Day 178 – Aguas Calientes, PE to Cusco, PE
February 18, 2011 10 Comments
Day 178 – Aguas Calientes, PE to Cusco, PE 02/15/11 Mileage: 137
I decided to hike out all the way from Aguas Calientes back to Santa Teresa instead of taking the train to the hydroelectric station. So at 8:30 I started walking down the railroad tracks which parallels the now raging Urubamba River. It was a great morning free from yesterdays rain and the temperature was perfect.
The main square in Aguas Calientes
The raging Rio Urubamba
Looking up at Machu Picchu from the valley below…
Hiking along the tracks back to Santa Teresa
It took 2 hours to get back to the hydroelectric station. I had to use an alternate pedestrian bridge as the one I crossed 2 days prior had been washed out last night.
Repairing the bridge after it was washed out the night before…
That doesn’t bode well for the streams and dirt road I had to traverse on the bike to get out of here. Farther down the road had been washed out were I had stopped to take a picture the other day…I thought the road was a bit close to the river, and apparently it was.
The road was there 2 days ago…
I was on foot anyway, so I just climbed up the bank onto some boulders and hopped across. Back in Santa Teresa I collected the KLR and left town heading back to Santa Maria and the road back to Cusco. Shortly out of town I was stopped at the point were I had crossed the land slide 2 days ago. A bulldozer was still in the process of clearing it, but the road opened with in half an hour….great!
The rest of the road out was muddy in spots and there was some fallen rock and slide debris here and there, but it was all passable.
Clearing another fresh land slide…
This rock slide took up most of the road and it was a little dicey sneaking by it with the cliff on the right!
After topping up the tank in Santa Maria, it was back up and over the pass back into the Sacred Valley.
Another stream crossing….whitewater motorcycling?
Passing through Ollabtaytambo I saw another KLR sitting in the town square. I pulled over and the owner, Alex, came up and we started swapping stories.
He started from his home in Texas a few months ago and was heading for Ushuaia too…that makes 4 riders in 2 days! We exchanged emails and I continued heading back to Cusco.
Night and rain caught up to me about 20 miles from Cusco so the last part of the ride home wasn’t too pleasant, but that certainly didn’t spoil another great day.