Asia-Europe 2012

From Cusco we continued through the Andean plateaus on our way to Lake Titicaca. Except for the mountains, the land was so flat as if we were at sea level. Only the llamas were reminding us we were actually over 3500m above sea level. Along the route there was also the railway of the Andean Explorer (a 10 hours round trip from Cusco to Puno costs US$220 per person, so I´m wondering whether they have any customers at all…)

Since we couldn´t see anything while travelling by train during night, we decided to take a 3 hour walk along the railway.

As any tourist visiting Peru, we wanted to check out this place as well. But everybody seems to be interested in making this experience as inconvenient as possible. You can’t buy the train tickets from Peru Rail, you have to get them from the travel agency, which in turn won’t sell them to you unless you buy a package and pay their generous profit margin. Ok, you want to go by road? Not possible as well, there is no road. By foot? Go back to travel agency to get a pass, and again deal with the same people that want to sell you a package you don’t actually need. In the best case scenario, getting one person from Cusco to Machu Picchu (some 90kms) is a 8 hours job, and the logistics involved is “impressive”: switch one train, 3 buses, meet with several guides and/or drivers along the way and so on. We finally got there at night (thanks again to the travel agency which made a mistake when ordering tickets from Peru Rail, so taking pictures in the canyon was out of the question), so we had to waste one more night in the village.

One can visit the Colosseum, the Louvre or the Bran castle (all of which are older, better engineered and better preserved) for under $20, but has to spend over $200 to see Machu Picchu. What a ripoff! Long story short, the whole experience in Peru can be resumed to something like “many years ago there were some smart indians around here who built interesting things; then the Spaniards came and built more; and now it’s us, the Peruvians, trying to make as much money as possible out of this, especially since we can’t do anything else properly. Fortunately, some gringos came to our country and showed the rest of the world what we have here, or else nobody would have ever visited our country…”

Anyways, here are the pics:

Cusco, the historical capital of the Inca empire, is the best looking city we found in Peru, with narrow streets and old buildings. We stayed there for 2 days, while trying to organize the departure to Machu Picchu.

For some reason, all flat tires happen during night time. Why? At least this one wasn’t in the neutral zone between two countries, just like the last one…