Chapter 70
Which recounts the misadventure of Machu Picchu , as well as other events that will astonish and amaze.
This is one of our longest blog entries, rightly so as it was one of our longest days.
Our phone rang at 4:58am with our wake up call. I didn’t sleep well in anticipation. We rolled out of bed, had a quick shower, and through some clothes on. Just then there was a knock at our door; the clock read 5:15—taxi is here early I thought to myself. I opened the door and a short, stout woman in her 40s was in the hall holding some tickets and a notebook. What she said went something like this, but in Spanish of course, “Buenos dias senor. Sr. Tornincasa si? There was a problem with the train tickets this morning, but I have bus tickets for you to Macchu Picchu. We need to hurry to make the bus.”
?!?!?!?!??!?!? I think Amie explained yesterday that after I paid the $300 cash, there was a concession made by Juan Carlos, the hotel proprieter fronting the travel agency, that it may not be possible to get train tickets, and we may be going by bus, to which I responded that I am not paying for bus tickets, only train tickets, and if he wants my business he needs to guarantee it to me, and put it in writing. He looked perplexed, made a few phone calls, and then made the guarantee… Ok, back to the action.
I like to think my response was something like this, in mediocre Spanish “Wait, I made it very clear that we were paying for train tickets. We do not want to go by bus. See those helmets there? We have a motorcycle. We can ride a motorcycle anywhere a bus can go.” Now put yourself in a mexican soap opera, and conjure up in your mind the whiniest, most pathetic, patronizing voice you can think of, and this is what she said “Pooooor favoooor senooooor. Its my fault. I bough the bus tickets because I thought you would rather go by bus than not at all. I spent $68 of my money on them. If you don’t go my boss will kill me, I’ll lose my job, por favooooor senor…” then came some fake tears for good measure. I was not fooled and saw through the bullshit right away. The situation is the travel agency yesterday guaranteed us two tickets on the train, even though the ticket stand was closed. They went to buy tickets this morning, but the train was sold out, so they bought us bus tickets despite my being very specific, assuming that since we’re up at 5:30am already we’ll just go on the bus. I told the lady in no uncertain terms we want our money back. More whinning on her part, obviously because she doesn’t want to refund the money. It got heated, and loud in the small hotel hallway at 5:30am. I felt bad for the other guests of the hotel, but I was tired of this BS! The senora went on and on pleading with us to take the bus, but finally realized we weren’t. Her next ploy was to insist that in order for us to get our money back we would have to go with her to the train station at 9am in person. !?!??!?!?!?
From what we understood this was not true. I believe she was trying to make it as difficult as possible so we would just concede and jump on the bus. There were so many contradictions I couldn’t believe anything she said at this point. If the bus takes an hour longer, but doesn’t leave an hour earlier, how will we make the connecting train? You can buy tickets for us, but we have to be there to get a refund? Etc
Amie had a good idea of calling her bluff in a round about way. We conceded that we will go with her to the train station to save her job, but would get our money back in full first and would not ride the bus this morning. To this she was perplexed and left. The next thing I did was to call Juan Carlos, as he is the man I gave my money to, I never met this woman previously (but obviously assumed she was with the travel agency the hotel uses). 5:45am was Juan Carlos’ wake up call. “Good morning JC”, “Good morning Senor, how are you?” “Not good JC, we have problems…” JC said something like “Oh. OK. Let me call the agency.” Satisfied JC would straighten things out for us, I laid back in bed and explained to Amie everything that just had happened. Her Spanish was good enough to get the gist, but the details I recounted blew her away.
About a half hour passed and JC didn’t call back. I told Amie we should just head down to the hotel. We quickly walked across town and beat on the locked hotel door at 6:30am. He came down and had us walk in. To try and shorten an already long story, JC said he didn’t have our money we would have to get it from the senora. He had called her and she would bring it in 30 minutes (impossible if what she was telling us was at all true). I explained to him very clearly (I hope) in Spanish that he is running a bad business. I gave him my money for a service that he didn’t provide, he should now refund my money to me. He explained to me that he runs a hotel, not a travel agency, and my problem was with the travel agency. This is how they think here. It is very different from home. There are no consumers rights, or honesty, even decency in business here.
