Ollantaytambo

Had a bit of a lie in this morning getting up at the extravagant hour of 7:30 to pack our bags. We had to split all our clothes into wet, damp and dry so we could keep them seperate. After grabbing a coffee from apparently the only shop in town which sells it to take away we arrived in plenty of time to catch our 'backpacker train' to Ollantaytambo. Considering the price of the tickets we were both expecting something a bit better than the slow bumpy ride we ended up on. (in what seemed to be a british rail train from the 1960s) It's even more galling when you realise that the locals pay only 1/10th of the price tourists do, which appears to be a very common situation in South America. As we sat drinking our small cup of coffee the train suddenly slowed to a halt and much to our surprise two hitch-hikers climbed into our carriage for a lift to Ollantaytambo!! Despite all this we did pass some beautiful scenery on the journey and arrived at Ollantaytambo station (sort of as it didn't actually have a platform) and made our way past the hordes of taxi and collectivo drivers offering rides to Cuzco up to the main Plaza. We spent the next hour of so looking for a hostel but since it was only midday everywhere was closed and deserted, after walking around most of the hostels we eventually found a hostel where we got a room for $5 each. Not only did we get a private room for this we also had some spectacular views of the ruins all round the town and even a terrace where we hung all our wet clothes out to dry while we went out. Our first point of call were the inca ruins where we found that there were no maps available and the directions provided were quite confusing but we managed to find our way around eventually. The stonework here was just as impressive if not more so than that at Matchu Pitchu with immense stones forming the temple area of the ruin. There were also several fountains made of channels carved in the rock and hidden waterways to make the fountains appear like they just spring from the walls, the engineering which went into it is amazing and we spent at least 2 hours looking all round the rather small site. By the time we had finished we were both exhausted from all the steps which the Incas seem to have made their mission to build everywhere. We then looked around the town which is still built the way the Incas laid it out originally and much of the buildings still incorporate original Inca walls. We picked up a couple of skewers which came with a spicy green sauce which I really like but Mae found a little too spicy and went to look at the Inca bridge which is now made with metal ropes and steel girders but at least the stonework is original. We also saw many Inca terraces and walls within the town itself which is remarkably pretty. We grabbed a couple of pieces of cake on the way back to the hostel where we packed all our now dry clothes away and chilled for a couple of hours. That evening we went out and found ourselves dinner, a meal of house pasta soup followed by grilled chicken and rice and a cup of Coca tea, for desert we bought ourselves a packet of biscuits which we went back to the hostel to eat before bed.