Organizational Skills

I will be the first to admit that my organizational skills are lackluster at best. That being said, it is hard to imagine a place where organization matters less than it does in Peru. My case study for this post is our recent trip to Machu Picchu, where if something needed to be organized, it probably wasn't.After Chad finally recovered from his 3 day bout with food-poisoning, we took off on Thursday morning to begin our 4-day trek to Machu Picchu. We arrived at the travel office at 7:30 AM as requested, only to be greeted by a locked door. After waiting around for 15 minutes, I went up the street to a pay-phone to call the main office and figure out what is going on. Of course, nobody answered the phone. At 7:55 the lady who ran our office came running up the stairs of our street and appologized profusely for being late. She then loaded us in a cab that took us around the block to another travel company where we waited to be picked up by our bus.
After about 20 more minutes of waiting, we were finally loaded into a bus that read Conde Travel (our company was Peruvian Viajes and had guarenteed that they were the operators, not just a booking agency). We were off and running on our grand adventure to Machu Picchu and despite a few organizational glitches, we figured we were in for fairly smooth sailing.

Things went smoothly for about the next hour and a half. When we arrived at the pass where we were to begin our 4 hour bike-ride into the town of Santa Maria we were greeted with a loud clap of thunder that rumbled for a good 20 seconds. Athena, our fellow adventurer from the Great White North proudly proclaimed that it sounded like the dynamite they use to set off avalanches. (Tangent: Athena officially cured me of any desire to be considered a Canadian while traveling. I mean, really? Why do people think that it is always the Americans who are loud and stupid? She was an endless source of unintentional humor and nearly drove many of us to jump off of the trail from several thousand feet up. And her laugh. Wow.) Anyway, the thunder was a sign of things to come in terms of the weather as we rode down the mountain. It could also be considered a sign of things to come for the organization of this trip.

First, the bikes. I like to ride bikes, so I was very happy that the first day consisted of a bike ride into our first town. I should say that I like to ride bikes that like to be ridden. My bike didn't. First, my helmet was too small (great for a rainy day while going down a mountain facing the same drivers I've already discussed!); second, the gears didn't work (the big gear at the front of the chain wouldn't go onto the biggest wheel) so peddaling was sure fun; third the wheels both felt like they were about to fall off. All-in-all, good, safe fun!

Despite these issues, and issues with just about every other bike, we all made it down the mountain safely. Day one was a success!

Things actually went very smoothly from here until Aguas Calientes, the town at the base of Machu Picchu, so I will now jump ahead.
We arrived in Aguas Calientes after 2 days of hiking following our day on the bike. When we get into town we were going to put our stuff in our hostel and then grab some lunch. The problem? We didn´t have a hostel for everyone to stay in. Oops. Then, after roaming around the town or climbing up a big mountain with a view of Machu Picchu (I chose the former because I was tired) we grabbed dinner. It was at dinner where it really hit the fan. After enjoying a lovely dinner with our fellow travelers, we were told that there was a slight problem with our train reservations back to Cusco the next day (cue Ian Faith in This is Spinal Tap) ¨How slight?¨
Well, there were NO reservations for anybody. We found this a bit odd seing as how we were told that they needed several days to make the reservations for the train. By not having them the day before we were to leave was a pure case of organizational ineptitude. We were also told that we may have to come back down from Machu Picchu at 12 the next day to catch a 2:00 train (enter classic Sean blow up). I made sure that our guide knew that this was completely unacceptable and that one of the major reasons for my traveling to South America was to see Machu Picchu. I would be damned if I was forced to leave early because he messed up our train reservations.
Things eventually died down and we had a lovely day at Machu Picchu despite our guide for the day pulling us out of line when we were in the top 100 people there (top 25 for Me and Cole); almost making us miss the climb to Wayna Picchu. Again, organization people.
Off to explore Bs As. Stay safe.

-Sean