(Aguas Calientes, Peru)
A few posts back, I mentioned that I would be returning to the subject of Aguas Calientes later…it is now “later”!
Aguas Calientes is located immediately below Machu Picchu. From here, it is a 25-minute bus ride (or a couple of hours of seemingly endless steps) up the mountain to the entrance of Machu Picchu.
My first impressions were more or less favourable. We had arrived mid-morning by train, so the initial rush of tourists had already departed for Machu Picchu itself and it was not yet time for lunch. The town looked somewhat hastily built, almost as if the buildings originally had one or two stories and gradually had additional floors placed on them as tourist demand grew. The bridges were strictly functional – there was no mistaking them for the beautiful bridges of Bosnia & Herzegovina. It wasn’t a perfect example of urban planning, then, but the town did seem to have everything we needed. Besides, we were here to see Machu Picchu!
A number of us decided to visit the nearby Machu Picchu Museum. It was located about half an hour’s walk from downtown; the walk through a narrow valley was pleasant and provided a few “Kodak Moments” along the way. The Museum provided some useful background information that helped me to better appreciate the engineering aspects of Machu Picchu the next day. There was also a serene botanical garden right beside the museum.
Alas, upon returning to the Aguas Calientes for lunch, the character of the town had begun to change. Outside almost every restaurant, an urgent cry of “Amigo!” begged us to visit their establishment. Somebody in our group joked that “I’ve never had so many friends in one place”. Somebody else suggested that some Spanish words don’t map up exactly with English, so “amigo” doesn’t necessarily mean “friend” in quite the same way. In any case, walking through the streets here wasn’t as much fun as it was elsewhere in Peru. I tried to say “no, gracias” with as much courtesy as I could, but that only seemed to increase the hard sell approach.
I found out later that these “barkers” are basically compensated only when they bring in patrons to the restaurant. The approach seems to be that the hard sell will naturally repel some people but it will bring in others. And so the hard sell continues.
In the past few years, additional limits have been placed on Machu Picchu in an attempt to control the damage that mass tourism can bring to such popular sights. Perhaps this is why the hard sell is so prevalent: there is increasing competition for a market that is no longer expanding at such a rapid rate. However, there is clearly still money to be made: “Happy Hour” consists not of 2-for-1 drinks, but (unbelievably) 4-for-1 drinks!
While prices were higher in Aguas Calientes than elsewhere, the quality of the food did not suffer at the restaurants we visited. This is one of the advantages of travelling with an experienced group leader. I enjoyed my first alpaca steak here and it was so good that I ordered another alpaca dish for lunch the next day. It was similar to steak, except much leaner and without any gristly bits.
Aguas Calientes did not detract from my enjoyment of Machu Picchu. Any discomfort with the hard sell completely disappeared when I caught my first glimpse of Machu Picchu.. However, unless you are a fan of unbridled “wild west” boom towns, Aguas Calientes may strike you as a place that you visit because you want to get to somewhere else…not because it is a destination in its own right.