Landslide Fun

So let’s talk about our last couple of days! Let’s start with Sunday “Santa” blessed me with a trip to Machu Picchu. As you can imagine when you aren’t working your spending money is limited and i couldn’t afford to join my team in the adventure. When Santa heard he graciously gave the money for me to go! So Friday we woke up around 6am caught a ride with our guy Alex into Cusco to catch a bus to Hydroelectrica. For those of you that don’t know Hydroelectrica is the first stop on the venture to Machu Picchu. From there we ate some lunch then started the 9 mile hike to Aguas Calente. Along the way we met 2 Australian guys traveling around South America pretty cool guys one of them carried my day pack.( Weighed about 22 lbs last time I weighed it!) Had some good convos and almost got hit by a train! Thing came around the corner and never even honked we had no idea it was coming till it was right on us! We had to scramble to the other side and up a hill so we were out of the way! After 3 hours of walking I was ready to get to our hostel and crash, my whole lower body was hurting soooo bad. Walking on rocks and rail road tracks will do some damage on the knees and once the knees start to go everything goes! Lol So we got there met up with our guide and he tells us that there was a landslide that took out a road earlier that day so we need to check with the bus ppl cuz we might need to switch busses when we get to that point if the bus can’t cross. Ok cool I’m thinking landslide like some rocks on the road some water rushing no big deal surly they will have it cleared by tomorrow afternoon when it’s time for us to leave. We didn’t think to much about it after that, We ate some din and crashed. We woke up around 4:15am to head to get in line for the bus up to Machu Picchu. Toured Machu Picchu had an amazing time, went back down walked around for a bit then caught a train back to Hydroelectrica. (My knees couldn’t handle another walk) Btw it was my first train ride and I’ve always wanted to ride a train! It was so amazing, when walking I had to look down so I didn’t trip over a rock or something (y’all know I’m clumsy) so I didn’t get to see what was around me. So the train was a perfect time to admire Gods amazing creation and high 5 the inkas for picking a beautiful place to live! ?? We were told the day before to be sure to be back by 2:30 or you would get left! So our team arrived at 2:15 headed to the meeting spot and after 20 min of standing around we were told our bus would be there in 20 min. So another 20 min goes by then we were told our bus was 2 hours away so go have a seat in the restaurant and wait. So we were all thinking the landslide had caused some delays no big deal, sure it wasn’t ideal cuz now we were going to get home till around midnight. ( it’s a 6 hour bus ride) ok cool so we wait, we finally get on a bus and he tells us that when we get to the landslide area we might not be able to pass but he doesn’t know for sure.  (Which means homeboy was 2 hours late and never went near the landslide ??) We buckle in thinking ok maybe we will have to cross, but on the other side there was transportation that we might have to pay for! Um say what!!! We paid for transportation already it was included in our price of the trip! We weren’t very happy about that, so we prayed for the best and went about our ride. So about 2 hours later (8pm) we reach the land slide area, some guys and the driver hop off the bus to go check out the situation to see if we can pass or not. They come back and say it’s a no go we can’t pass in the bus. The driver explains we need to cross on foot and he’s gonna drive the bus another way and pick us up on the other side in about 2 hours! If we aren’t willing to wait we can pay another bus to take us. So we all climb out of the bus with all our stuff (thank the lord we only had our day packs with us and not our big packs) it’s pitch black outside except for the little light the flash lights were showing. We come to the area where the bridge is down it’s rocky, murky, rushing water and at the edge was a drop off. I was scared all I could was picture myself falling and getting rushed away and falling over the edge! ????‍?? after taking a few min to analyze the situation and watch a few people cross we decided we should cross the river. The water wasn’t very deep maybe mid calf  but it was going pretty fast. So I grabbed some guy (later learned his name was alijandro) and Jenny took my pack and we started off across! We made it across with a few slips but nothing major I was proud and felt like I could finally breath….. until I saw there was another section to cross and the water was rushing even faster and the water was a lot deeper! This time Jenny grabbed my one arm and Alijandro grabbed the other and we set off. Jenny was reminding us the whole way slow and steady which was REALLY helpful because I just wanted to get across and get this scary part of this trip done and over with. around the middle of it the water got moving really fast and got about thigh deep and it became hard to put one foot in front of the other because the water wanted to take my feet sideways!