Monday, May 27, 2013

A Thousand and One Names

Even without doing the four day Inca Trail trek, which I would have loved to do, going to Machu Picchu was an adventure for us in finding the right person who would take us to our next travel segment or arrangement. Our first entry point was Cusco; we flew in there from Lima. Acclimatized for the rest of the day in Cusco, had wholesome quinoa and chicken soups at Pachapapa in Plaza San Blas (where the steep climb to our abode began) and wandered through the old city to Plaza de Armas -- a beautifully laid out and lit plaza major (the main square).

We added the Sacred Valley tour to the previously made Machu Picchu travel arrangements and so left early to catch the tour bus. Our first handover was from the person at our hospedaje (hostel/hotel) to someone who after first five minutes vanished. Yes, really vanished, never to be seen again. Many tour buses kept coming and filling, but no one called our names. With our limited Spanish and the general chaos of the place we couldn't really get our questions answered. After a good half hour of waiting a bus returned looking for us. They had apparently called our names before with hardly a recognizable syllable. This was the trend for the rest of the trip with flavors of our names we didn't know existed. This delay and a couple of tourist trap shopping stops further delayed the first stop to the ruins at Pisac; the ruins and the hilltop citadel at Pisac were certainly worth the wait though.

Later, I think the only reason we were able to have our paid lunch at Urubamba was because I recognized that the person being repeatedly called out as Imate Dasu (with that spelling) was actually Srimati. I couldn't decide which of the five unclaimed names were mine and so finally I pointed to one of them and then everybody was happy! Eventually, the cumulative delays limited our visit to the spectacular Ollantaytambo ruins to the view from the base of the valley as we had a train to catch (medium gauge and partial windows at the top to see the mountain peaks) for Aguas Calientes, the base of Machu Picchu.

At Aguas Calientes, we were to look for Orlando with a board with our names on it. No board with our names in any form. Well, Orlando decided to bring the board with the hotel name instead (you can guess why). One of the hotel names sounded familiar but we had gone through so many hotel names that we couldn't say that was ours, and yes we were following the instructions. Eventually, Srimati decided to a check with the person with the familiar sounding hotel name and there was Orlando. At the hotel, the guide met us. We declined the sunrise option (surprise, surprise) and chose the eleven o'clock one. One guide with a small green flag was to meet us at the Machu Picchu gate. We reached there after a twenty five minute bus ride with stunningly beautiful scenery and hair raising cliffs. (I think these steep peaks have formed by erosion and exfoliation of a large granitic batholith; granites exfoliate but this is really on a massive scale.)

You can guess by now that there several green flags but none with the guide from the tour sub-contractor. In that chaos, we found this guide as he was calling out yet another set of names that we somehow thought we should check out (developing artificial intelligence?). Not a spot of green on him; he joked that maybe he should wave my green sweater over his head for people to find him. We were then handed over to another guide with a blue umbrella and things went more or less smoothly (except at one point I somehow lost our group while taking pictures and checking out something, and had to go around that circuit twice). See the iconic photo of that spellbinding site.

 On the return journey, the handover I was most unsure of was coming up at Ollantaytambo train station that night. We were to go find a woman named Marina who would have a list with our names - but not a placard this time - and she was to put us on the right bus to Cusco. We were not quite sure how we were going to find her.  But guess again, among tens of placards with people's names, there was a woman with a placard with my name on it the least distorted of all of the ones we had embraced so far. It is another story that Marina couldn't get any of the bus drivers to take our group because all the buses leaving for Cusco were full and clearly proper arrangements were not made for us, but in the end she found a camioneta (a van).

I do want to come back again to do the Inca trail trek. Or do I really want to come back for experiencing a completely new set of handovers?










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