I was getting pretty hot under the collar, the angrier I got the louder and less correct my Spanish got. JC made an effort to rustle up our money to get us out of his hotel, but he only had $100 on hand, not the $300 I gave him yesterday. He tried to calm us telling us not to worry, everything was ok, we would have our money. I told him I was worried because yesterday he said I’d be on a train to machu picchu now but instead I’m spending my morning trying to get my money back. He made another phone call and told us in 20-30minutes we’d have our money, please take a seat. There was a big clock in the lobby and we watched the seconds tick by. I made up my mind that at 30 minutes I would go to the police.
The most curious part of this whole misadventure is what I am about to tell you. At 29 minutes in of the 30 minutes we were waiting he picked up the phone again (in another room) and said in muffled spanish “Yes, yes, there still here. Please bring the money now. ?????? Then he came out, walked down stairs, and came back up stairs just as he went down them with our cash.
That was all by 7:30am. Our days misadventures had just begun. I had given up on Macchu Picchu at this point and was content with riding the moto through the sacred valley and visiting some of the smaller, but still spectacular incan ruins. This would save us 8 hours travel, another 5am wake up call and about $300. Amie was still hot for Machu Picchu as it was one of the stops she was most excited about in south America. I agreed it would be a shame to come all this way and not see it, but the hassle and expense were not worth it to me.
I pulled the other pannier of the bike so we could ride unladen. Carrying the pannier on my shoulder through the courtyard, I mis-judged a step, twisted my ankle, and fell flat on my chest in the hotel lobby, the pannier smacking my head. Unfortunately there was no one in the lobby to witness, I’m sure they would have had a laugh. I got up and sure enough, my ankle is badly sprained. Mama said there’d be days like this.
We set out for Sacsayhuaman (pronounced “sexy woman” but actually means “satisfied condor” if you can believe that) and quickly found our way to the entrance. The ticket price for entry was $35 a person. !?!?!?!??!?!? Shocked, I opened my wallet and found I had only $60. Our travel guide book (printed in 2004) said admission was only $10. I lost it at this point. I completely blew up at the difficulty and gouging we had experienced trying to see the Inca ruins. I was ready to say scew it all, lets go to Bolivia tomorrow. Unfortuantely, my frustration overflowed onto Amie and we got into an argument. She had the presence of mind to remind me that it wasn’t the Inca’s fault, just our bad luck that got us to this point.
We reconciled, went back to the hotel, and decided we would try to go to the train station ourselves and by MP tickets for tomorrow. We would bite the bullet because if small attractions were $70, we might as well pay $300 for the granddaddy of them all. Before we head out to the trainstation, we asked our hotel to call and confirm they were open. They closed at noon. It was 1pm. Could this day get any worse. This meant that if we wanted to go to MP, we would need to buy tickets tomorrow for the next day. I already felt like we’ve been here too long.
Feeling cursed, we decided to salvage the afternoon and just take a moto ride through the valley, not paying any of the exorbanant fees for the sights. We rode out of Cusco into the countryside and the rain began to fall. We turned around and said enough is enough for one day.
I spent the afternoon finishing the bike maintenance and Christmas shopping. We met Tom and Maria at Norton Rats biker bar at 9pm to say goodbye and get there reaction from MP. Amie and I agreed that if it was in there top 3 of there 9 month world trip, we would have to suck it up and do it. Sure enough, it made there top 3. DAMN!
We spent the rest of the evening sharing stories of our travels and laughing over our misadventures. Tom and Maria sure have had there fair share which made us feel better about ours. Maybe we aren’t cursed, trips like this just have there bumps.
