Aguas Caliente – THE WORST

Aguas Caliente (hot water) is a town located at the base of the mountain upon which Macchu Picchu is perched. The town’s entire reason for being is to make as much cash as it can out of tourists passing through on their way to and from Macchu Picchu. It is my most hated place in South America. Avoid it at all costs.

The funnest part of Aguas Caliente was leaving it! We caught a minibus with  12 Inca Trail guides on their way home after 4 days of trekking and stopped for beers and bathrooms 4 times on the 3 hour journey

These are just some of the reasons why I hate it:

• Despite sitting in a beautiful, green valley, the town is dirty and ugly. Not a moment of thought has been put into the design of the town and every building looks rundown and ramshackle;
• The town exists soley to capture the tourist dollar – therefore, every single person in the town who is not a tourist is desperate to extract money from you. You cannot take one step without people pushing pamphlets for restaurants, massages and internet cafes into your face. It is stifling;
• The town has a souvenir store which is approximately the size of the entire town. You have to walk through it with you bags to get into or exit the town. There is no escaping it!
• Everything is the town is shockingly overpriced – for example, the only way to get up to Macchu Picchu (apart from walking) is a 20 minute bus ride up the bends of a steep cliff.  The cost of the short bus trip is approximately the same as an overnight bus elsewhere in the country;
• We stayed at a little hotel in the town. When we checked in the receptionist promised that the hotel had hot water. When we went to have showers and found this to be false we were told by the receptionist that the entire town was out of hot water… odd! When we asked the hotel next door if they had hot water and they replied “yes” we returned to our hotel to move out with our things. Miraculously the receptionist immediately fixed the hot water. Rude;

Hell On Earth

• Internet in internet cafes doesn’t work – but you have to pay for the privilege of coming to this realisation yourself;
• Our hotel charged us for holding our bags for a few hours after check out time – even our little backpack  - approximately doubling our room cost;
• The only way in and out of town is a run down old train – and it costs 2 times more than an average hotel room in the country for a 1 hour ride;
• All of the food and drinks in restaurants are overpriced and really bad;
• There is a special town “tax” added to each bill (shop/restaurant/drink) – the percentage depends upon what the writer feels like, but it varies between 5 and 15%.

So happy to be leaving! With bus driver Pevy