First the bad stuff. Since yesterday evening I'd been trying to get train tickets to go to Aguas Calientes, the village near Macchu Picchu (which can only be reach by a long train ride). All the hotel staff kept saying that all the trains were fully booked for today and probably the next few days, but that I could perhaps get tickets from an agency which buys tickets to sell them with a commission. Since the Inca Trail (a 4 day hike towards Macchu Picchu) is fully book months in advance, this seemed credible enough, and I waited hours while they contacted an agent, without getting a reply. First thing this morning I started nagging again, then asked the address of the agency so I could go ask them myself. They told me to pay 65$, but then it turned out they were just gonna go to RailPeru´s booking office with me to 'help'. Since RailPeru has a monopoly on the trains to Macchu PIcchu, they charge exorbitant prices and make you wait endlessly to get a ticket. While waiting I got so worked up about wasting all that time and getting myself treated like an idiot tourist that I got an intense headache, but I kept telling myself to stay calm unless I didn't get the tickets after all this, but I did without a problem.

It was a ticket from Ollantaytambo, which is halfway to Macchu Picchu and has the ruins of an Inca fortress. I hadn't planned to go see it, but since I had to go there anyway I decided to hurry over there and visit them before my train left. I'd wasted the whole morning by now but from this point on things went great.

I first rushed to a bus station in Cuzco and in no time got an a chicken bus to Urubamba. The 2 hour ride gradually became a how-many-Indians-can-you-squeeze-in-this-bus contest, but it was a fun ride anyway because I enjoyed watching the gorgeous Andean landscape we were driving through as well as observing the locals who got on the bus. In between the Indians that were piled up over me I found a Flemish couple and got some useful info out of them about places I am yet to visit.

In Urubamba I immediately got a minibus to Ollantaytambo (it took me 100 tries to memorise that name) and made myself the doorman so I could stretch my legs. We arrived in Ollantaytambo at 2pm, my train was at 5pm. I'd planned to just walk around the ruins with my big backpack since I didn't expect much of them anyway, but fortunately I felt lazy, walked into the first scrappy restaurant and said "puedo dejar esta [a slap on my backpack] aqui por favor" and the owner said "si, es possibile" and put it away.

The ruins were just a short walk away and I was immediately impressed. Ollantaytambo fortress is one of the only places where the conquistadors suffered a defeat, at the hands of Manco Inca who led a big revolt two years after the Spanish took over. Unfortunately that victory would be his last. The fortress was built as a series of terraces against a mountain, and was far bigger than I thought.

So I started climbing and when I was beyond the fortress I saw a French couple walking down a path on the mountain. I asked where the path was leading to and they said there were some more ruins and a good view above, so I quickly went on. Good thing I'd gotten rid of my big backpack! After some time I found the ruins, but the path still went on. I decided to go a bit further, then a bit further still, and just as I was about to turn back I saw the mountain top with a cross on it, so I went there and enjoyed a superb view around. Of course I had to make my traditional mountain-top self-pic with hands held out, and since there was a big cross there I hung my head to the side and played crucifixion - good pic I think :)

On the way down I soon lost the path and scrambling down got a bit tricky with the loose stones, but I was rewarded with a view on the fortress from straight above - more good pics. Anyway I was back in the village by 4:15pm. I need to shape up if I want to do serious climbs later on so this was good fund and good exercise. From the village I made a pic of the mountain I climbed and noticed that you could see the cross with the naked eye, so I wonder if someone looked at it when I was playing Jezus there.

I had enough time left for a quick soup and then went to the train station, and discovered that the train to Macchu Picchu was 3/4 empty. Only now did I really realise that the hotel staff had been scamming me from the start to get that bit of commission out of me, fuckers. Well, nothing could ruin my mood after a great afternoon, especially as I set my backpack on the chair next to me and put my legs on the opposite chair for the two hour ride to Aguas Calientes.

Here I immediately found a private room; been sleeping in dorms so far. It turns out the hotel is full of Belgians but I haven't met them yet. The hotel had a restaurant "economico" as they put it, so I went to check out the menu and sure enough it offered a three-stage menu with plenty of choice for each round and with a fresh juice to boot all for 4 euro. I didn't understand what the opener was and when I asked they showed me a big round purple piece of fruit; I just wanted to make sure it wasn't meat so I said bring it on and it was delicious (combined with avocado and other stuff). Then I got cream soup, and trout with rice and fries as the main dish. All for 4 euro!

While eating the TV showed Peruvian pop, which isn't even bad. Someone from the hotel family brought in a little girl, about three years old, and she started dancing to the music, actually swinging around with her arms and everything, totally cute!

Some general things. I really should have put more effort into learning Spanish. I can get by with the bit I learnt before this trip (read 90 pages of the Assimil pocket book), and I learn more all the time, but the problem is that almost all the other backpackers here, mostly from the USA and South-America, speak Spanish fluently, so I feel like the village idiot whenever I try to say something.

I'm really enjoying my little mp3 player. In earlier travels I brought a CD player but that's often too cumbersome, in Mexico I learned from Danny that it´s far better to have a handy little USB stick. I put 110 songs on mine before I left, and I've already had a great time with the first 30. On the airport yesterday I started doing the Reservoir Dogs walk when I heard "Little Green Bag", and on the chicken bus today I especially enjoyed "De wilde boerendochter" by Ivan Heylen because of the contrast with my surroundings - I must take more Flemish songs next time, feels great to listen to them on the other side of the world.

I like the Indians, or Indigenos as they prefer to be called. I just love the traditional colourful clothes and hats that many of them wear, and their general look (e.g. women with two braids and a hat) and they are generally very friendly even when squeezed together with a gringo on a bus. I just keep wondering: suppose people with, say, a green skin had conquered all of Europe a few centuries ago, mass-murdered us, enslaved us, torn down all our churches and generally destroyed our culture, - would it even be conceivable then that green-skinned people could travel around Europe safely now and even be treated in a friendly way? Given the hard time black-skinned people, who've never even harmed us, already have for example, the answer is obvious. Which shows that Indians are vastly superior to Europeans in at least two ways: clothing and tolerance.

So tomorrow I visit Macchu Picchu, and since today I've realised that I love traveling around the country-side far more than being in cities, I won't head back to Cuzco yet but will stay the night in Ollantaytambo and visit my next destination (the Inca ruins + Indian market in Pisac) from there. I´ve settled into the traveling mood :)