Dec 8
Just a recovery day. I had to buy my ticket to Macchu Picchu. I had plans to go Wed, but I could not go until Thursday becasue it seems there has been a protest, a bunch of local cusconians layed on the tracks for two days to block all trains. The locals are upset because the gov´t awarded a 20 year contract to a new busing system to Macchu Picchu and the busing company is partly owned by the Mayor of Cusco. Currently the train is the only way to Macchu Picchu. It´s expensive too. $65 for the train, $12 bus and $23 to bet in the park. It was very impressive, but very crowded and touristy, almost disney like, but worth seeing. But I must admitt that the ¨City of Gold¨, regardless how hard the hike was, was much nicer because we were the only ones their, and it was better manacured. It felt like yo were actully dicovering it as aposed to being shown it.
On the way back from MP the train was going back and forth on the tracks in a super slow sea saw motion. It was horibly slow. Around 8:30, still on the train that was due to arrive at 7:30 pm, I had to make a crucial decision because the train was going no where fast and I had a bus to catch for Puno at 9:30. So i found an ulocked side door and I jumped off the train and ran down some dirty street through soom cusco ghetto, and grabbed a cab back to the house to the ghetto house where I was staying to collect my things and headed for the bus station. I got there on time but of course the original bus had broken down and my new bus wasn´t to leave until 10:00pm which ended up being 10:25pm. Frieking cusco. So I met this extremly butch lady on the bus that is trasvelling for a year in South America. She was strange. She sat down beside me, it was not her seat, and started bitching about her mentsrual cycle, wow too much information. Besides that The bus trip was fine but the bus would stop at these random places in the middle of the night, and let on all kinds of people on that smelled sour. Yuck!!!