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FROM CUSCO, PERU

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Urubamba, Ollantaytambo: Bridges over Troubled Water

An Angry River Wreaks Havoc, Widespread Flooding, Destruction; Helicopter Evacuations from Machu Picchu; "Amphibious Driving on Water" to Safety

The Ollantaytambo Adventure

FROM URUBAMBA, PERU, Jan 26 (continued from Urubamba, Day 2) - Ollantaytambo is famous for a variety of reasons.  First, there are marvelous Inca ruins here, just as interesting as those in Machu Picchu or other sacred sites.  Second, this town is as far as the Spanish Conquistadors got.  An Inca warrior after whom the town was later named made his last stand here and held them off. That is why the Spaniards never discovered Machu Picchu, and thus did not destroy it as they seemed to have done with other sacred Inca sites.  Third, this is where the trains leave from that take visitors to Machu Picchu. 

We had tickets for today, Jan 26.  Alas, we knew that no trains were running.  An angry Urubamba river had washed out several sections of the railroad tracks, cutting off the town of Aguas Calientes and Machu Picchu from the rest of the country upstream.  Soon, we were about to find out what that really meant, from the ground zero level. 

Signs of flooding were everywhere along the road from Urubamba to Ollantaytambo.  Take a closer look at the above bridge.  You will see that half of it is missing... the far end from our vantage point.  I also recorded the following video here...

 Urubamba bridge flooding (1 26 10) filmed by Bob Djurdjevic  (1:59 mins)

... and Elizabeth recorded me doing it...

  Urubamba River Flooding (1 26 2010) (1:08 mins, filmed by Elizabeth)

Further down the river, we saw a foot bridge that was still precariously standing. 

Some people were actually crossing it (right).  It looked as if the bridge could go at any moment.  We thought they were rather foolish, taking their lives in their own hands. 

 Urubamba bridge downstream flooding (1 26 2010) filmed by Bob

And there was this adobe house close to the river that may have been already flooded once before (middle left).  You can see the weeds growing out of its walls.

Just before entering Ollantaytambo (two right shots), we encountered a breach in the road that the river had made.  The water reached to about the top of our Nissan's wheels.  But we made it across with no trouble.  "Wonder what it's going to be like when we come back?" I wondered. But I kept the thought to myself.  Our driver Raul seemed agitated enough as it was.  No need to add to his worries.  He was doing a good job of it himself.

Ollantaytambo looked like a war zone.  It reminded me of many scenes I had encountered when I worked as a war correspondent in Bosnia and Serbia in the 1990s.  The town was full of refugees.  The main square was jammed with buses and trucks.  They got that far and had no place to go.  That hole in the middle of the bridge (middle left) made sure of it.  Underneath, a small creek was raging wildly, proving you don't have to be a big river to cause a lot of damage.  In fact, they did not even allow foot traffic across that bridge. Yet the famous Inca Ollantaytambo ruins were just a few hundred yards across the bridge on the other side.  So instead, we had to walk about a mile downstream to the Ollantaytambo train station, and then the retrace same distance back upstream on the other side till we reached the ruins.

It was here, at the Ollantaytambo train station, that one could feel the full rage of the river.  Every couple of minutes or so, helicopters were flying overhead, evidently evacuated the tourists and stranded residents from Machu Picchu and Aguas Calientes to Cusco.

Listened to the river's rage in that clip below.  Again, Elizabeth again took pictures of me as I was filming it...

  Ollayntaytambo-Machu Picchu train station (1 26 2010) filmed by Bob  (2:01 mins)

A Peruvian soldier came over to us and told us to get away from that railing. We did, and then proceeded climbing on a narrow footpath up the mountain toward the old Inca ruins.  From the opposite direction, refugees who weren't so lucky as to be picked up by helicopters were walking toward the train station and the town of Ollantaytambo, with whatever possession they could carry on their backs.  It was a pretty grim scene on a beautiful sunny day.

After we checked in with the staff of this archeological site (left), we proceeded to climb the steep stone steps to the top of the fortress.  We were told that another Temple of the Sun and a Temple of the Military awaited us there, along with some marvelous views.  You be the judge...

Finally, we reached the Temple of the Sun.  Doesn't Elizabeth look in the left picture as if she were hitchhiking to the sun? :-) The fortress in the top right frame is the Temple of the Military. 

We took a few more shots from the top of the ruins before starting a long (and different) way back to the valley below.  All along, Elizabeth did great, both during the long hike and the steep climb up and down the ruins.  Who would have thought that only two days earlier, she seemed dead to the world in Cusco! (altitude sickness... as you may recall).  It seemed as if the excitement of being in a disaster area had got her pumped up. Her adrenalin was flowing freely all day.  And a sense of humor never left us, either.  As she stood next to that old Inca hut in the right shot, Elizabeth joked that maybe that would have to do as our hotel for the night (in case the river cuts off the road to Urubamba).  At the time, she had no idea how close she came to reality...

