Train Transport from Cusco to Machu Picchu

There are two basic options for travelling from Cusco to Machu Picchu. First, you have the Inca Trail, which usually takes 3 days of hard trekking through a beautiful yet strenuous landscape. Second, you can take the train. Ok, you can also reach the Inca citadel by helicopter, but only the few can afford it ?besides, you?ll miss the beautiful Andean scenery that comes with the journey.

Train transport to Machu Picchu is indeed the best alternative for the trekking-adverse: not better nor worse, just different. Still charming and attractive, yet much more comfortable.

Rail services to Machu Picchu, Peru?s most important tourist site, are managed by Peru Rail, a company of the Orient Express group (which also runs the exclusive Monasterio Hotel in Cusco and Miraflores Park Plaza hotel in Lima). Trains depart from the San Pedro station in Cusco (close to the Huanchac market), and arrive at Machu Picchu city (Aguas Calientes) some 3 hours and 40 minutes later.

The spectacular journey begins at Cusco with a series of switchbacks, or zig-zags, as they are know locally, that last for half-hour: the trains ascends the Picchu mountain, up to the city's highest point (El Arco or The Arch) and out of Cusco into the village of Poroy.

The train then descends into the Sacred Valley and the foothills of the Andes, along the Urubamba River, passing through a beautiful landscape packed with typical Andean crops and grasslands, herds of llamas, and colourful villages. Many old Inca buildings and archaeological sites can be seen along the journey, in particular the magnificent Wi?ay Wayna ruins and Q?ente (hummingbird in Quechua), amidst a lush vegetation where a nearby waterfall attracts oversize hummingbirds and colourful flowers blossom all the time.

In alternative to the Cusco departure, travellers can choose to take the train at Ollaytantambo or Urubamba, in the heart of the Sacred Valley of the Incas. This offers the possibility of staying longer in Machu Picchu -that is, without having to pass the night there-, as the first trains arrive before any other, at 7am, and depart from the Lost City of the Incas after every other train has left, at 6.10pm.

Regarding carriage qualities, you can choose among the plain Backpacker train, the more upscale VistaDome train, or the luxurious Hiram Bigham train (which departs from the village of Poroy, some 20 minutes from Cusco's city centre).

Resident in Cusco since 1997, Charlotte De Patre runs a caf? and spends much of her time reading, writing, and hiking in the mountains and cloud forests of Southern Peru. Charlotte is editor of the Cusco and Machu Picchu sections of The Peru Guide.

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One Year In An Amazing Continent

On Sunday December 15th 2002, I set off on a journey. It would become my first real journey in my life. I was leaving my home, my town, my country, my continent, crossing a sea and embarking on another continent: Africa.

A bit less than six months before I had finished my secondary school. While closing the school gate behind me I had a great plan in mind: I would go to Africa, and no one or nothing would stop me. Differently from most students, I wasn't planning to join any high school or university. I first wanted to do something else. I wanted to live out the restlessness I had felt during those often boring years at school.

Yes, Africa was definitely my plan!

I needed some money to realize my plan. So the months before my departure I spent working in factories. Initially I worked in a factory processing animal fodder. I remember one very funny moment during my time there.

At a given moment I had told my colleagues that I was planning to travel to Ethiopia, to which one of them replied in his coarse Flemish dialect ''you poor lad, you will be the fattest over there!'' It was a spontaneous and humorous reaction that brought about a lot of great merriment. During my long stay in Africa I often remembered that quote.

Later I worked in a pork factory, a very unpleasant job, but I was only interested in the money. The evening I quit, a colleague was teasing me about me missing the factory soon and weeping because of homesickness. It made me laugh heartily. I couldn't imagine that I would miss a factory or that I would miss Belgium.

The days and weeks and months went by. Finally there was that Sunday the 15th of December, the day of departure, an emotional goodbye for my parents and myself at the airport. That day I took a plane. My destination was Nairobi. It was the very beginning of my one-year journey in Africa.

Now, more then one year later I have returned to my home, my town, my country and to my continent. I don't know yet how much this journey will have changed my life. I don't know yet how much it has changed me.

But I do know I will never ever regret it. Not even a fraction of a second. I will always cherish my memories and they will be always a part of me.

Deep in my heart I wish I were still there. I hope it won't run away, Africa. If all is well...one day I will go back.

Maarten De Boeck documents his breathtaking one year adventure with vivid stories and excellent pictures in his websites- http://www.OneYearAfrica.com and the latest journey- http://www.TravelDocumentAfrica.com He now knows a lot about African people and culture. He can be contacted at- maarten@OneYearAfrica.com if you want stories or excellent pictures about Africa.

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Tahiti in Fiction and Film

Over the years, Tahiti and Polynesia have provided novelists and moviemakers with colorful subject matter. Early travelers told of wanton women on tropical shores, and Fletcher Christian added drama to the plot by leading a mutiny against the tyrannical Captain Bligh.

In 1934 American writers Charles Nordhoff and James Norman Hall brought out the Bounty Trilogy. This three-part novel deals with Christian's mutiny on the Bounty, the escape of Bligh and his loyal crew members to Dutch Timor, and the colonization of Pitcairn Island by Christian and his fellow mutineers.

The novel was an instant bestseller, and director Frank Lloyd soon made it into a movie, Mutiny on the Bounty, starring Charles Laughton and Clark Gable. In keeping with the mood of his time, the mutiny was presented as a simplistic struggle between good and evil, and the film won an Oscar for Best Picture in 1935.

A generation later Marlon Brando flew down to Tahiti to star in a blockbuster remake of Mutiny on the Bounty. MGM's 1962 production is still considered the most spectacular film ever made in the South Pacific, in part due to the glorious scenery of Tahiti and Bora Bora. Thousands of Tahitian extras appeared in the film, and Brando married his first lady, Tarita Teriipaia.

In 1984, yet another version of The Bounty was released, with Sir Anthony Hopkins as a resolute Bligh and Mel Gibson as an ambiguous Christian. Of the three Bounty films, this is probably the most historically accurate, and it's certainly the one with the greatest psychological depth. It was largely filmed in Moorea's Opunohu Bay.

Another Nordhoff and Hall novel, The Hurricane, has been brought to the silver screen twice. John Hall's 1937 film portrays a young couple fleeing a despotic governor. In 1978 Dino de Laurentiis reshot The Hurricane on Bora Bora, with Mia Farrow and Trevor Howard. The resort built to house de Laurentiis' crew still exists as the Sofitel Marara.

British novelist W. Somerset Maugham also had close ties to the South Pacific. In 1943 Albert Lewin filmed The Moon and Sixpence, Maugham's fictionalized account of Paul Gauguin's life in Polynesia. The nonconformist painter's incompatibility with French colonial life provided Maugham with a pretext to explore the role of the artist in society. Another famous Maugham story, Rain, set in Samoa, has been made into a movie several times.

Other well-known authors who have popularized the legend of Tahiti include Herman Melville, Pierre Loti, Robert Louis Stevenson, Jack London, Rupert Brooke, and James A. Michener. Their stories, plays, and films have helped create the myth of a South Seas paradise. And even today, Tahiti and Polynesia beckon to romantics wishing to live their share of the dream.

David Stanley is the author of Moon Handbooks Tahiti http://www.southpacific.org/tahiti.html His online travel guide to Tahiti and French Polynesia may be perused at http://www.southpacific.org/text/findingtahiti.html and his Tahiti travel photos are at http://www.pacific-pictures.com/tahiti/index.html

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