Walking in the Valley
When we arrived back at the hostal from the day trip, I struggled to slot myself into the bathroom and onto the toilet. I didn’t move for several minutes and was left in no doubt the gastro-stop had now worn off. I was also dehydrating quite severely, and was becoming truly thankful I’d bought a travellers emergency kit when I got my pre-flight vaccinations several weeks earlier. The gastro-stop had been wonderful while it lasted, but I’d been popping them the last few days to try and retain control without success. Clearly, it had escalated to something more serious. In the traveller’s kit, were several sachets of hydrolite, and so I started to administer those, and searched for the booklet that came with the kit, as it had a section on dealing with traveller’s runs.
I went to sleep soon after, and Edgard went to visit relatives living in Cusco’s North. When I woke yesterday morning I was definitely not feeling any better, and had absolutely no desire to eat anything. We had realised that, with our “winging it” for Machu Picchu, we had managed to forget about the need for accommodation when we returned to Cusco in a few days, and as such not made the necessary reservation at the hostal. They couldn’t offer us a room on our return, so we’d had to book into one of the local Casa Andinas with a hefty premium.
We used the morning to visit a couple of small museums in central Cusco, the entrance for which was included in the boleto turístico we’d had to purchase for Sacsayhuaman. As the morning progressed, clouds heavy with rain hung low on the peaks around the city, and I hoped the weather would hold out until we’d scaled Machu Picchu.
After lunch, we packed up our stuff, checked out, and got a taxi to the depot from which the colectivos and out of town taxis departed. There were no colectivos going to Ollantaytambo at that time, so we had to hire a taxi on our own. In seemingly no time at all, the driver had us out of the city and weaving along the side of the valley its outskirts.
Here, I got my first real glimpse of how the poor in Cusco lived. Small mud brick houses marched up the steep hillsides, with occasional staircases passing as streets. I could see children and animals (goats, pigs and dogs) roaming freely, but the only vehicular transport these people had were the occasional dilapidated bicycle. From what I could see, the only electricity into these areas was to power the occasional streetlight along the hillside staircases, and they were few and far between.
Not long after, we were into the highlands, and as we careened around corners, I found myself searching for a seatbelt. Past taxi experiences had caused a similar reaction for me, but this one was becoming just a little more urgent—evidenced by Edgard, who had laughed at me the first time I tried to find a seatbelt in the back of a taxi, now also searching for one. Both of us only managed to find one of the two parts we each needed, and so the only outcome was to ask the driver to slow down to sub-sonic speeds. He seemed mildly amused by the request, and within 10–15 minutes was back to his tarmac burning speeds.
We arrived in Ollantaytambo in a time that belied the true distance between it and Cusco, the driver setting us down at a hostal we’d picked from the guide a few days earlier when it became apparent a train from Cusco was out of the question. It had good basic facilities and fortunately, a bathroom connected to the room. When it fell dark, we went for a walk back into the town centre to get something to eat. I really didn’t feel like eating (still) but knew I should. We were too early for most of the places in the tourist section of the town, and so continued into the Plaza de Armas. A young girl asked where I was from, and when I said Australia, asked if I had coins with Kangaroos on them that I could give her. It happened I had brought some Australian currency, but it was still in Lima.
We went to a locutorio and checked our email, and I was reminded of my days at the Student Village when they ran the internet connection for a small computer lab through a 56k modem. Ollantaytambo has tourist infrastructure, but most of it is geared towards day-trippers from Cusco, or overnighters passing through on their way to or from Machu Picchu. By night, it’s fairly quiet except for the handful of restaurants targeted at that market.
By the time we got back to them, an Andean band had started up in one of the restaurants, the sounds of their whistles, fiddle and drums (especially) spilling noisily onto the street. It was quite full of noisy westerners, soaking up the faux culture being presented to them. Three other restaurants were visibly open—one was completely empty, a sign, Edgard told me that their food may not be so good; another was an over priced pizza restaurant (neither of us wanted pizza anyway); and the other had been open long enough to collect a small group of customers. When the doorman of this place saw us eyeing ”the one with the band”, he quickly informed us they were getting a band soon.
He didn’t realise that if he’d had a band, he wouldn’t have us as customers. We were looking for somewhere reasonably quiet.
From dinner there was nothing left to do really, except either join the other noisy westerners, or go back to the hostel and sleep. We opted for the latter, though in my case I had an ulterior motive. I was keen to get up at dawn and do some photos of the terraces, looming silently to the east, but my worsening illness won out and I ended up sleeping in the next morning. For the best, it turned out, as the coming day was going to require all the energy I could muster.