final destination of the day, Aguas Calientes. We arrived around 4:00pm, after which we went to the natural hot springs. They smelled kind of funny, but were relaxing nonetheless.
Something that I should mention is the confusion about the name of the town and the general area around the place we call Macchu Picchu. Tourists call the town Aguas Calientes, but in reality, Aguas Calientes is the name of the river flowing through the town. The correct name for the town is Macchu Picchu town. Additionally, the name of the site that we call Macchu Picchu is not actually Macchu Picchu. There is a mountain nearby that is the Macchu Picchu Mountain; it is for this reason that Hiram Bingham named the archaeological site Macchu Picchu when he discovered it in 1911. The actual name of the archaeological site is actually unknown.
After we returned from the hot springs, we took a quick shower before heading out for dinner. Here, we had a three course meal consisting of a stuffed avocado, grilled trout with garlic sauce, and a glass of pineapple juice. The trout was great, but I wasn’t the biggest fan of the sauce. Instead, I liked the spicier garlic sauce they gave us on the side.
After dinner, we headed to a general store to buy snacks for our trip to Macchu Picchu tomorrow. We could feasibly have bought food at the archaeological site, but everything is really expensive there. For example, a bottle of water that would cost 1 sol in the market costs 17 soles at Macchu Picchu.
When we returned to the hostel, we went to sleep right away. It was difficult to fall asleep because we were all so excited about Macchu Picchu tomorrow, but we knew that we had to get some sleep if we were to have any energy.
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