Machu Pichu Village

And our nearly disastrous train ride from Cuzco.

This is the logo of the train and the front of the train.

It was to be a two and a half hour train ride. We left Cuzco at 6 am. The first train out. We went back and forth, in forward and then reverse, and back again, over and over, as we worked our way up the mountain. It was the last day the train will use the old system (Jan. 1, 2008) (After that everyone takes a bus to and from Ollantaytambo.) We made it up the historic, if annoying, switch backs in without incidence.

In Ollantaytambo we were stopped. We were told that the tracks ahead were ruined in a land slide and that we would have to wait for the tracks to be cleared. We sat there sucking diesel fumes for four hours. The little shop at the train station ran out of water and they asked us to stay with the train and not visit Ollantaytambo.

Eventually we got going...

Kim snapped these when I wasn't paying attention. On the left is me in my "good luck New Year's hat." (Yellow, in Cuzco, is the good luck color for the New Year, but that hat was the unluckiest lucky hat ever.)

On the right is me looking at the only remaining rail track.

The left is a view from the train window of the wall face we were inches from.

On the right is the work crew who had just cleared the only remaining set of rails. The other one, the outer set, was washed into the river.

This is the view from the train as we were against the wall and the ruined rails were hanging over this river.

We missed the wall and the river by inches. But more importantly we missed the land slide entirely. So is it a lucky or unlucky hat?

This is the view from the train finally coming into the little village of Machu Pichu.

This is the church on the main square.

And below is the famous statue.