We were up at Sparrow’s fart this morning to the 0700 train to Machu Picchu. Well, the township used to be called Machu Picchu, but so as not to confuse it with the Inca ruins, the town was renamed to Agua Calienntes. There are hot springs in the town somewhere, but we never got to them.
Agua Calienntes is possibly the only town in the world that can be reached by rail but not by road. The only road out of town goes to the ruins, and that road connects to nothing else. The many buses that ply the route were all brought to town by train. The train is quite slow, taking 4 hours to travel 110km. Coming out of Cusco, the train climbs a very high hill and goes through four switchbacks. This and the fact that the railway track is lined with houses whose doors face the track, makes it very slow going.
The 18km to the first stop at Poroy takes an hour. Machu Picchu is a lower altitude than Cusco, so the rest of the trip is mostly downhill with another two switchbacks taking the train into a river valley that flows all the way to Agua Calienntes. The river was racing with seemingly unnavigable rapids and a hydro electric station running from the flows.
We took the bus from Agua Calienntes to the ruins and a short sharp climb had us quickly overlooking the ruins. Huayna Picchu towers over the site (that is the mountain seen in all the postcards), while the actual Machu Picchu mountain is at the back of the site.
The ruins are amazing, particularly the temple sites. The sun temples has a curved wall on two sides with a window in each side. One faces the sunrise of the summer solstice and the other the sunrise of the winter solstice. Very little is known about the purpose of the site and theories abound. An original assessment that 80% of the population were female was reassessed recently with tests showing the population to be 50:50 and many of the females reassessed as lightly boned males, most probably royals.
The site was ‘rediscovered’ in 1911 by American archaeologist Hiram Bingham, although he also ‘discovered’ two families living on the site and was shown the way there by a local boy and a farmer . We arrived in the sunlight, but as the day progressed the clouds moed in and by 3:30 the rain was pouring down so we caught the bus back down the hill. There is a walking path that goes straight down the hill, while the road is understandably zig-zaggy. 
Enterprising local children use this to their advantage. Soon after we began our descent, we saw a young boy dressed as an Incan messenger waving franticly at the bus. As we turned the next hairpin and traveled along the mountain, there he was again. This continued all the way down the mountain until at last he sprinted across the bridge into Ague Calienntes ahead of the bus. He then boarded the bus and greeted us all, before walking down the aisle of the bus collecting money. It is the most energetic busking I have ever seen and he would make 20-40 Sols for the 25 minute trip down the hill. He would then catch the next bus to the top and start again. You have to admire the effort.
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