The Chayana Wasi hostel owner gave us some good tips for Machu Picchu while we were having breakfast. He used to be a guide on the Inca Trail so we accepted his information to be good.

A group of police officers came knocking on the hostel door asking if they could use hot showers, they had been in the area for few days and only had access to cold showers. Due to demonstrations (which caused the cancelation of our tour), police have been sent in from Lima, Cusco and etc. to make sure there are no problems around Machu Picchu itself. The demonstrations are all around building of a new hydroelectric station in a village near to Machu Picchu. The government clearly wants to ensure that Machu Picchu tourism is unaffected whilst the issues over the station get resolved.

We took a walk around the old Inca 'streets' of the village and past the walls down to the river. There was a hanging bridge across the river to some walking trails but the information sign let us know that we didn't have time for any of them before our train to Aguas Calientes.

Walking back up the hill towards Plaza de Armas, the centre of the village, we took an alternative route that took us past the market. It was really small but filled with the usual fruit, vegetables and hacked up carcases of animals.

By the time we reached the plaza, we were hot from the walk and the heat of the sun so we grabbed ourselves an ice cream. As we ate our ice creams from the comforts of a bench, we watched the interesting comings and going of village life. Like the guy carrying a whole cow's leg over his shoulder towards the market or the lady with a mobile phone who acted as a public phone booth.

We dragged ourselves away from the plaza to walk down to the train station, we had booked Peru Rail's 1:30pm train to Machu Picchu and had to be there half an hour before. We had bought the cheapest class of travel, Expedition, which was pretty good apart from it being very, very hot inside the carriage. It had roof windows which were great for viewing the high mountains but the sun blazed through too and A/C was not working properly. It was quite a shaky ride too, not what we expected but maybe the rails get moved about a bit with all the earthquakes and tremors. There were really nice views on the journey and we got a little sweet snack and drink.

The owner from the Varayoc Hostel was waiting for us at the station in Aguas Calientes which was handy. The small town seems to have the railway line as its main street and when the train disembarked it was like a scene from India, hordes of people swarming around the side of the train. We were swiftly taken out the throng of the crowd and up the street to our hostel. It was a simple twin room with a bathroom and television, very basic but equally very cheap for a one night stop (for Aguas Calientes) and an early start in the morning.

We bought our bus tickets for tomorrow morning to make sure we get up to Machu Picchu early, we've decided against the walk up.

With the bus tickets in our pocket, we took a walk around Aguas Calientes town which is set between the mountains with the railroad and a river running straight through the middle. There are a few bridges over the river but not the railroad, it's treated like a pavement.

We walked round a few of the Tripadvisor top choice restaurants and ended up at number two, Indio Feliz. It had a 3 course menu, with choices from soup to start with, then trout or chicken followed by a dessert. Unusually, David's choice of Criolla Chicken in Pisco Sauce was better than Maria's grilled trout.

One thing we worked out very quickly is that Aguas Calientes is definitely more expensive than the majority of Peru. I guess it's a tourist mecca and they know they can milk it.

We tried to go to bed early but the hostel was quite noisy and our room was right by the stairs. There were no curtains on high window and the stairwell lights shone through for most of the night. There wasn't much soundproofing either, we (or Maria really) could hear everything from reception.