Machu Picchu Camino Inca Trail Cuzco Peru 1996
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A few moments later our group of twenty-three assembled, facing the main street of Aguas Calientes, along with several other tourist groups and locals. Aguas Calientes is like no other. From a distance it looks like a collection of washing lines attached to corrugated-iron shacks. The main street resembles the Wild West with its high pavements separating a fifteen yard trench of mud. Each side has its small bars, restaurants and catch-peso tourist shops. Down the centre run two narrow-gauge railway lines housed on rotting wooden sleepers. A melee of locals and back-packers crossed in between, picking their way through the muddy pools. In the middle, two Indian girls practised their volleyball skills while street sellers called out the day's bargains from colourful street-stands. Everything could be purchased: beads, necklaces and handbags, bananas, apples, and roasted cashew nuts. |
Leaving the train was almost as dangerous as getting on. The darkness had descended and the platform at Ollantaytambo extended only twenty metres into the pitch black night. The train had halted prematurely and the carriage now loitered some thirty metres from the rickety platform. There was a drop of four feet to the ground, so I tossed my rucksack to the dusty earth and climbed down from the carriage steps. Rob tossed me his rucksack which I dumped aside a barbed-wire fence. He still had back pains and complained of muscular stiffness throughout his body, which came as no surprise to those who had witnessed his valiant efforts. We waited for the others in a clearing by the side of the track and I noticed Maricela's mother waving enthusiastically to me from inside the carriage. I waved back to her and smiled, wishing I was still on the train with them, and not returning to hotel Cahuide.
Geoff passed by and congratulated me on my style, but I outstretched my arms and gave him an apologetic glance. There would be no romance from that brief encounter despite my innermost wishes. I had been silly - Maricela had a daughter and a cluster of sparkling rings, but that little optimism and flirtatious energy had granted me a special interest during the journey, and I felt justified in those lonely months of study which had improved my linguistic skills.
The train's whistle screeched out in the darkness and the yellow and orange carriages shuddered slowly away from the clearing. I looked across at the train to make my final gesture of friendship to the close-knit family on board, and there leaning out of the window waving furiously towards me, was Maricela. In a fleeting impulse, I shouted, "Plaza de Armas. Maņana por la tarde."
"A que hora?" she replied.
"A las dos," I returned, as the train vanished around the bend and into the gloomy night.
For a man of my age, I was uncommonly slow on the uptake. Maricela had asked me a number of times in roundabout ways how long I intended to stay in Cuzco. All the time she was chatting me up and I had behaved like a stupid gringo. But then I wondered if she would meet me in the Plaza de Armas tomorrow or had I set myself up for another embarrassing fall?
The bus journey to Cuzco endured two more hours in an inhospitable cold. The two back seats were like a scene from the Crimea with Rob, Tony and SJ stretched out across their metal framed expanses, covered in rugs and fleeces. Whatever happened now we had to be careful. There were still another ten weeks of the adventure to run, and it would have distressed me unendingly to have lost just one individual from this incomparable selection of personalities.
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