We took a cab to the Cuzco bus terminal and had him drop us where the "collectivos" gather - the minivans that squeeze in eleven passengers plus a driver before they leave the station. Predictably, the driver asked for fifty percent more than he was actually willing to accept for the ride. "15?" Deb repeated, and we asked him to show us his vehicle. There were two young French girls sitting inside already. "How much are you paying?", Deb asked them. "10", was the answer. "Very well", said Deb to the driver, knowing the girls had already probably agreed to pay more than the fare for the locals who would soon fill up the empty seats, "obviously we won't pay more than that. Take 10, or we'll go talk to another driver." "Fine", he said..."10." Later we saw a sign for tourists at the train station that had the posted prices for a collectivo from Ollantaytambo to Cusco: sure enough, it was 10 soles.
The sun was bright and strong, and I wished I were able to take photos at every turn. Between my fascination for residential architecture and the intoxication of seeing things I've never seen before, and my favourite colour - green, in all its myriad shades - I would have had a very long photo album to share.
The buildings were all sun dried mud and red clay brick with straw in them, and where a wall wasn't capped, green plants with yellow flowers would sprout. The bottom course has to be made of stone to withstand heavy rains, though, or at least properly parged - where it wasn't, you sometimes saw the bottom two or three courses of mud bricks eroding out from under the rest of the wall! Those courses would be a pain to replace.
The driver dropped all but the four of us by the time he reached Urubamba, and then pulled into a terminal where he informed us he wouldn't go any further with only four passengers, and we should pay him and continue in a smaller taxi. "That isn't good," said Deb. "We won't pay you at all, in that case. Find us the taxi, and you pay him to take us where we're going; when we arrive at Ollantaytambo we'll pay him, and you can work it all out with him afterward...this has nothing to do with us." After some complaint from both drivers, they finally agreed that was obviously the only way they were going to be paid anything, so the first one paid off the second one out of his pocket, and we continued in a little white car.
At Ollantaytambo we were unloaded at the main plaza, and walked up a stone walk between buildings for about five minutes, finally arriving at Apu Lodge. The views are pretty spectacular. There is a sheer rock face behind the lodge, and ruins of various fortifications and grain storehouses dotting the steep hills around us, in addition to the main ruins that are the focus of visits by most tourists - although archaeologists are fascinated by the range of Inca building styles they can examine right inside the town itself.
One needs to be Rambo-fit to get around in this town...if you aren't when you arrive, you will be by the time you leave. (My belt, by the way, has already gone in four notches, a good three inches, since this winter's travel began.) This is not the worst place one could spend seven weeks.
Imagine a Tibetan town, a medieval European one, and Brigadoon, all rolled into one...except that it is laid out in a grid, by an Inkan architect and emperor named Pachacuti (or Pachacutec) in the early 1500's. It became a Royal Inka City, before being captured by the invading Spanish. Needless to say, he didn't design it for cars, or even for wheeled carts that had to pass each other. You can get to the main plaza by car, but then you walk up streets that only pedestrians can navigate, and not ones with weak ankles either; they are made of uneven cobblestone. Donkeys and llamas could barely pass each other.
It is more hazardous walking these streets in the dark. As we walked home from a restaurant, I tried to spot dog poop before it spotted my new boots, which I had to lace up tight to handle the uneven terrain. The Inka - for that's what at least some of these people are, and the rest consider themselves to be, in what is said to be the last living Inkan town - love their dogs, just as other Kitchwa and Quechua do, not only as guard animals, but as free ranging companions in their communities. The dogs are well fed, attractive looking for the most part, and some are identifiable pure breeds. When not wandering the town in pairs or foursomes, dodging traffic with nimble aplomb, as intelligent and car aware as any human pedestrians, they sit at the entrances to their homes, never tied or chained; but they don't bark and guard the homes like farm dogs. They watch you step over and past them with nary a snarl or a growl.
From Urubamba onward we began to see "moto-taxis" (called "tuk-tuks" in Asia), which are a particularly hazardous three-wheeled way to fly around bumpy streets, but they are here in abundance for the tourists and locals to hire as taxis. But even those can't negotiate the majority of narrow streets in the grid of Ollantaytambo. They basically take people from the main plaza a short distance down to the train station, and back.
