Dec 18: Making it to Aguas Calientes

This is the town where we missed the train at.

We made it to Aguas Calientes tonight (the last town before Macho Picho), but not without a little bit of drama thrown in for good measure.

We had to take a two-hour bus ride to a town where we took a taxi to another town, where the train station was. The taxi, well they called it a mini-bus, was a van with about 18 people thrown in and had a baby llama strapped to the top of it. I couldn't make this up if I tried.

It only cost us 4.5 soles to reach the train station since we avoided the tourist means of travel and traveled like the locals do. However, we arrived at the train station about four minutes too late.

Apparently, this was my fault, a point Tara made clear. At the bus station yesterday, the train employee told us where to catch the bus and told us to take the 1:30 bus, which was what we wrote down and planned to take.

I left the hostel this morning with the intent to be back by 1 p.m. so we could leave for the bus station then. I knew I was cutting it close, and even stopped and picked up lunch on my way back to the hostel in part because I had correctly assumed Tara hadn't ate yet, but I still wasn't worried because I knew once I was back at the hostel, all we had to do was walk back down the hill, get in a taxi and we'd be fine.

Though I got back to the hostel about 1:15, this is exactly what we did and were sitting in our seats headed down the road at 1:29. It turns out that the railroad employee had also said the busses leave every ten minutes, a fact I had missed since it had been said in Spanish, a language I don't speak, and the language Tara told the employee to speak when he asked, "Spanish or English?"

Tara had wanted to leave on an earlier bus, a fact I didn't know because she never told me and we had agreed to leave on the 1:30 bus. Had I known she wanted to leave at 1:20, I'm pretty sure we would have gotten there by 1:19.

Anyways, all's well that ends well. We were able to get on the next train at no additional cost, despite being told yesterday that train was sold out and if we missed out train, we'd have to buy new tickets.

After we got out tickets, Tara decided she wanted pizza for dinner and I decided I didn't want to keep being called names, so we split up. In the town's center, I ran into the two Germans and Italian guy I had met a few nights ago and walked around with them until we found a restaurant to eat at.

The restaurant had a huge happy hour sign with a list of drinks to pick from. I ordered a margarita, but was told they didn't know how to make them so I chose another drink, one I had never heard of but one of the Germans swore was a good rink. The Italian guy and I got the two-for-one happy hour special and the Germans got mojitos. It turns out they didn't know how to make those neither as they were the worse tasting drinks ever. The German who recommended the drink promised to show me this bar where they make the best whatever it was when I backpack Europe.

Our food took forever to get because once we ordered it, we watched the waitress walk to the market to get things the cook needed. I had alpaca, which I still think is the best meat ever, but it was better from the street vender.

I called the airlines today to see if I could change my ticket to make it home for Christmas. For $700 I can. I think I'm just going to ask my mom to make a second Christmas dinner on New Year's Eve or shortly after I get back.

This town, Agus Calientes, has no main street. Instead, the train tracks go though middle of town. As soon as we got off the train, three or four people surrounded us to get us to stay in their hostel. We ended up getting one right where we got off the train at and it's the nicest and cheapest we've stayed at yet. As we were registering, I couldn't help but feel like we were fish who had just been caught by the hostel lady.