Strike

Day 258 – Cuzco, Peru

Instead of going back straight to Cuzco after Machu Picchu, I had decided to stay an extra night in Aguas Calientes -sorry, Machu Picchu Pueblo.

If I had a knee mutiny yesterday, today I was feeling the aches and pain everywhere! Using only one trekking pole gave me muscle aches in the shoulders, and my legs had very arrested ideas of what I was and wasn’t going to do. Especially the latter one.

So I didn’t go around the town to have a better look at things as I had wanted to do -in particular, I had thought about going to the hot springs, which would have been wonderful for my aches, but I hadn’t the courage!

At the appropriate time, I made my way to the train station, stopping in the French bakery in the hope to drown my pains in a real croissant; I ended up with a pain aux raisins that was so-so. A bit dry, a hint of cinnamon that I am not overfond of, but not bad. 

Then I arrived at the train station, where after sitting in the rain on a wet bench, I finally understood that there was a delay with the my train. Ah! There was a strike that had interrupted all train travel during the day, no train had circulated at all. To understand that, it took me queueing at the ticket office, reading an English notice in very small characters, and looking at people’s tickets over their shoulder.

So I ended up waiting 4 hours for a train -frankly, the people who had the morning trains had to wait 10 hours, so I’m not complaining.

The problem of course was the bus shuttle from Ollantaytambo to Cuzco, the travel agency told me that they wouldn’t be there and to negotiate a shared taxi with other passengers. But the bus had waited and I had a guide with a list of name -I was the first on the list- calling them as we got off the train. Two hours and a racketeering stop -when people armed with clubs stop the traffic and there is the noise of monies changing hand, what else can it be?- later, we were back in Cuzco.

So instead of being back at the hostel around 8pm, it was midnight, I didn’t dare take my backpack out of storage to get clean clothes for a shower, I just changed into my PJs and slid into bed.

A quick note on the next day: laundry day, doing-nothing-because-my-muscles-still-hurt-day, and the day where I take an overnight bus to Lima. So, no more news for a while. The hostel is putting red balloons and stuff up for Valentine’s day. The staff call me by my first name. I am known 😀

It’s cold, raining and there was a peal of thunder a moment ago. Brrr!