Lucma Lodge - start: 2,135 m [7,003 ft]
Aguas Calientes - end: 1,900 m [6,232 ft]

Before we headed out on our last part of the Salkantay Inca Trail, I spent a short while photographing some of the beautiful flowers around our lodge. As you can tell from the photos our lodge from the prior night was once again unique in its architecture including the grounds, matching the flavor of the Inca trail steps and the villages and homes in the area.

That morning we discussed options for our final day. The others were fairly tired and my feet were giving me problems. So upon a recommendation of our guide, we opted to do a short hike along the Inca trail that we would have normally followed all the way. But then back tracked down to the road and followed it for a ways (shown in dark blue in the map). At a point there was a kind of rest stop with a lot of hikers hanging out. Our guide had arranged for a van for us while the other hikers were waiting for a bus and their own vans.

Our van then took us down the road (which got very rough at times, with a lot of roadwork due to prior season landslides and flooding) to the Estacion Peru Rail hydroelectric train station. Here we bought ourselves some food as we waited for our train. The train route followed the river (hikers can also follow the tracks if desired) to the town of Aquas Calientes which is in the valley below Machu Picchu.

One very interesting thing about the train, it had a series of a type of switchback where it would go forward, change the track switch and then backup another section, change the track switch again, and then go along another section. A very clever method since trains can’t do tight turns such as found on road switchbacks but allowing it to do a decent elevation change in a small area.

When we arrived in Aquas Calientes after the beautiful train ride, we found a town in a narrow canyon basically with train tracks down its middle and buildings on both sides. All kinds of shops, bars, restaurants and fun places along with lodges. We had to walk to the other end of town with all our bags (no more porters) to get to our hotel - the walk was not too bad and gave us a chance to look around (we were no longer staying in the Mountain Lodges). I didn’t take pictures of the town or the hotel but if you follow the links here, you can see just how cool the town was.

The hotel was built on the side of the mountain with a ton of steps and different paths. Lighting wasn’t that good on the steps so one had to really watch where they were going. I actually got lost a couple of times but persistence and retracing steps came through once again.

We had a very nice dinner in the hotel’s dining room and then, of course, found the hot tub which was part way up a slope and drained into a pond/pool below.