There are two volunteers who've been here for quite a while, and they seem to have a lock on the reception and most other functions. There are two paid reception staff named Carlos and Ruth; and there are other local people (Francesca, Gregorio, Karina) hired to do cleaning, cooking, gardening, etc. So we'll just have to worm our way in slowly in order to learn how to make ourselves useful. The other volunteers are very kind and friendly, and they plan to give us plenty of time to learn the ropes. Louise the owner is in Scotland until the beginning of March. I'll fire off an email to Alan Harman to tell him we're ready and willing to do his assignments as well.
There is a little uncertainty in the air, however. Just before we arrived, heavy rains created a landslide and took out the town's water supply line. The locals are lining up in the main Plaza de Armas to get water in any container they have from a tanker truck. Apu Lodge has a main tank and a reserve tank, both still full, but I'm told that if the lodge was fully booked that might be enough to last for a full day. They don't collect rainwater, they don't do solar water heating (which would help with shower water heating, of course - guests run a lot of cold water before the propane heated hot water arrives at the shower head), and they don't have composting toilets, which would save a lot of water. But I guess under normal circumstances there's enough water not to have to worry about such measures.
Tuesday: I spoke too soon. No photos today, and plenty of work. We woke up to no electricity and no water. The upper tank and the primary tank were both empty. Ruth the accountant and morning receptionist thought all three tanks were empty. I began to think of solutions, but my snooping around soon discovered that the reserve tank was actually full; the only problem was that without power, it couldn't be pumped to the upper tank, from where it would have fed by gravity to the plumbing throughout the building. I cut a siphon from a hose, found a metal garden watering can, and took water into the kitchen that way. The pile of dirty dishes had reached the point of almost overflowing onto the floor, so we boiled some water and Deb and I washed the dishes while Ruth and "Pancha" (Francesca) had breakfast. At noon the electricity came on, so Ruth tried to get the pump to put the reserve tank water up to the upper tank; at first it wouldn't work and we didn't know why, until she remembered that the sensor in the primary tank was hanging in air so she pulled it up above the ground, and the pump went on. I guess that's a failsafe device so the pump can't run itself dry if there's no water in the primary.
We thought all was well, but suddenly there was no water coming from the kitchen taps again. Everybody ran about scratching their heads, until I suddenly realized the guests who'd left in the middle of the night hadn't been able to have showers, and might have left their taps open while trying to get some water out of them. Cesar and I grabbed keys and ran to check those rooms, but we actually found the taps open and water on the floor in another room inhabited by Kim, a frequent guest and a friend of the lodge. She'd had too many beers the night before and had gotten up early to ride a horse to a charity project her foundation was being asked to consider. She's gonna catch it from the staff and volunteers when she gets back! The upper reservoir had run bone dry in less than two hours.
What next? We considered going to the main plaza to meet the tanker truck, but we didn't have anything to carry the water back in but shallow laundry and child bathing tubs; we decided we'd take the cart, but our way was blocked by a motorcycle and another cart - two carts can't pass each other on this narrow street. It was beginning to rain, so I walked around the building and spotted a downspout that would disconnect quite easily. Gregorio the gardener saw what I was doing and disconnected a second one from a balcony at the back of the building; but the rain was too light to accumulate sufficiently. Cesar (another Helpx guy), Gregorio and I hiked over to Pancha's house three times and brought home about forty gallons, which we can boil, and we have some bottles of drinking water. Deb came on one trip, to see the house full of guinea pigs.
A lady from the utility dropped in with her clipboard - she was canvassing to see who had water. Some of the village got it back as a result of a temporary bypass line they'd put in, but it hadn't reached this high, perhaps because the emergency system didn't have enough pressure, or just didn't carry enough water, and everyone lower down was frantically filling every reservoir and jerry can they had while they could. She said it would have to be disconnected again once they were ready to put in the main pipe section, and no-one knows for sure how long it will take to complete that repair.
Later the rain increased again. I McGyvered a hose to a plastic bottle which I attached to the downspout, and we ran back and forth with enough buckets to half-fill the reservoir tank. We were trying to rig the same thing to the upper downspout so we could run the hose directly into the reservoir tank, but hours of effort couldn't result in a way to attach the bottle - we just couldn't quite reach the end of the eavestrough. Finally night fell and we gave up until morning. We were hoping it might fill overnight on its own while we slept. We'll probably figure out how to attach the bottle tomorrow, and just as soon as we do, they'll finish the supply line repair...
It was an interesting introduction to Apu Lodge. Thankfully, the five rooms of regular guests left this morning, and no more are expected to arrive until Thursday; but we're expecting a full house that evening, so our fingers are crossed that by then, either the pipe will be repaired, or we will have come up with a rain collection solution that works.
No comments:
Post a Comment