Peru’ed Again

I received this notice from the tour operator who took our $350 to visit Machu Picchu on Wednesday. 

Dear Guest,

My name is Rómulo, from the travel agency. We are reaching out to inform you that, unfortunately, there is no availability for Machu Picchu on your selected date. Tickets are completely sold out, and the next confirmed availability begins from June 25th onward.

Given this situation, you have three options:

Reschedule your tour for a later date, starting from June 25th.

Cancel your reservation. In this case, a full refund will be processed within 48 hours.

Choose the following on-site alternative:

On-Site Alternative – Daily Ticket Sales in Aguas Calientes

Currently, the only way to obtain tickets before June 15th is through the in-person daily ticket sales system established by the Peruvian government. Here’s how it works:

The government releases 1,000 tickets daily for the following day.

These tickets are sold only in person, upon presentation of a passport, at the official ticket office in Aguas Calientes.

This process requires a 2-day express trip from Cusco, following the itinerary below:

🗓 Day 1

Depart from Cusco between 3:00 a.m. and 5:00 a.m., traveling to Aguas Calientes via a combination of land and train transport.

Upon arrival, go directly to the government office and line up to receive a numbered purchasing ticket.

The typical waiting time in line ranges from 30 minutes to 3 hours, depending on demand.

🗓 Day 2 – Machu Picchu Tour

On the second day, you will enter Machu Picchu at the time assigned by the government.

You will be accompanied by a professional guide who will show you the natural, cultural, and archaeological beauty of this extraordinary place.

Please keep in mind that many other travelers will be doing the same, so your chances will depend heavily on how early you arrive to queue.

P.S. The Peruvian government requires that all visitors be physically present during the process of obtaining the numbered purchasing ticket.

However, if you are traveling as a family, one representative may obtain tickets for the entire group. If you are not family, then each person must queue and be present individually.

We remain at your disposal and are happy to assist you with whichever option you choose.

Thank you very much for your understanding.

Best regards,

Rómulo

I think it’s a case of overbooking in case people drop out and at $350 each canceled reservations would cost money. Bear in mind 6500 people visit Machu Picchu daily so as tours go I had my own reluctance to be herded at the site like this.  Now I can’t go so I get a day of drinking coffee and people watching in Cusco. There are lots of sites to see pictures of the place and I’d recommend a biography of Hiram Bingham as well. 

At the back of the book the author traces the discovery of Machu Picchu and the likely history of the place. I enjoyed the whole book too. 

Preparing To Fly

Tuesday I fly to Cusco and you can tell it’s important because flying is my least favorite travel option. We’ve settled in to the campground in Arequipa but I will be gone Tuesday morning until Thursday evening. 

My passport expires next year and it’s time to renew which is a good thing anyway as my pages are filling up with stamps at an alarming rate. I contacted the US consulate in Cusco, a three day drive from here, and I have an appointment to drop off my application Tuesday morning. 

The process takes up to six weeks to get my new passport back so we wanted to get it started as quickly as possible as we want to get to Brazil in the dry season, late July or early August. The thing about northern Brazil, Amazonia, is the presence of long stretches of dirt roads and a few river crossings and in rainy season the dirt roads are barely passable by specialized  hard core off roaders never mind a heavily laden delivery van.

So our plan is to wait until it’s stopped raining and the road is dry to see if we can cover the 250 miles of dirt when they are graded and hard. To go now would be impossible and we’d have to take the paved road east to the capital and the beaches or take a barge down river for five days.

I put the blue flag on our route north of Porto Velho to mark where the asphalt ends on the 319 road to Manaus. The last 100 miles to the ferry crossing to the city are also paved. The rest is dirt which has to be dry for us to pass. 

We might be able to barge to Manaus if they can fit a nine foot tall four ton van with the cars or perhaps if they’ll take it with the trucks. Oh and Rusty. Lots of  questions about shipping and we only get answers when we are on scene. Hopefully the road will be passable and we shan’t have to contemplate a river trip right at the beginning of Brazil. 

Not many overlanders travel this route and the overlanders that have traveled here are not very informative about how they coped so we will have to learn as we go. Highway 319 in Brazil on the paved section: 

With all that in mind this stop in Peru to renew my passport is an opportunity also for Layne to fly home to visit family and friends so that’s what she will do in a couple of weeks, so when she gets back my new passport should be ready for pick up. I want to take a road trip together before she leaves to see some sights and then settle down to a few weeks alone with Rusty waiting for everything to come together. 

There are a few other campers in the campground, a couple from Switzerland who have stories to tell about driving Africa, and are in town to fix the rear axle of their Toyota Land Cruiser,  a Brazilian couple who told a story about breaking their trailer in the middle of nowhere while Sean from Colorado and his girlfriend Isadora from Brazil have a failing starter motor. And there’s us with a recently broken radiator. One minute the place is empty…

…and the next it’s not. We sat around into the cold winter night talking about life on the road and the fun of being a nomad amid the tribulations. It was nice not to have a broken van at least for now and to be among strangers who were friends.