Peru Rail

Today we took the most expensive train per kilometer in the world. Peru Rail from Cuzco to Aguas Calientes. Poor Carla was so stomach sick when she woke up but we had to get to our train at 7:45am.

Peru Rail and Inka Rail are both so expensive because it's the only way to get to Aguas Calientes and Machu Picchu from Cusco. It's completely monopolized and perfect to make money off of the 2,500 people who enter Machu Picchu every day (when we got our entrance tickets for Machu Picchu the day before yesterday, there were only 100-200 tickets left).

We all had tea, bananas and crackers for breakfast and took a taxi van to the Poroy train station.

Carla had such stomach pains and was throwing up all morning and during the van ride. We finally got her into the station and with her crying, the workers put us in our own car so we could sit together.

After 15 minutes Carla was feeling better and we got tea, water, coffee, orange juice and snacks.

Our steward's name was Fabrizio and he was so good to us. He was super cute too. He talked to us in English for a while then we finally told him we spoke Spanish... Oops. The face he made was so funny because we were letting him struggle with English when we knew Spanish perfectly fine.

He also played great music in our car like Shaggy, Rihanna and David Guetta. He said he wanted us to have a party in his car since it was literally only us 6 girls and him.

The train is beautiful! It's mostly windows, even in the roof to see the great views, river and mountains of Peru.

Below are brave people hiking the Inca Trail!

We each only packed a backpack full of stuff for our overnight trip to Aguas Calientes/Machu Picchu.

Aguas Calientes is so beautiful! It's basically a super super small village alone the river in a valley of the Andes Mountains.

It was definitely very touristy though since you had to go through the village to get to Machu Picchu. Actually, to get from the train to the village you have to weave through a maze of super traditional Peruvian market stands.

Aguas Calientes is so small that there are no cars or taxis. Everyone just walks or bikes. We walked the main street (it was basically the only street) to get to our hostel at the top of the hill. We got two three-bed private rooms again.

We put our stuff down and went out to buy snacks then to the hot springs. It cost 10 soles to get into the hot springs and it was so nice!

We were all kinda stressed from traveling and being sick and all hanging out in a hot spring really brought us back to reality of the amazing place we were staying. We would look up from the springs and there were nothing but beautiful mountains surrounding us.

The bottom of the hot springs were gravel which felt good on our tired feet. It drizzled for a little bit but it wasn't bad since we were basically in a hot tub.

We had great conversation too. I learned that even though Carla is a vegetarian, she used to eat almost every part of animals including organs. Sam also told me all about the Grand Canyon and how I have to go... Maybe that'll be a good round trip with my mama.

Traveling around South America has made me realize how much of my own county I haven't seen yet! I definitely wasn't to focus on that after this trip, especially because I have friends all over the country.

After we showered, and I realized how bad my sunburn on my shoulders and back from yesterday was, we went to look for dinner.

On the main street, there are TONS of restaurants with workers outside them shoving menus in your face and yelling about happy hour specials.

By the way, happy hour is the same in Spanish and English... And probably every other language/culture that likes to drink.

We got a 6 for 1 drinks with unlimited chips and guacamole happy hour special from one restaurant so we jumped on that! We didn't even care what food they had. It was kinda funny because the restaurant workers were rivaling each other for our attention the entire time.

All of the food looked pretty similar too: alpaca, trout, spaghetti, streak, chicken, Guinea pig and Mexican food. There was so much Mexican did but it was a lot more expensive than the other stuff for some reason.

For 15 soles we got a soup or salad, entrée and juice/smoothie. I shared minute soup (tomato base with egg and small pieces of beef) and a stuffed avocado (with other vegetables and cheese) with Sam, and ordered spaghetti with meat sauce and a banana smoothie. All was really good! I would have gotten Guinea Pig to try but I didn't see it on the menu until after I ordered :/

During our dinner, a young man went up to Mindee with a flower and a note and told her it's from his friend across the street. The note said that she's beautiful and he's been looking at her all night and asked if she'd like to be friends. He also asked if she had any free texting apps. Mindee got so embarrassed but it was still so cute.

When we left the restaurant, we bought some passion fruit, bananas and apples for our Machu Picchu hike tomorrow. Waking down the street, this high school-looking boy came up to me and asked if he could take a photo with me... um, ok. He had a bunch of his other friends get in the shot and his girl friends had about 5 cameras to take pictures... I got Sheridan, Sam and Carla to get in the picture with me but obviously Carla started freaking out for some reason and ran away...

Sam, Sheridan and I were literally in bed by 7:15. We strayed up till about 8:15 researching Machu Picchu. The wikipedia page is actually really interesting if anyone wants to check it out.

We learned later that the other room watched Emperor's New Groove on Netflix! I was so jealous! They probably learned more about Cuzco and Machu Picchu than we did!

We're all so excited for tomorrow's hike but we gotta get up really so I need to get to bed! 

Night, Aguas Calientes!