Day One of Machu in the Books!

Welp. It's a good start. Didn't keel over yet. Didn't step on poisonous snakes. So far, so good. We took a train to Aguas Calientes and then we were off to find our luggage and get a room. We DID get our bags back. See, I wasn't worried at all... :)

The above photos are from our walk to our hotel. There was also a market/flea market area where many people had stalls they were selling items. They mostly looked like the picture of the right. An interesting way of life, but I'm pretty sure Aguas Calientes is just a tourist town. I'm not sure much else happens here. 

We settled in and washed the stink of the day off and got ready for dinner. Ok. This is the moment where I'm going to go on a tangent really quick. The hotel room we stayed in was bad. Seriously bad. The mold was seeping through the wall paint. It smelled like poop. The toilet leaked and there were bugs in the bed. Ok, just one bug, but it was damp in the room and I didn't want to lay under the covers. We ended up sleeping in our clothes on top of the bed. It was so gross. We did see that other rooms on other levels were quite nice. So, I'm not sure why they are putting people in this room. No one should book room 103 or really the neighboring room either. The weirdest part of the rooms is that you had  window in the bathroom next to the toilet that opened up into the next persons bathroom... yes. You got that. So any time their light when on or you were going to the bathroom... you were doing it right next to someone else. It was very strange.  The hotel was called the Wiracocha Inn. Seriously gross. I'm not picky. I just want a clean room with no bed bugs. Is that hard to ask? Oh, there were someone else's pile of nail clippings on the nightstand. So, there's that... 

Anyway, off to dinner! We stopped at a restaurant that SAM has a partnership with. It was nice to be able to order a three course meal. Appetizer, entree, and dessert.  The food wasn't amazing, but it was better than the lunch buffet from Sacred Valley. It was just fine. It really was nice to have a hot meal after the day's activities.

My favorite part of the evening was when Marcelino was trying to set a time when we would go into Machu Picchu and suggested 7am. No one wanted to commit to that early time. He said it was better to go early, but proposed 7am because he knew we may want to sleep in. 7am is the sleep in time eh? Oh, Marcelino. You're funny. :) We ended up going at 8am. Marcelino was right though... go early. The queue to get in got crazy in the afternoon. The bus lines can take over an hour to get back down the mountain. It was really congested in Machu Picchu at an early hour so I felt bad for anyone who went in the PM.