Ollantaytambo, half-way to Machu Picchu (MP)...

Talor: With Erik all healed up, and feeling the adrenaline from the white-water rafting, we were finally ready to tackle MP ... well, almost. We heard Ollantaytambo is a pretty, quaint, little village half-way to MP, with impressive ruins of their own well worth a visit. And we can take a train from there to MP for a cheaper fare than from Cusco. Being the cheapies that we are, we decided to try it. Purchased our round-trip train tickets online, and then the next day, headed out. A one-and-a-half hour bus ride (where we were packed in like sardines) later we arrived into Urubamba. Shared a taxi with a nice Belgian couple for a 15-minute ride to Ollantaytambo.

It was raining when we arrived so we followed the Belgian couple to Hostal Home Sweet Home, where they had a reservation. It seemed like a nice place so we bargained with the owner and got a room with a view of the surrounding mountains for 50 soles. Turns out the whole town had no electricity or water until 3:00pm... oy!

Took a walk to Plaza de Armas and found it super-touristy... so not like the chill villages we had been to prior. It was not our scene, but we just needed to get through the day, and we would hop on a train for MP. Well, it was not as easy as you think... reasonably priced food was hard to find, and the prices at the stores were crazy inflated. The price of the water was clearly marked on the bottle, but they tried to charge two or three times the price... it was as if they see a foreigner coming and peg him as an easy mark. When I complained, they lowered the price, but it just left a bad taste in my mouth. Back at the Hostal, once power and water was restored, we tried to shower, but it was crap! With one of those electric shower heads, the water was barely a dribble and never got anywhere near hot... argh! Then later in the evening, we went in search of food and found a couple of “local” eateries with cheap set menus for dinner, but apparently, they shut down around 8:00pm, so we ended eating in an overpriced restaurant, paying New York prices... damn! O well, tomorrow is another day...

Erik: At first glance, Ollantaytambo seemed nice, with narrow, cobblestone streets, quaint village architecture, and a large Inca fortress looming on the hill above town. It probably was a nice little town 10 years ago, but now has been totally taken over by the massive influx of tourism. Every restaurant in town served pizza (the omni-pleasing tourist fare), and every shop sold tourist trinkets such as pseudo-hand-woven, supposedly alpaca caps and sweaters. Even the ruins had been hijacked by tourism, and charged a whopping $10 entry fee, as opposed to the $1 or so we'd paid to visit most other ruins. (A bad omen for MP, which was to provide the superlative sticker shock!) In the end, we were quite happy to be catching the over-priced train the next morning.

Photos of Ollantaytambo:

Ollantaytambo, Peru