This is one of our longest blog entries, rightly so as it was one of our longest days.
Our phone rang at 4:58am with our wake up call. I didn’t sleep well in anticipation. We rolled out of bed, had a quick shower, and through some clothes on. Just then there was a knock at our door; the clock read 5:15—taxi is here early I thought to myself. I opened the door and a short, stout woman in her 40s was in the hall holding some tickets and a notebook. What she said went something like this, but in Spanish of course, “Buenos dias senor. Sr. Tornincasa si? There was a problem with the train tickets this morning, but I have bus tickets for you to Macchu Picchu. We need to hurry to make the bus.”
?!?!?!?!??!?!? I think Amie explained yesterday that after I paid the $300 cash, there was a concession made by Juan Carlos, the hotel proprieter fronting the travel agency, that it may not be possible to get train tickets, and we may be going by bus, to which I responded that I am not paying for bus tickets, only train tickets, and if he wants my business he needs to guarantee it to me, and put it in writing. He looked perplexed, made a few phone calls, and then made the guarantee… Ok, back to the action.
I like to think my response was something like this, in mediocre Spanish “Wait, I made it very clear that we were paying for train tickets. We do not want to go by bus. See those helmets there? We have a motorcycle. We can ride a motorcycle anywhere a bus can go.” Now put yourself in a mexican soap opera, and conjure up in your mind the whiniest, most pathetic, patronizing voice you can think of, and this is what she said “Pooooor favoooor senooooor. Its my fault. I bough the bus tickets because I thought you would rather go by bus than not at all. I spent $68 of my money on them. If you don’t go my boss will kill me, I’ll lose my job, por favooooor senor…” then came some fake tears for good measure. I was not fooled and saw through the bullshit right away. The situation is the travel agency yesterday guaranteed us two tickets on the train, even though the ticket stand was closed. They went to buy tickets this morning, but the train was sold out, so they bought us bus tickets despite my being very specific, assuming that since we’re up at 5:30am already we’ll just go on the bus. I told the lady in no uncertain terms we want our money back. More whinning on her part, obviously because she doesn’t want to refund the money. It got heated, and loud in the small hotel hallway at 5:30am. I felt bad for the other guests of the hotel, but I was tired of this BS! The senora went on and on pleading with us to take the bus, but finally realized we weren’t. Her next ploy was to insist that in order for us to get our money back we would have to go with her to the train station at 9am in person. !?!??!?!?!?
From what we understood this was not true. I believe she was trying to make it as difficult as possible so we would just concede and jump on the bus. There were so many contradictions I couldn’t believe anything she said at this point. If the bus takes an hour longer, but doesn’t leave an hour earlier, how will we make the connecting train? You can buy tickets for us, but we have to be there to get a refund? Etc
Amie had a good idea of calling her bluff in a round about way. We conceded that we will go with her to the train station to save her job, but would get our money back in full first and would not ride the bus this morning. To this she was perplexed and left. The next thing I did was to call Juan Carlos, as he is the man I gave my money to, I never met this woman previously (but obviously assumed she was with the travel agency the hotel uses). 5:45am was Juan Carlos’ wake up call. “Good morning JC”, “Good morning Senor, how are you?” “Not good JC, we have problems…” JC said something like “Oh. OK. Let me call the agency.” Satisfied JC would straighten things out for us, I laid back in bed and explained to Amie everything that just had happened. Her Spanish was good enough to get the gist, but the details I recounted blew her away.
About a half hour passed and JC didn’t call back. I told Amie we should just head down to the hotel. We quickly walked across town and beat on the locked hotel door at 6:30am. He came down and had us walk in. To try and shorten an already long story, JC said he didn’t have our money we would have to get it from the senora. He had called her and she would bring it in 30 minutes (impossible if what she was telling us was at all true). I explained to him very clearly (I hope) in Spanish that he is running a bad business. I gave him my money for a service that he didn’t provide, he should now refund my money to me. He explained to me that he runs a hotel, not a travel agency, and my problem was with the travel agency. This is how they think here. It is very different from home. There are no consumers rights, or honesty, even decency in business here.