It took us a long time to walk back into town of Ollantaytambo, this time descending from the mountain.  The town square was an even bigger madhouse than three hours earlier, when we left our driver Raul there to wait for us.  But he was nowhere to be seen.  We circled the square twice without being able to see it.  I then called Liz at the hotel to see if she had heard from him.  He said that he had called her very worried that the river would cut off our way back to Urubamba.  He was supposedly "in the line of cars waiting to leave the town."

Well, we walked in out of Ollantaytambo twice without seeing either Raul or his Nissan.  It was getting dark and we could see that the water level had risen since we crossed that flooded section of the road 3-4 hours earlier.  Now, only buses and trucks dared to make a run for it across the breach.

When we walked back into the center of Ollantaytambo, we finally found Raul.  He was getting something in a store and rushed back to the car when he saw us.  He sounded excited, out of breath.  Told us the river had risen, according to his wife who had been listening to radio or TV reports in Urubamba.  We said we knew that already, having been down there twice. 

"And where were you?" I asked, not too pleased with the search of Ollantaytambo we had had to carry out.  "Why weren't you answering your phone? Neither Liz nor I could reach you."

Well, it was the old dead battery story.  It didn't matter now.  We'd finally found him.  What mattered now was whether or not we would be able to make it across the flooded section of the road.

Things did not look good when we got there.  "Shall we make a run for it?" Raul suddenly found his courage.

"Sure," Elizabeth and I both said at the same time.  "Let's do it."

Well, Raul had second thoughts by the time we came close to the river.

That's when I called on Apu Huaskaran, my benefactor Apu, and asked him to get us across the river.  As I was praying for it, a van full of people coming from the opposite direction had gotten stuck in the river.  Things looked pretty bleak. That's when a truck appeared on the scene.  First, he pulled that van out of the river.  Then the driver offered to haul us all the way across. 

"He wants 20 soles," Raul said to me.

"Done," I replied.  "Let's go."

And off we went.  Suddenly, our Nissan became an amphibious vehicle with water reaching almost up to the car windows at the deepest point of the crossing.  Here, check it out yourself.  While I was taking those still pictures, Elizabeth made three short video clips of our "driving across the river."

  Urubamba river crossing near Ollantaytambo (1 26 2010, 1/3) (1:50 mins, filmed by Elizabeth)

  Urubamba river crossing near Ollantaytambo (1 26 2010, 2/3)  (0:48 mins)

  Urubamba river crossing near Ollantaytambo (1 26 2010, 3/3) (0:39 mins)

By the time we made it across the flooded portion of the road, even the morose Raul, our driver, was rejoicing.  He and the truck driver were slapping each other on their backs.  Elizabeth chimed in as well, rattling things off in rapid Spanish.

When everybody settled down, and we were driving on the dry portion of the road back toward our hotel in Urubamba, I asked Elizabeth to translate for me.

"So you think this was exciting?" I said to Raul and her.  "Let me tell you what an exciting river crossing really is."

When I was in Serbia during the NATO bombing in 1999, I was traveling in a van with a group of people toward Belgrade.  NATO was targeting bridges at the time.  It had knocked out all of them across the Danube, Europe's biggest river, except for one.  That's the one across which we were planning to cross.  At that point, the Danube is quite wide.  The bridge was about 800m in length (about 2,500 feet).  With the threat of imminent bombing, it looked three times as long from the other side of the river.

Our driver stopped the van at the start of the bridge.  "Now, let us all pray," he said.  And then he gunned the engine.

For reasons I never quite understood, something to do with confusing the guided missile systems, all bridges in Serbia and been covered with big rubber tires.  So our crossing across the bridge at full throttle seemed more like a slalom around the tires than a straight shot.  It probably only took a few seconds to get across, but it seemed forever.

"As you can see, we made it across the bridge," I concluded my story.

It took a moment or two for the point to sink into Raul's head.  Then he started to laugh. 

"That WAS a more exciting crossing indeed," he said.

Soon we were back at our hotel where Liz anxiously awaited to hear the news of what happened.  I also showed her my soaked boot (right), evidence of Nissan's lack of amphibious qualities.  :-) Later that evening, I also shared the story with my family and friends in this email:

FROM URUBAMBA, SACRED VALLEY, PERU 

Hello everybody. This was a day for the record books.  It was certainly the most exciting day so far on this trip. Here´s why... 

First, our prayers worked.  So to those of you who did join us praying for the rains to stop, here one big THANK YOU! 

After raining all night, the morning was at first gloomy and drizzly. By mid-morning, however, the rain had stopped and the sun was trying to break through.  By noon the clouds had mostly cleared.  The rest of the day was dry and sunny. 