I was getting pretty hot under the collar, the angrier I got the louder and less correct my Spanish got. JC made an effort to rustle up our money to get us out of his hotel, but he only had $100 on hand, not the $300 I gave him yesterday. He tried to calm us telling us not to worry, everything was ok, we would have our money. I told him I was worried because yesterday he said I’d be on a train to machu picchu now but instead I’m spending my morning trying to get my money back. He made another phone call and told us in 20-30minutes we’d have our money, please take a seat. There was a big clock in the lobby and we watched the seconds tick by. I made up my mind that at 30 minutes I would go to the police.
The most curious part of this whole misadventure is what I am about to tell you. At 29 minutes in of the 30 minutes we were waiting he picked up the phone again (in another room) and said in muffled spanish “Yes, yes, there still here. Please bring the money now. ?????? Then he came out, walked down stairs, and came back up stairs just as he went down them with our cash.
That was all by 7:30am. Our days misadventures had just begun. I had given up on Macchu Picchu at this point and was content with riding the moto through the sacred valley and visiting some of the smaller, but still spectacular incan ruins. This would save us 8 hours travel, another 5am wake up call and about $300. Amie was still hot for Machu Picchu as it was one of the stops she was most excited about in south America. I agreed it would be a shame to come all this way and not see it, but the hassle and expense were not worth it to me.
I pulled the other pannier of the bike so we could ride unladen. Carrying the pannier on my shoulder through the courtyard, I mis-judged a step, twisted my ankle, and fell flat on my chest in the hotel lobby, the pannier smacking my head. Unfortunately there was no one in the lobby to witness, I’m sure they would have had a laugh. I got up and sure enough, my ankle is badly sprained. Mama said there’d be days like this.
We set out for Sacsayhuaman (pronounced “sexy woman” but actually means “satisfied condor” if you can believe that) and quickly found our way to the entrance. The ticket price for entry was $35 a person. !?!?!?!??!?!? Shocked, I opened my wallet and found I had only $60. Our travel guide book (printed in 2004) said admission was only $10. I lost it at this point. I completely blew up at the difficulty and gouging we had experienced trying to see the Inca ruins. I was ready to say scew it all, lets go to Bolivia tomorrow. Unfortuantely, my frustration overflowed onto Amie and we got into an argument. She had the presence of mind to remind me that it wasn’t the Inca’s fault, just our bad luck that got us to this point.
We reconciled, went back to the hotel, and decided we would try to go to the train station ourselves and by MP tickets for tomorrow. We would bite the bullet because if small attractions were $70, we might as well pay $300 for the granddaddy of them all. Before we head out to the trainstation, we asked our hotel to call and confirm they were open. They closed at noon. It was 1pm. Could this day get any worse. This meant that if we wanted to go to MP, we would need to buy tickets tomorrow for the next day. I already felt like we’ve been here too long.
Feeling cursed, we decided to salvage the afternoon and just take a moto ride through the valley, not paying any of the exorbanant fees for the sights. We rode out of Cusco into the countryside and the rain began to fall. We turned around and said enough is enough for one day.
I spent the afternoon finishing the bike maintenance and Christmas shopping. We met Tom and Maria at Norton Rats biker bar at 9pm to say goodbye and get there reaction from MP. Amie and I agreed that if it was in there top 3 of there 9 month world trip, we would have to suck it up and do it. Sure enough, it made there top 3. DAMN!
We spent the rest of the evening sharing stories of our travels and laughing over our misadventures. Tom and Maria sure have had there fair share which made us feel better about ours. Maybe we aren’t cursed, trips like this just have there bumps.
View of Cusco
I curse you Incas!
posted by Pedro and Maria at 10:57 AM
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