So where´s the excitement in all this?  Well, after inspecting the extensive damage close up around the Urubamba bridge, we drove on to Ollantaytambo.  For those of you who are not experienced Peru travelers, this is the town from which the trains to Machu Picchu leave.  Well, not today.  The trains were grounded by the flooding.  Had they been running, however, the usual hustle and bustle of a busy train station would have been drowned out today by the roar of an angry river.  Urubamba river was rushing by, tearing up its banks and swelling up right up to and over the railroad tracks in some places. 

Overhead, helicopters were shuttling well-to-do tourist back and forth between Cusco and Machu Picchu at a $1,500 a pop, we were told later on.  (And evacuating stranded tourists and residents of Aguas Calientes and Machu Picchu to Cusco).  Yet even the drone of helicopters was muffled by the roar of the river.  I made a video at this as well as several other flood locations. 

The reason Elizabeth and I ended up at the train station in the first place is that a bridge in the town of Ollantaytambo that leads to the famous ruins, akin to Machu Picchu, had broken down.  A large gaping hole stared at us from the middle of the roadway.  Because ther was a danger that the whole thing would collapse, even the pedestrian traffic was rerouted a couple of miles.  Which is why we ended up at the train station enroute to the entrance to the archaeological site. 

That meant that we had already hiked two miles before even starting the arduous vertical climb to the top of the ruins, where the Temple of the Sun once dominated the valley below.  This town was as far as the Conquistadors got.  An Inca warrior by the name Ollantay Tambo made the last stand here.  The Spaniards never got further down river.  Which is why they never discovered and occupied Machu Picchu.  

Anyway, Elizabeth passed her Andes fitness test today. I gave her a chance to opt out, but she wanted to press on. By about 4PM, we reached the Temple of the Sun from where I took a picture of Elizabeth looking like a 'conqueress' of Ollantaytambo, something even the Conquistadors never achieved- :-)  

One can also enjoy magnificent 360-degree views of Urubamba Valley, and therefore, see just how extensive the flooding was.  Suffice it to say that the government of Peru has declared this a disaster area and has rushed federal police and troops here. 

As if all that weren´t exciting enough, when we descended back into town from our climb, we could not find our driver for over an hour in the madhouse that Ollantaytambo has become.  There were stranded buses, trucks and cars everywhere.  His cell phone battery had run out, so we had no way of reaching him. When we finally did connect, through sheer divine guidance, the sun was already setting behind the mountains.  That´s when the real `fun` began... 

On our way into Ollantaytambo, the river had flooded a 200-300 yard section of the road.  But the water was only about a foot deep, so we were able to drive right through.  Since that time, despite the dry and sunny weather, the river had risen.  Now that looked more like a 300-400 yard section of indeterminate depth.  Buses and cars were getting through, but no passenger cars made.  Even one of the vans got stuck in the deep water and had to be towed out by a truck.   

That´s when I called on my benefactor Apu Huaskaran (master spirit guide), and asked him to take us across the river.  I had no doubts that he would, no matter how hopeless our situation seemed at the time. 

Half an hour later, a truck driver had rigged a rope around the front fender of our Nissan sedan.  Slowly, inch by inch, it started to pull us through the deepening flood water. Elizabeth kept filming it all on a video camera, while I took still shots.  At the deepest level, the flood water reached the level just under the car windows.  Busy taking pictures and talking to Elizabeth, I had not even realized that the water had also flooded the car floor until I felt my feet getting wet.  Yes, my hiking boots had failed another waterproof test.  

As you can see, we eventually made it across.  Otherwise you would not be reading this story.  The crossing took several long minutes, we found out later after checking out Elizabeth`s video. I paid the truck driver 20 soles (about $7), the price he had asked for the rescue services rendered.  

`This has been the best spent 20 soles on this trip so far,` I later told Elizabeth and our driver, as he speeded up toward our hotel in Urubamba. They both laughed. 

Thus ended a `red letter` day on our Peruvian itinerary.  So far.  Elizabeth thought it was like being on a roller-coaster ride in an amusement park, heart in throat most of the time.  She was emotionally drained by the time we got to the hotel.  But she bounced back quickly and we had a nice pizza dinner in town (Urubamba).  And we reveled in her accomplishments today, both physical and emotional.  Who would have thought that she was as sick as a dog only three days ago. 

The forecast is for continuing dry weather.  So once again, thank you for your prayers. Good night. 

And that's all she wrote on our second day in the Sacred Valley of the Incas.

CLICK HERE to go back to Urubamba, Day 2

Also check out...

2009

• The Altomesayok Journey (May-June 2009)

2008

• Communing with Holy Mountains in Peru (June-July 2008)

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